The first employment condition that I ever negotiated was in a grocery store: I would take the job, but I refused to kill any of the crabs or lobsters. I had that job at a grocery store seafood counter for almost five years. I fileted massive halibut. I scrubbed smelly fish displays. I shelled prawns and I shucked oysters. Three years into the job, Sobeys offered me one of ten national awards, which included summer internships at their subsidiary’s head office.
Before my first summer interning, I met one of the directors at a local coffee shop. After a thirty-minute impassioned account of the grocery industry, he said to me “at the end of the day, all we really do is sell groceries,” putting up his hands and shrugging his shoulders. But, it’s so much more than that. I have spent the last six years studying the food supply chain, with two published articles on global food innovation and the pricing of local food. Food supply impacts everyone. We are seeing that impact emphasized on the national stage right now, as the large grocers come under scrutiny from not one but two federal institutions: the Competition Bureau and the House of Commons.
The public is furious and for good reason. Everyone is impacted by high food prices, but these high prices disproportionately impact our most vulnerable. Food Banks Canada reported the “toughest” summer in their 41-year history last year, and disproportionate food bank usage by children, single-parent households and single-adult households. Consumers are not expected to see relief any time soon. Canada’s Food Price Report has forecasted food prices to increase between 5 and 7% in 2023.