In Canada, our anti-trust regulator is completely feckless and captured by industry.
For non-Canadians, this is by design, our government carved out NAFTA-exempt industries (Grocers, Dairy, Telecom, and Banking) during NAFTA negotiations, subsequently creating protected industries from which we now have oligopolies.
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/co...
Grocery itself has more competition than the rest (thank you Walmart), which is why you gotta be careful when making US shopping trips. I've found rice, oils, canned beans/tomatoes, carrots, bananas, potatoes, onions all cheaper in Canada.
And every year, I get more and more non-perishable grocery stuff from Amazon.ca
Fun fact: Canadians can import non-prescription meds by mail, officially up to 90d supply (so I address it to "Family Scoundreller"), so I cruise ebay for a lot of that stuff.
I am jealous of Americans and their 10,000IU Vitamin D pills. Canada limits the same to 1,000IU per pill. Would this be allowed to cross the border or no?
Looking up the prescription regulations, only >2500 IU requires a prescription, so if you can find 2500s to import, that's over-the-counter and can be lawfully imported for 90d personal use. https://www.napra.ca/national-drug-schedules/?_nds_drug_name...
If you try to have 10000s mailed from USA by USPS, there's a very rare chance that it could be reviewed by Health Canada and they would deem it prescription-only and seize it, or they could "use their discretion" and still let it through anyway because seizing is a lot more paperwork.
Don't bother with UPS or Fedex shipping into Canada. Ever.
Note: if you're in Canada on a work/study permit, there are some exemptions allowing you to import non-narcotic prescription medications.
Are you referring to brokerage fees? UPS does not charge brokerage fees if air shipping is used; basically, anything other than Standard qualifies.
TransCanada is doing that against the US Gov for cancelling a pipeline project. The company will probably lose, but so much $ is at stake, so it makes sense to try.
This link also only looks at gross margin - if revenues and gross profit increase, their fixed operating costs (rent for example is usually fixed for 10-20 years for grocers, or the site is owned by the grocer) are now spread over higher sales so their operating profit (EBIT or EBITDA) can increased dramatically.
Sure, but why would anyone call such a situation profiteering?
Furthermore it seems unlikely that the amount of food canadians have eaten has changed significantly over the last few years. Its not like the population increased significantly.
We don’t have Bernie Sanders or AOC equivalents.
https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/monopoly-7-canadas-compet...
Thanks for sharing!
Here is some reading on this topic:
https://www.thestar.com/business/2022/07/09/supermarkets-are...
https://www.thestar.com/business/2022/10/24/canadas-competit...
Suggesting that people who can't afford to eat should liaise with their elected official, who should present it to the legislature, empower the Competition Bureau to properly investigate the issue, then wait for the Competition Bureau to audit these companies and win a case through the judicial system (and that's the ideal case) – well, I think that's going to happen too slow to prevent starvation.
I'm personally worried about this because rising food prices predict riots and rebellions through history. Either prices have to come down, wages have to go up, or we're gonna see a greater loss of social cohesion and we'll have a much bigger problem on our hands. Getting the government to act on this on a macro scale is going to be a huge task given who's in power right now.
* https://old.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/xqigdu/profit_marg...
As for "greedflation", see econ professor Trevor Tombe: "Are rising profits fueling inflation?"
> Rising grocery prices—the focus of Mr. Singh’s attention—also does not reflect rising profit margins. In fact, food stores and food manufacturing [both have lower profit margins this year than last][0].
> One can even see this in the financial statements of large food retailers. Loblaws, for example, [reported a net profit margin][1] of 3.04 percent in the second quarter of this year and 3.03 percent in the second quarter of last year. Their rising profits are due entirely to rising sales, not increasingly uncompetitive behaviour as some suggest. > > The entire increase in average markups in Canada are therefore related to rising global energy and commodity prices.
[…]
> There are of course important issues to explore and debate when it comes to the level of competition in certain areas of corporate Canada, and there are also many overlapping causes of rising consumer prices. But when it comes to claims that “greedflation” is a key driver of recently rising inflation rates, the data is very clear: it’s not.
* https://thehub.ca/2022-10-14/trevor-tombe-are-rising-profits...
* https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1580935693672775681
[0] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv!recreate.action?p...
1. Which corporation reported record profits exactly? If that is not a grocery store chain, then it is hurting wrong business.
2. If there were any unjustified increases within the country, how did anti-trust regulator react? If price increase results in bigger profits, i.e. unjustified by increasing costs in the supply chain, it is anti-trust case and government must react. Why not demanding this action?
3. If price increase was due to increasing costs, then it is fair and there is no moral ground in stealing anyway. Instead the government should intervene and subsidize some markets to protect population from inflation shock. Why not demanding this action?
My point is, there exist lawful mechanisms to mitigate the negative economic effects of the current situation in the world. They must be activated by a responsible government. Theft is never a solution to anything.