New Democratic Party 🍁 Nouveau Parti Démocratique

Stop price gouging with a grocery cap

We will introduce emergency price caps on basic food items—like pasta, frozen vegetables, and infant formula—to keep costs of food down. These items have seen some of the steepest increases since 2020: cooking oil is up 75 per cent, pasta is up 43 per cent, and infant formula—an essential for so many parents—is up 30 per cent and still climbing.

Price regulations are already in place for a number of sectors of Canada’s economy, like electricity, natural gas and certain medicines. And they have been used in other jurisdictions to tackle food price inflation. We would attempt to negotiate this cap but if big grocery chains refuse, we would act by passing the appropriate legislation.

To enforce this cap, we will put in place a mandatory Grocery Code of Conduct. We will also strengthen the Competition Bureau to act as a grocery price watchdog with the power to impose serious penalties on those who don’t comply. These powers will extend to price gouging, price surging, price fixing and shrinkflation.

We would also help boost competition in the grocery sector. We know that the sector is currently dominated by just five companies, who control over three-quarters of the market. This concentration has driven up prices and led to unfair market practices. Our mandatory Grocery Code of Conduct would help level the playing field in the grocery industry. We would establish a National Food Cooperative Strategy aimed at boosting independent small- and medium-sized grocery stores. And we would fix Nutrition North, to make sure the subsidy goes straight to people, and not to corporations.