‘A Little More In Loblaw’ Doesn’t Cut It Anymore
The Saturday Huddle is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region. Derek Montague is a Halifax-based reporter for Huddle.
I remember fondly my early days in Halifax. It was 2018, which may as well have been a century ago. I was loving all the amenities and services I never could find up in Labrador. Or if you could find it, it was way over-priced.
“A little more in Labrador,” business owners would say when consumers complained about high prices. Just because it rhymes, doesn’t mean it has to be true.
Where I’m from, the grocery stores, with their “more in Labrador” justification and lack of healthy competition, would gouge people on the items they need to live.
I was (pleasantly) shocked at my grocery bills between 2018-19 in Halifax. I felt like every receipt showed a 50 per cent discount. It felt like I was shoplifting and getting away with it.
Now I have a different view on who the highway robbers are. Suddenly, it’s like I’m transported back to Labrador where everyone and their dog pay more.
I went to place a Superstore order online for delivery yesterday. When I saw the cost, I deleted it. I used to consider the delivery fee and tip worthwhile for the time saved from in-person shopping. Now I feel I need to save the $20 to buy more food.
I need to scrounge the shelves to find the sale stickers not available online. I have a fulltime job, but now looking at side hustles and contemplating a career change.
Tim Houston recently gave his “state of the province,” speech in Halifax. It was underwhelming and didn’t represent what the average wage-earner is going through right now.
He talked about Nova Scotia’s economic potential. And, yes, we all know that’s true, especially in Halifax. The city is one of the fastest-growing in Canada. As more businesses come to the city, it will create more jobs. But it’s becoming quite evident that so many of these jobs aren’t enough to pay the bills.
I spoke with two immigrant Uber drivers recently who want to move away from the city. They want houses and money. The cost of living in Halifax, plus the wages they could find, simply doesn’t cut it anymore.
This is an issue not unique to Halifax, of course. Inflation, high rent, and high mortgages have increased the gap between rich and poor across the country. Corporations are still benefiting from high-profit margins, while low-wage workers are struggling.
Some would have you believe that higher prices on items like food are inevitable. Things are more expensive for the corporations right now too – the poor darlings – and in our economic system, those expenses get passed onto the end-user.
Loblaws has been hit so hard by inflation that last week they reported a 40 per cent jump in profits! Oh, the suffering.
And while some have vaguely pointed to Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine for record-high fuel prices, the world’s behemoths in the oil industry are raking in mind-boggling profits.
Oh, these poor corporations, having to deal with these unfortunate circumstances.
Meanwhile, small businesses will suffer from this greed. Surveys have shown many Canadians are cancelling summer road trip plans because they can’t afford to travel hundreds of miles at $2 a litre. That’s fewer tourism dollars spent in small rural towns that rely on the highways for their visitors.
The political response to Canadians’ financial suffering has been inadequate and laughable. From the federal to provincial levels, it has amounted to a collective shrug. They are saying, essentially, that our economic system is uncontrollable.
Bollocks.
Since the pandemic started, we have seen jurisdictions put caps on rent because they acknowledged the free-market system wasn’t working.
Even the Higgs government in New Brunswick, which has been mocked for the cartoon-villain way they have snubbed poor people’s problems, put a rent-control program in place recently.
Shelter is a human necessity, yet for eons provincial governments have ignored their duty to stock up on public housing. I’ve often wondered, over the years, what a Minister of Housing actually does during the course of a day, because finding more housing didn’t seem to be a priority until we went into a crisis.
Now the average citizen, through no fault of their own, is paying the price. In the worst-case scenarios, it has meant a sadly large number of homeless people living on our streets.
We shouldn’t just stop at capping rent, however. The average work-a-day Canadian deserves a shot at owning a home. As more and more homes sell to rich people who are offering ABOVE the asking price, we need a formula to cap these prices as well.
Before you say this is a ridiculous idea, ask yourself this: why does it make sense for apartments and not houses? Are we to live in a society where the working class is only deserving of the smallest places?
In Halifax, we already live in a city where the most beautiful spot, downtown, is off-limits to most. At some point, we have to say enough. Enough of the greed, enough of the gouging, enough of the poor and working-class paying the price for a broken economic system.
This brings me back to food. There is no reason left not to cap prices on essential food, especially if we care about the health of our citizens.
While I was shopping last week around the over-priced healthier foods, I noticed chocolate bars were on sale for 99 cents. This is pretty much the same price I was paying for chocolate 20 years ago.
Chocolate remains cheap because most of our cocoa comes from the poor Ivory Coast, where the average cocoa farmer makes about $1 a day. Child labour is common and they haven’t seen any wage increases over time. Hence why it’s one of the cheapest food options left.
How many people, struggling to make ends meet, will now be consuming more junk food to take away the hunger pains? How many low-income parents will turn to the cheapest measure when their kids need a snack?
We already have an unhealthy population in Atlantic Canada. I would guess that with these food prices, our healthcare costs will keep on rising.
At some point in your life, you were probably told that there is a universal law about buying and selling: that is price is controlled, in large part, by the simple formula of supply and demand.
The idea that this is a universal rule has proven to be bunk, especially when it comes to essentials like food.
The competition has dried up. Gone are the mom-and-pop stores that cared about reasonable prices for customers. What’s left are grocery giants. If you live in Atlantic Canada, you basically have two main choices: Superstore or Sobeys (and maybe a bit of Walmart)
That’s not healthy competition, which is the theme for food pricing across Canada. Even when there is supposed to be competition, there is collusion. Remember the 2018 bread-price fixing scandal? Remember when Parliament Hill questioned why grocery stores all dropped the “hero wage” to their underpaid staff during the pandemic?
Supply and demand my ass.
Then there is the biggest insult to consumers in Nova Scotia. We are surrounded by ocean (supply) and we love to eat fish(demand), yet we pay the same outrageous prices as if we were surrounded by gravel and dirt.
I was thinking of buying scallops a while back until I saw the frozen bag cost $30.
The only measure that has worked so far for the average consumer has been a rent cap, although I admit that is not a perfect system, and smaller landlords have suffered.
So if something is essential to the lives of citizens, I say put a cap on it. Relying on the generosity of the greediest corporations has proven not to work time and again.
I don’t care if this idea makes me a “socialist” or even makes me sound communist. It’s time to fix what has long been broken and what the pandemic only made worse.
The excuse “a little more in Labrador” – or Loblaw – just doesn’t cut it anymore.