Trade Minister François-Philippe Champagne says he’s working arduous to attempt to rein in excessive grocery costs, regardless of there being no windfall tax for grocers within the 2024 finances after prior threats to impose tax measures if costs weren’t introduced underneath management.
In an interview on The West Block, Champagne advised host Mercedes Stephenson that he nonetheless believes competitors stays one of the simplest ways to rein in meals costs.
“We’ve got an excessive amount of focus in terms of grocers within the nation,” Champagne mentioned.
In latest months, Champagne says he has been courting overseas grocers to enter the Canadian market.
He says he’ll make bulletins as soon as there are offers finalized, however an unnamed American grocer identified a major hurdle to getting into the northern market.
“I met one in every of them in the US, and the largest hurdle that they had was about leases. They may not discover 400 or 500 leases or properties to lease within the nation regardless of them being very huge, billions of {dollars},” Champagne mentioned.
“So, is it straightforward? No. Is it price making an attempt? Positively.”
As a part of the 2023 fall financial assertion, the federal government launched reforms to the Competitors Act with a concentrate on grocers. Key amongst them, giving the Competitors Bureau subpoena energy to gather data from corporations like grocers as a part of market research and making it unlawful for company grocers to forestall impartial shops from establishing store in the identical business constructing.
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In his interview on The West Block, Champagne hinted that these reforms have American grocers taking one other have a look at Canada.
On Thursday, Champagne took half in a “historic” announcement in Alliston, Ont., with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Honda executives on the Japanese automaker’s $15-billion funding in electrical car manufacturing.
The plan consists of retrofitting the present Honda plant in Alliston to make purely electrical autos and constructing a battery manufacturing plant close by and two battery components manufacturing amenities elsewhere in Ontario.
“It’s sending a sign to the world that now we have the most effective staff on this planet, that the place to take a position is in Canada, as a result of now now we have the total provide chain in terms of batteries and electrical autos. Truthfully, right now can be a game-changer. It’s form of historic,” Champagne mentioned.
Work on retrofitting the Alliston Honda plant is anticipated to be concluded in 2028, with an annual manufacturing goal of 240,000 electrical autos yearly.
The federal authorities has a purpose of getting all new client autos offered in Canada be zero-emission by 2035.
When requested if the federal government is doing sufficient to construct infrastructure to energy and cost all these electrical autos, Champagne centered extra on car manufacturing however mentioned extra must be performed.
“Properly, we’re going to do extra. And that is nice as a result of when you’ve an funding like that’s form of a catalyst,” Champagne mentioned.
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