Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Walmart Canada is not trying to profit from food inflation, president and CEO Gonzalo Gebara told a parliamentary committee studying the issue Monday evening.
Gebara told MPs that Walmart Canada's gross profit rate for its food business declined last year, as did the company's total operating profit in dollars. However, he declined to provide specific numbers for the private business, saying Walmart Canada has provided relevant financial information to the Competition Bureau.
MPs pressed Gebara on the fees and penalties that grocers charge suppliers. These fees are one of the topics being discussed as part of efforts to create a grocery code of conduct.
Gebara said Walmart Canada has received a draft of the code of conduct recently and is reviewing it.
"We will support any initiative that would bring better conditions and the ability to have more transparency in the whole chain," he said.
Gebara's comments before the committee followed a highly anticipated appearance by the leaders of Canada's three biggest grocery chains on March 8.
The CEOs and presidents of Loblaw Cos. Ltd., Metro Inc. and Empire Co. Ltd. told the committee that food inflation is not being caused by profit-mongering, and insisted their margins on food have remained low.
Federal politicians have been calling for more transparency from the grocery industry as food price inflation has been significantly outpacing overall inflation.
Gebara said Walmart Canada strives to maintain a price gap between its products and those sold by its competitors, naming the other grocery giants.
He said Walmart is known for its "everyday low price" strategy: "This is not a stunt or our response to the challenging times we're living in."
The retailer is doing everything it can to fight inflation, said Gebara, such as taking measures to control operating costs, identifying improvements in its supply chain and working to keep prices down on private-label products.
"The past two years have presented a perfect storm of external factors that have driven up food prices," he said. "These inflationary pressures are passed through the entire supply chain."
Grocery prices were up 10.6 per cent in February compared with a year ago, while overall inflation was 5.2 per cent.
During the past year, the Bank of Canada has repeatedly raised interest rates in an effort to quell inflation's rampage.
Galen Weston, the billionaire chairman and president of Loblaw, told MPs earlier this month it's "impossible" that grocers could be causing food inflation, and said the company makes bigger profits off the non-food parts of its business such as apparel and pharmacy.
A report last fall out of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University found that all three of the big grocery companies posted higher profits in the first half of 2022 compared with their average earnings over the past five years.
The March 8 meeting featured NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh repeatedly asking Weston, "How much profit is too much profit?"
Weston argued that "reasonable profitability is an important part of operating a successful business," while earlier Empire president and CEO Michael Medline took a similar tack, saying, "It is folly to suggest that an unprofitable grocery business is somehow better for customers and better for shelf prices."
At the March 8 meeting, the heads of Metro and Empire both questioned why MPs seemed to be excluding American retail giants like Walmart and Costco from their research into food inflation. The committee agreed unanimously to invite the leaders of those two retailers' Canadian arms to speak before them.
-- With files from The Associated Press
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 27, 2023.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.