The federal government’s Competition Bureau is launching a new study announced a new study of the Canadian food supply chain.
It said it’s in response to recent food price increases and comes after Prime Minister Mark Carney announced $130 million of increased funding for the Competition Bureau to examine the food industry.
The study will be a “broad examination,” of every step in the food production process, interim commissioner of competition Jeanne Pratt said in an interview. It will look at crop inputs, such as fertilizer and seeds, as well as transportation, distribution and pricing practices at grocers.
“The price at checkout starts a long time before the product gets on the shelves,” she said.
Pratt said the bureau study will build on its recommendations from a 2023 report that examined concentration of ownership in the grocery business,.
Mike von Massow, an agricultural economist at the University of Guelph, said the study seems to be too broad and the meatpacking business alone is a highly consolidated sector worthy of its own investigation, He said he said 85 per cent of Canada’s slaughter is done at three plents. Two are in Alberta and one in Ontario and they are owned by Cargill and JBS.
“This is so unfocused. It’s kind of like casting a big wide net and hoping we catch something,” von Massow said.
The 2023 study recommended changes such as limiting property controls, which have been used by major grocers to restrict what nearby businesses can sell. Investigations into property controls are continuing.
Only one province – Manitoba – has banned the practice.
The Competition Bureau could notch a slam-dunk win by investigating the two companies that dominate Canada's egg supply chain.
More than five years ago a whistleblower provided the Competition Bureau with electronic evidence of how the two conspired to control the supply chain.
It could also examine the history of competition in Ontario's dairy-processing industry, including lobbying in the 1970s by the Ontario Dairy Council against provincial government permission to establish new milk processing plants in Ontario.
There is enough anti-competitive behaviour to keep Competition Bureau investigators working for decades.
