The Aisles of Avarice: How Canada’s Grocery Oligopoly Fuels the Inflation Fire… Oligarchs: Loblaws, Metro, and Sobeys Robbing Canadian Blind In Broad Daylight

By Eddie Hardie, Sociopolitical Commentator @ Canuck🍁Post

The Aisles of Avarice: How Canada’s Grocery Oligopoly Fuels the Inflation Fire

Walk into any supermarket in Canada, and you feel it. The silent, squeezing pressure at the checkout. The disbelieving shake of the head as a single bag of groceries costs a small fortune. We are told a story of inflation—a global storm of supply chain snarls, war, and climate change. And while that story is true, it is incomplete. Lurking behind the rising price of bread and butter is a more insidious, homegrown truth: Canada’s grocery market is not a free market. It is a tightly controlled oligopoly, and in this environment, crisis has become a catalyst for record profits.

The Usual Suspects: A Landscape of Concentrated Power

At its heart, the Canadian grocery industry is a fortress, and its gatekeepers are a powerful few. The “Big Three”—Loblaws (with its banners like No Frills, Superstore, and Shoppers Drug Mart), Sobeys (parent to Empire Company Ltd., including FreshCo), and Metro (owner of Food Basics, Jean Coutu, and others)—command the aisles. When you add in the colossal presence of Walmart, these few players control an estimated 80% or more of the grocery market.

This is the very definition of an oligopoly: a market structure so concentrated that the actions of one giant directly influence the others. They are not fierce competitors; they are interdependent titans, operating in a realm with barriers to entry so high that meaningful competition is all but impossible.

The Great Price Gouge: Profiteering in a Time of Panic

The initial causes of global inflation were real. But in a competitive market, companies would absorb some of these shocks and compete fiercely on price to retain customers. In an oligopoly, the playbook is different. It allows for what economists now call “greedflation” or profit-led inflation.

The evidence is in the ledgers, and it is damning.

• In 2023, as Canadians struggled to put food on the table, Loblaw Companies Ltd. reported a staggering profit of $2.12 billion.

• Metro Inc. saw its net earnings soar to $1.02 billion.

• Empire Company (Sobeys) posted a gross profit of over $4 billion.

This isn’t just recovering costs; this is profiting from the crisis. As a study from the Centre for Future Work confirmed, corporate mark-ups have been the dominant driver of inflation in Canada post-2021, not wages or input costs. The oligopoly provides the perfect cover: when one player raises prices citing “inflation,” the others can follow in lockstep, a practice known as “shadow pricing.” There is no fear of being undercut, only the mutual understanding that everyone’s bottom line will grow fatter.

The Illusion of Choice and the Government’s Muted Response

The giants offer the illusion of choice—a No Frills here, a FreshCo there—but the pricing power remains in the same corporate boardrooms. This has prompted a public and political backlash. The federal government has summoned grocery CEOs to Ottawa, demanding plans to stabilize prices. The Competition Bureau is investigating the sector, but its hands are often tied by outdated laws that fail to address the modern reality of oligopolies.

Even the industry’s proposed solution—a Grocery Code of Conduct—has been mired in delay and dispute, reportedly opposed by the very titans it seeks to regulate: Loblaws and Walmart. The message is clear: the status quo is too profitable to change voluntarily.

Conclusion: A Crisis Made in the Boardroom

To blame inflation solely on global forces is to ignore the cash registers ringing in Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary. The grocery oligopoly has acted as an amplifier, turning the global whisper of inflation into a deafening roar for everyday Canadians. It is a system where the pain of the consumer is the gain of the corporation, where the shared struggle of a nation has become a historic opportunity for profit.

The aisles of our supermarkets are not just lined with goods; they are lined with evidence. Evidence of a broken market, of concentrated power, and of a simple, brutal equation: less competition equals higher prices. Until this fundamental structure is challenged, the Canadian shopper will remain trapped in the aisles of avarice, paying the price for a market that no longer serves them.