The Federal Government is considering a list of 12 foreign grocery companies from the U.S., Germany, Turkey, Portugal and others to see if it can lure them to come to Canada in an effort to increase competition in the grocery sector, according to a story by Reuters.
The news comes against the backdrop of an industry push to introduce a grocery code of conduct to manage food prices and comments by industry leaders like Michael Medline and others stating publicly that Canada already is one of the most competitive markets in the world.
Addressing competition, Medline has noted the hurdles of entering the Canadian markets.
“It’s a big geography and highly regulated. If hard discounters come, they shall come but like Target they will find how hard it is to compete here.”
Since the fall, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne has criticized Canada’s three biggest grocery companies—Loblaw, Metro and Empire—for failing to be transparent on the causes of food inflation, and told Canada’s Competition Bureau he expected the agency to “confront abuses” in the domestic marketplace. At one point, Champagne and other officials spoke of a windfall tax on grocery-chain profits unless prices for grocery staples stabilized.
Two of the names on the list are both based in Germany: Aldi, which has over 2,000 outlets in the U.S., and Lidl, another discounter with American stores.
