THUNDER BAY – Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is continuing his push to lower the price of groceries.
Singh said the New Democrats want to take on corporate greed. The NDP are calling for measures such as an excess profits tax in the new budget and cuts to corporate handouts to put an end to over-the-top grocery costs.
“These grocery stores have received massive corporate handouts from the Conservatives to the tune of $60 billion across the sector. For a company like Loblaws over this period of time, it's $1.2 billion in handouts and the Conservatives put it in place, but the Liberals maintained it,” Singh said.
“So, we're giving effectively billions of dollars in handouts to these large corporations started by the Conservatives and continued by the Liberals while we are paying the highest prices ever for our groceries and that is the wrong approach.”
Singh recently introduced Bill C-352, which he said will help to ensure fairness to consumers and protection from things like price-fixing, such as the case of coordinated fixing of the price of bread in 2018 which resulted in Canada Bread Company agreeing to a $50 million fine.
He said cases like that show a need for a sentencing body to award harsher penalties.
“My bill proposes that we would allow for sentencing - (by) an organization, a sentencing body. Whether it goes to the Competition Bureau or goes to the courts, the sentencing body would be able to put in place, one of the options would be (the fine would be three times) the benefit that is accrued,” said Singh
“So, in the case of the bread case, it would be $15 billion potential penalty. Now, we're talking serious deterrence that would really significantly deter companies from engaging in those type of abusive practices. So, that's what my bill does.”
The bill also proposes that if any merger were to result in a 30 per cent or more market share, it would not be allowed unless it could be proven that a merger would benefit the consumer.
“This would have prevented one of the mergers that happened recently within the past year. It would have stopped that Rogers-Shaw merger. With this change in place, they would not have been able to meet the threshold,” he said.
“And so that's the type of type of change we need. We need the government to do the job of fighting for people and standing up to corporate greed.”
Bill C-352 has completed its first and second readings and is now at consideration in committee in the House of Commons.
