Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome back to the committee, Minister.
With my first question, I want to talk to you about the persistent case of food price inflation. I will acknowledge that the rate has gone down, but a lot of Canadians are still feeling the pinch. There has certainly been some work done in terms of giving more legislative authority to the Competition Bureau. I know there's an industry-led grocery code of conduct. That aside, a lot of Canadians are still feeling the pinch because, in the middle of our food supply system—and this, I would argue, is harming both our producers and consumers—we still have a severely concentrated marketplace in grocery retail.
Over the last few months I attempted with my limited resources to introduce legislation to address the problem of shrinkflation, to have some kind of transparency on how unit pricing is done, but also to try to get more food co-operatives set up in Canada so that we can provide some honest competition to the big grocery giants.
I understand that these areas fall primarily under the purview of your colleague, the Minister of Industry, but my question for you, Minister, is, given this persistent problem, why have you failed in advocating with your colleague to get this problem addressed? It's not like it's new. Canadians have been suffering through this for several years now.