Thanks, Chair.
Thanks to all the panellists for being here today. I'm definitely listening intently to your comments and taking all things into consideration.
To Mr. Littler's opening remarks, I think we all get that costs have increased across the agri-food supply chain and that there are good reasons for those globally. I guess the thing that struck me is to see Loblaw, Metro and the other large grocery chains claiming that these net earnings, which are quite sizable....
Mr. Hussain, I think you were giving us a rationale or an alternative explanation other than what one might assume, which is that there's some profiteering going on. I think it's interesting to dig a little deeper there and understand that better. Also, I should say that net earnings, as we all know, just to set it clear, are an entity's income minus all the costs of goods, expenses, depreciation, amortization, interest and taxes. We're really talking about net profit for Loblaw as a whole when we're talking about $266 million prior to the pandemic to I guess $387 million today. That's pretty sizable in terms of earnings, given that we've gone through a global pandemic and Canadians out there are struggling to pay for necessities as you said.
Mr. Hussain, maybe you can enlighten us. You mentioned health and beauty products as one of your verticals. Has that one been so successful in the last couple of years that it accounts for your whole net earnings increase?