Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here today.
You, as the CEOs of major grocery chains, have an oligopoly with only five companies controlling 80% of grocery stores in Canada. You use this power to nickel-and-dime farmers and wholesalers to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars for many with fines, chargebacks and exorbitant fees for the privilege of selling their food to your stores, forcing them to accept contracts where, according to the Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada, 44% of producers are selling at a loss.
The world is worried about food security right now and Canada has an abundance of land to grow fresh food to feed the world, but your companies' practices of arbitrary fees, fines and chargebacks are keeping your profits and grocery prices high, while single-handedly helping to destroy Canadian family produce farms and businesses. Nowhere else in the world do grocers do this to farmers and producers.
A farmer should not have to be an accountant to read their statements after selling to you. Prices are quickly becoming unreachable for roughly 12.5 million Canadians who are earning less than $40,000 a year, forcing them to switch from fresh, healthy food to heavily processed, cheaper and less nutritious products. That's not real food and it's going to lead to an increase in the burden on our health care system.
Canadians deserve to eat fresh Canadian-grown fruits and vegetables and we cannot rely on foreign countries to feed us. Foreign growers don't operate under the same high standards as our farmers here in Canada.
As someone who's been in the produce business, it's concerning knowing that the prices in stores are inflated far beyond the costs of what a farmer is being paid to grow and then deliver to your distribution centres. After eight years under a government that's purposefully implementing taxes and policies that are harmful to Canada's agriculture industry, what your businesses are doing to farmers doesn't give a lot of hope to the average person who's simply looking to eat.
Farmers' selling prices are going down while grocers are piling on fees and penalties and consumer prices are going up in stores.
Gentlemen, I'd like to ask you, can you look farm families in the eyes right now—because I know a lot of them are watching right now—and tell them that you're not pushing family produce farms out of business in this country? Are you even aware that 44% of farmers are selling at a loss to you?
Knowing this, my question is simple. Will you, once and for all, abolish all fees, fines and chargebacks and actually pay farmers the price that's on their invoice?
It's a yes or no.
I can start with you, Mr. Medline.