Thank you, sir.
My time is short here, but I'll take that as a no again.
Sir, I'm pro-business, but I've mentioned that other grocery giants are nickel-and-diming with the fees that are charged. Fees that are charged to suppliers by grocery giants, such as Walmart, amounted to over $6 billion for renovations to their stores, a cost normally paid for by reinvesting profits in a business, not by creating new fees and offloading the responsibility on suppliers, farmers and producers. In fact, Sylvain Charlebois called this “supply chain bullying”, and according to the Fruit and Vegetable Growers of Canada, 44% of producers are selling at a loss.
During the pandemic, Walmart announced that it would be charging its suppliers a new fee, not just an increase to the current fee structure. This was a new fee, and it was to be charged retroactively to pay for store upgrades, such as improving the online-ordering system infrastructure.
My question is this: Did you go ahead and implement this fee during the pandemic?