Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.
I think the issue of the profit margin has been misunderstood and perhaps deliberately misportrayed as a sign the industry is not profiting from food inflation. We've heard the claim that, if you buy $100 worth of groceries, only $3 to $4 of that actually goes to the profits of the supermarket. We have to adjust that analogy today, because a cart of groceries costs $200 now, not $100. Therefore, only $6 to $8 of it goes to the profits of the supermarket. Still, that makes it seem inconsequential, and it's not.
First of all, as I noted, food retail is not a capital-intensive industry, so the amount of invested capital in that sector is not high. It's barriers to new entrants, including the market power of the companies that are already there and have consolidated their power through all the mergers and acquisitions that have occurred over the last generation, which were detailed in that Competition Bureau report, and very helpfully. That's what keeps it so cozy as an oligopoly, and it has allowed them to take advantage of the uncertainty and disruption associated with the pandemic, and increase their margins.
First of all, it's false that the margins didn't increase. Secondly, even if they seem small, it's a large amount of profit relative to the capital that's invested.