Thank you, Mr. Chair.
These last couple of years have been incredibly frustrating for so many Canadians because of the constant rise in food prices. They can see from the publicly available data from Statistics Canada, which one of our witnesses, Jim Stanford, provided to us, that food retail profits have doubled since 2019, and even the margins.
Every time people go shopping, they see increased prices. I personally have noticed that the net weight of many of the food items I purchase has gone down while the price has either remained constant or has sometimes gone up. It's a double insult. There's an incredible amount of frustration out there.
With regard to the study that was released in June 2023, how would that study have been different or how do you think your conclusions would have been different if you had had the powers you now have under Bill C-56? Do you feel at the Competition Bureau that you would like to revisit that study and maybe make use of the new legislative powers? Can you explain the differences that now exist?