Ms. Taylor-Roy, I am very pleased to hear you ask a question in French and to answer in that language.
You're right. The curve shows that inflation is slowing down in the grocery sector. That is a fact and the data comes from Statistics Canada. The measures that we have taken are currently affecting the market, but we need to do more. That is why, when I met with grocers for the first time in September 2023, I asked them to work with us to implement measures. We were guided by what is being done in Canada and abroad. We looked at what is being done in France, England and other countries. We told Canadian grocers that we need them to work with the Government of Canada to help us stabilize food prices in the country.
The major grocery chains that appeared before the committee came back with some ideas. However, I did not think that they were enough and I was not satisfied, so I told them that we were going to change the law to give the Competition Bureau more power so that it could get to the bottom of this issue. That is what we did.
When we meet with Canada's major grocery chains, they tell us that the supply chain is complicated and that there are many factors that affect grocery prices. I told them to put their cards on the table and to tell Canadians if it is complicated and then we can decide what to do about it.
We launched the biggest reform of the Competition Act in the past 40 years. What is more, we made record investments in the Office of Consumer Affairs, which is part of my department. We also held a federal-provincial meeting on consumer challenges. Some people told me that this was the first such meeting since Confederation. I would like to believe them, but there have definitely been other meetings since then. I was told that the last such meeting supposedly took place around 2000, and we are in the process of verifying that.
We put pressure on the industry because we think that everyone has a role to play in this. In light of that, we did not just meet with the major grocery chains. We also met with industry representatives, those who have a role to play, including major domestic and foreign stakeholders in Canada's processing industry. We met with them in Ottawa and asked them to be part of the solution.
More recently, I was in discussions with major grocery chains in the United States to see how their market dynamics work. I learned something that this committee should know. A representative from a large American grocery chain that generates about $100 billion in revenue told me that it tried to enter the Canadian market a few years ago, but that it was unable to find any rental space. The chain was looking for 150 rental spaces in Canada, but it was unable to find them. I answered that we had just changed the law to prohibit the use of restrictive clauses in leases between lessors and lessees that prevent competitors from setting up shop near a large grocery chain. The representative confirmed that that was the reason why the chain was unable to enter the Canadian market. We are talking about a company that generates $100 billion in revenue. The representative said that, now that we had changed the law, the chain would again think about coming to Canada because it thinks that Canada is a lucrative market.