Dr. Lee, thank you for being here. I wanted to ask you about the recent calling in of the grocery executives to Ottawa to dress them down for their so-called obscene, gross profiteering during the pandemic.
I would have loved to have been a fly in the wall for that meeting, but I'm pretty sure that when they showed up, they would have said something like, “Well, our margins are between 2% and 4%. Really, the problem has to do with the supply chain, and there are all kinds of reasons for that.”
One of the things that concern me, though, is that the Prime Minister has said over and over, as recently as yesterday in question period, that if they didn't lower their prices, he would hit them with a punitive tax of some sort. I'm wondering if I could get your thoughts on the idea of a tax. I'm not sure how a tax on grocers makes groceries more affordable for consumers.
Also, I'd like your thoughts on this idea that the government would publicly decide to use a tax as a punitive measure to punish a business because the business isn't doing exactly what the government wanted it to do, and what that says about our society.