When we look to the reasons for inflation, outside of external supply shocks like the price of oil, often we point fingers at workers, saying that workers require wages to be too high, but there's another possibility, which is that corporations are increasing profits along the supply chain. Their cost of goods may well have gone up and they may well pass that amount on to consumers, plus an extra 2% or 5% on top to pad their own profits. That's another possibility as to why inflation might be going up.
It's worth considering market concentration in particular areas. I mentioned beef just because it's so concentrated and there are so few facilities in Canada that actually process beef. There are three major plants, two of which are owned by Cargill, and Cargill reported record profits in 2021. It's a big international corporation. They cited in part high beef prices, so it wasn't exclusively Canadian, but it just goes to show that the fluctuation in prices and consumers' general acceptance at the grocery store that prices will be higher doesn't mean that there isn't a profit margin being built in as a result of that trading up the supply chain.
That isn't a surprise to beef producers. They're well aware of the market concentration. It's not a surprise to farmers in general who haven't seen the prices they receive for their goods go up, despite the fact that the price of bread goes up for end consumers. Somewhere along that chain, someone is capturing that value and it's not farmers. It's often where those supply chains are very constrained through a couple of different parties—and the grocery store industry isn't terribly distributed in Canada either—where you see a concentration of profits.
It's well worth considering when we are seeing this big boost in inflation. People are taking advantage of it to boost their own profits.