Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to speak to this bill put forward by my colleague the member for Fleetwood—Port Kells. I can definitely understand the inspiration behind this bill. In his speech, he referred to the COVID-era activities that were happening in his community and in communities coast to coast, whereby people were experiencing the different impacts of food shortages in certain areas, and some of the responses that grocers were devising.
I think this bill is really about two of the strongest emotional connections we have, the connections with our food and with our wallet. It is where those two things intersect that this bill speaks to. There is a special emotional reaction that we have at the cash register at the grocery store when we see the price of what we have actually put in the trolley.
My colleague from Fleetwood—Port Kells referred to the COVID-era effects that were experienced in groceries. At that time, I was a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. I see my friend here from Victoria, who was also teaching at the time. I remember understanding the student perspective on these issues, as students were often cooped up, and they would eventually be able to go out of their classrooms, out into the community to get the food they needed for the week. A lot of students these days are doing part-time work. In my particular case at Toronto Metropolitan University, a lot of my students were actually the ones working in these grocery chains, and they started to notice something. They started to notice they were being asked to move things on different shelves. They started to notice that different products were even different shapes or different sizes.
I remember very well a student who worked in the butcher department of one major grocer. He told me very directly that he was being effectively asked to implement shrinkflation policies within that grocer's retail operation. The students actually brought that forward to me as a professor, and it was significant enough, with enough of a voice. We happened to be doing a pre-budget consultation with the former minister of finance. Actually, it was such a demonstration of what young people were experiencing; not only were they being affected by some of the food security issues, but they were actually being forced to implement some of the policies within grocery stores that were having a deleterious effect. I was able to bring those issues to the deputy prime minister and minister of finance at the time.
We also know that since the COVID era, and during the COVID era, the former government did make a number of responses that really helped reduce food inflation and deal with some of the more problematic policies that were being implemented by grocers. There was, for instance, an injunction on covenants that prevented other grocers from opening near grocers. There is a grocery code of conduct that has had an important impact on controlling and patrolling some of the behaviour of some of the large grocers that would otherwise, maybe, have more space to be increasing prices. In the specific case of a labelling standard, we know that federal, provincial and territorial ministers did not quite get there. That is, I think, one of the inspirations of this bill.
I am the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry. The minister and her department, which administers the code of conduct, have also put up a number of information resources that are very important, to help Canadians understand a bit more of their experience at the grocery store: in particular, the grocery affordability web page and the food price data hub.
I listen to my colleagues across the aisle, and I am still hearing a few of the old hits around grocery affordability. I want to remind them of some of the reality of what is happening in groceries today and what is not happening. I have brought my receipt from Maple Produce on Roncesvalles Avenue, a very—