Agriculture committee  No, I think we nuanced it. What we said is that we don't accept price increases.... We don't want to process price increases from suppliers during the busy holiday period.

Agriculture committee  I can't speak for them.

Agriculture committee  We tell suppliers that we will not process price increases during the busy holiday period. Our teams are too busy with merchandising. We want to have stability, and we say there's a pause on.... We don't process it.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely not. There is no collaboration at all. We self-supply. We don't want to process increases from the beginning of the holiday period until about the end of January or beginning of February.

Agriculture committee  No.

Agriculture committee  There is no collusion. There is no collaboration on that.

Agriculture committee  What I am saying is that you cannot look at it in absolute dollar terms. You have to look at it as a percentage of sales. We're a big company. Our revenues have increased this year because of inflation and so have our expenses. When you look at the profit margin as a percentage of sales, whether it's gross margin or net margin after all the expenses and taxes, it has been very stable.

Agriculture committee  Now you're talking about capital allocation, which is a different subject than talking about—

Agriculture committee  The way we do capital allocation is that we start with capital investments in our core businesses. Our warehouses and our store network are our priority. In 2022 we invested $620 million in our network DCs. That was a record. This year we're going to invest $800 million throughout our broader DCs network, a record level for our company.

Agriculture committee  Well, I'm a leader of the company. I interact with various stakeholders on a daily basis, talking about the operations of Metro, and I'm here today to answer your questions.

Agriculture committee  It ranges from products purchased from small growers to those purchased from producers who are quite large. We try to do business with the full range of producers, and the number is growing every year. We've even made it a priority in our corporate responsibility plan to buy more from local growers.

Agriculture committee  I can't speak for anyone else, I can only tell you what we do. We have a good relationship with our suppliers, including the local suppliers. We want fees to be negotiated transparently. As I said, we want to make more room for local suppliers in our stores.

Agriculture committee  You need to consider all the factors that determine purchase prices. I can't comment on each supplier's situation, because we negotiate with each supplier individually.

Agriculture committee  We report our results in accordance with current accounting standards, based on what we call a retail operating segment. There are many similarities between the two divisions. In our results, we report comparable sales by division, both food and pharmacy. We even break down comparable pharmacy sales into prescription and commercial sales.

Agriculture committee  I should let you know that 95% of our employees are unionized. For the vast majority of them, salary is determined during negotiations about their collective agreement when it expires. These negotiations include wages and benefits, such as pension, health care and so on. We offer very competitive wages and benefits.