Agriculture committee  The independent grocer is on a margin of about 2%. We don't have a level playing field in this country for independent grocers. We're just trying to stay on the playing field. We're doing our best to do all of the things that my other colleagues from Metro and Save-On mentioned.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Good evening. My name is Gary Sands. I'm senior vice-president with the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers, as the chair indicated. Thank you for the invitation to CFIG to offer our perspective on the issue the committee is examining, that of food inflation.

Agriculture committee  It's a very good question. I don't feel qualified enough to really comment on that in detail, only to tell you that, yes, we've heard from our members. They have had conversations with truckers and, as you can imagine, there have been a lot more conversations due to the increasin

Agriculture committee  Good afternoon. Thank you for your invitation to appear today. My name is Gary Sands. I am the senior vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers. There are approximately 6,900 independent grocery stores in Canada, and in some provinces, such as this one, O

Agriculture committee  It is hard to try to provide an overview. Listen, I'm a former political staffer. When I got into this job, I knew next to nothing about the industry. It is hard to explain to people how it works. I can't stress enough how important the independents are to the supply chain. If

Agriculture committee  I'm trying to get across here that this is related to increasing capacity. I think we've actually now convinced most of the provinces of this. If you keep the independent grocers on the playing field, that is going to have a downstream impact on the entire chain. The small and m

Agriculture committee  I wouldn't get too complicated about it. From the standpoint of the independents, they're looking for ways to buy local; they're looking to connect. One of the things we've been doing.... Actually, the leader in terms of government action has been the Ontario government. I think

Agriculture committee  In Ontario, for example, the two biggest wholesalers are Sobeys and Loblaws. For all those independents that you just mentioned in your riding, that's also their retail competitor. So if you're having shortages or high demand, you'd have to have just fallen off a turnip truck not

Agriculture committee  It definitely has an impact, but we've seen cases.... I've been with CFIG 18 years and I can tell you we've seen cases over the years where suppliers are doing things that in terms of pricing and supply.... We don't use the term “equal supply"; we're talking about fair supply. On

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Chair. As you've said, my name is Gary Sands. I'm the senior vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers. On behalf of the CFIG, I want to thank the committee for the invitation for us to participate in your hearings this afternoon. I'll give you

Finance committee  Yes, for sure, and independents are already doing that. The independents are up against the chains—the Loblaws, the Walmarts, the Sobeys—and their niche is to differentiate. That's what I was talking about earlier. They hire local, support local and buy local. That's really their

Finance committee  It would significantly increase prices. The cost of transporting goods is a significant one in terms of the bottom line. It would have a huge impact on our industry, particularly because many products are seasonal and there are imports.

Finance committee  We feel very strongly about it. I don't think there's an issue that's more important for all small and medium-sized businesses in Canada. I do want to start off by saying that the government has brought about a new agreement, which was to go into place in April and has been dela

Finance committee  Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm the senior vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers. I would like to thank the committee for the invitation to participate in your hearings this afternoon. Independent grocers across Canada serve a myriad of com

Finance committee  I want to reiterate, too, that the comments I am making today are based on the direct input we're getting from our various coalition members, notwithstanding what you're hearing in the media. I don't come here and stick my neck out that far. We're representing what we hear from o