The federal government recently sent $3.1 billion in one-time grocery and essentials relief to Canadians through the new Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit.
And look, when people are struggling to afford food, money in their pockets matters. I’m certainly not going to argue otherwise.
But I do think we need to ask a slightly more uncomfortable question:
Why are taxpayers being asked to subsidize increasingly expensive groceries while the people and corporations that own much of Canada’s grocery infrastructure keep accumulating enormous wealth?
Because while Ottawa is sending out rebate cheques, grocery companies are reporting hundreds of millions in quarterly earnings, billionaire families remain billionaires, and Canadians are still standing in grocery aisles wondering when a bag of food became a luxury purchase.
Grocery prices are still outpacing inflation
Food inflation isn’t something Canadians are imagining.
Statistics Canada reported that grocery prices rose another 3.1% year over year in July 2026, compared with 3.0% for overall inflation. More importantly, July marked the 18th consecutive month in which grocery inflation outpaced headline inflation. Earlier in the year, the gap was even larger: grocery prices increased 3.8% in April while overall inflation was 2.8%.
Meanwhile, the federal government paid 12 million Canadians a one-time Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit top-up on June 5, worth a combined $3.1 billion. The ongoing benefit was also increased by 25% beginning in July.
That assistance is valuable.
But there is something deeply backwards about a system where governments need to send people money so they can afford to shop at enormously profitable corporations.
So, how well are the grocery companies doing?
Consider Empire Company, the parent company behind Sobeys, Safeway, FreshCo, Foodland and Farm Boy.
In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, Empire reported what its then-CEO, Michael Medline, described as ‘the strongest quarterly earnings per share in the company’s history’. Net earnings came in at $212 million for the quarter. By the fourth quarter, Empire was again reporting $212 million in net earnings - up 22.5% from the same quarter the previous year - while operating income increased 10.9%.
Those numbers don't prove that grocery companies are simply raising prices and pocketing the difference. Grocery pricing is complicated. Food prices are affected by transportation, labour, climate events, commodity prices, tariffs, suppliers and plenty of other factors.
But they do make it reasonable to question a system where food becomes less affordable for ordinary Canadians while major players within that system continue producing very healthy returns.
And then there is the wealth behind the companies…
Canada's grocery market isn't just concentrated at the corporate level. An extraordinary amount of wealth has accumulated around the families connected to it.
Galen Weston was estimated to have a net worth of roughly $20.6 billion in 2025. Loblaw's shareholders have also done remarkably well: as of September 2026, its five-year total return was more than 200%, including dividends and distributions.
The Sobey family, whose holdings are closely tied to Empire, have similarly accumulated billions in wealth, with published estimates placing the family's fortune at roughly $5.5 billion in 2025.
And this concentration isn't limited to Loblaw and Sobeys.
The Jim Pattison Group - which already controls major Canadian grocery interests through Pattison Food Group, including Save-On-Foods - acquired The Save Mart Companies in 2024. That deal added roughly 200 U.S. supermarkets operating under banners including Save Mart, Lucky and FoodMaxx to the group's grocery interests.
This is why I don't think Canada's grocery affordability conversation should be reduced to whether Galen Weston personally decided your lettuce should cost an extra dollar.
The bigger issue is concentrated ownership of something humans literally cannot choose not to buy.
Canadians have reasons to be skeptical
Remember the bread price-fixing scandal?
In 2024, Loblaw and George Weston agreed to a $500-million settlement of class-action lawsuits related to their involvement in an industry-wide bread price-fixing arrangement. The companies apologized for their role.
And now there are new reasons for Canadians to pay attention.
In 2026, several companies reached proposed settlements totalling nearly $8 million in Canadian class actions alleging an unlawful conspiracy involving the supply and/or price of beef. Importantly, settlements are not admissions of wrongdoing, and litigation continues against other defendants.
Separately, a CBC investigation reported that meat purchased at Loblaw and Sobeys stores was sometimes priced using weights that included packaging-effectively meaning customers were paying the meat price for something that wasn't meat.
None of these things means every grocery price increase is the result of corporate misconduct.
But they certainly don't inspire blind trust.
Maybe rebates aren’t the only conversation we should be having
This brings us back to that $3.1 billion in government grocery relief.
Again: people need the money.
But rebates treat the symptom. They don't necessarily address the structure producing the problem.
And Parliament has already acknowledged this possibility.
In its report on food price inflation, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food recommended that if the Competition Bureau found evidence that large grocery chains were generating excess profits on food, the federal government should consider a windfall profits tax on large, price-setting corporations to discourage excessive increases in profit margins.
That's a much bigger conversation than a grocery rebate.
It's a conversation about competition, taxation, corporate concentration and who gets to profit from necessities.
From an anti-capitalist perspective, this is the part I think we need to keep talking about. We can debate individual grocery prices forever, but the underlying question remains:
When Canadians struggle to afford food while enormous wealth continues accumulating among the people who own the systems selling it to us, who is our economy actually working for?
A rebate might make this month's grocery bill a little easier.
But Canadians deserve more than help paying inflated bills.
We deserve to ask why the bills became so unaffordable in the first place.
If this conversation has you thinking about where affordability, government benefits and our tax system collide, you might also like my previous posts:
Goodbye GST/HST Credit, Hello Groceries and Essentials Benefit: What Canadians Need to Know
Too Rich for the Rebate, Too Broke for the Bill: The Squeezed Middle
And if rising costs are affecting your business - because, spoiler alert, business owners also have to eat - you don't have to figure out the financial side alone.
Reach out to connect with me HERE, and let's look at your numbers without judgment, corporate nonsense or pretending that every financial problem can be solved by skipping takeout.