One hates to see the scion of the Weston family lying to our parliamentarians. He blames his international suppliers now for his stores’ unconscionable profits. He says that his giant company is performing the way it should, with record profits every year. I do not know how he became so facile with the workings of a grocery empire such as Loblaws.
I also was taught about the grocery business as a young man. I had come home from the Canadian air force, trained in the use and care of weapons and munitions. I was looking for something more peaceful as a career. It happened to be a time of rapid expansion of grocery chains in Canada and there was a need for store managers and area supervisors. All I had to survive was some rigorous training while earning my salary by working in every department of some very large supermarkets.
I think I was shocked at the time with the waste in produce that demanded a 40 per cent mark-up across the board in that department. I learned more about meat than I really wanted to know when learning the basics in that department. Unloading trucks of canned goods was a very basic muscle-building job. Frozen food was only starting to come into the stores at the time and other departments had to pay for the new freezers. I think my favourite learning time was as a cashier and I learned a lot there.
And to this day, I enjoy taking the wife to the grocery store and checking out the prices and doing the math for her on which deal is the better. Two of my favourite stores here in Barrie are Metro and Zehrs. They are the best run and probably most profitable stores in the city. For value for your dollar, you cannot beat No Frills, which is part of the Loblaw empire.
And that is why I know that the Weston heir was lying to our MPs the other day. I have mentioned before that I have a favourite orange juice that we buy every week. It is the 2.5 litre jug of pure orange juice packaged in Quebec for Del Monte Canada. I get it on sale at No frills for $4.49 and regularly at up to $5.29. I was in Zehrs just last week and the price of exactly the same product and packaging was priced at $9.99. There is absolutely no rational way that the Del Monte company would have any part in the setting of those stores’ prices. Personally, I think there should be jail terms reserved for those who lie to parliament. And I am even more convinced that there should be heavy fines for companies that exploit Canadians at a time of extreme inflationary pressures.
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