OTTAWA – All of Canada’s major grocery retailers have agreed to sign on to a voluntary code of conduct that will ensure any retailer who breaks the code will have to answer to themselves.
“I am elated that the grocery industry has finally agreed to police themselves,“ said federal agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay. “We could simply pass laws to regulate this crucial industry, but it’s always been Liberal policy to avoid heavy handed legislation. We would rather trust corporations to decide for themselves which rules they have to follow.”
While most experts believe that only a mandatory code enforceable by law will change the behaviour of Canada’s large grocery retailers, the retailers themselves and the people who are paid to agree with them are adamant that this voluntary code will be sufficient to control the industry.
“Everyone knows the worst person you can disappoint is yourself,” said Paul Reid, the CEO of the Canadian Food Retailer Association. “Canada’s grocery industry doesn’t need laws. An agreement amongst retailers is obviously the best way to get things done. Like when so many of those retailers secretly agreed to fix the price of bread for over a decade. Now those same retailers have solemnly sworn on their honour to follow these new rules and I believe they will. And I’m not just saying that because they literally pay me to say that.”
The new code of conduct is mainly designed to increase fairness in the way major retailers deal with suppliers, and is not expected to lower prices for consumers. Nevertheless, the Liberals are hopeful that this voluntary code will ease consumer worries about high food prices because “grocery code of conduct” sounds like something that would help grocery consumers by stopping industry profiteering and most people don’t read past the headline.
“The price of groceries has risen by 22% in the last four years and Canadians have begged us to reign in Canada’s wildly profitable grocery oligopoly,” said MacAulay. “We believe those Canadians will be satisfied by the creation of this voluntary code with nebulous enforcement mechanisms that doesn’t address consumer prices or corporate greed. And stop bugging us about this.”
At press time, the CEOs of Canada’s largest grocery retailer were meeting in their secret underground lair to discuss how they can immediately raise prices and blame the new code.
