In that post, the surprisingly cheap giant sandwich came from Sobeys, and the novelty came from the fact that a purchase of such good value could come from a place that is otherwise ludicrously pricey. This is because Sobeys is owned by a mega corporation named Loblaws which owns most of the major grocery outlets across Canada.
Recently, people have started calling the company out for artificially inflating food prices. I'm not savvy enough with economics to say one way or the other, but my brother used to work for one of their branches and had many ugly stories about how they treated their employees. So while I can't confirm that they aren't doing their due dilligence to keep prices low, I can see that their reach is wide, that they are charging more than most smaller outlets, and I've got a soured opinion of their company culture.
It came to a point that people started calling for a boycott. This caught some speed, enough that the CEO started whining about it on Twitter. He complained that the amount their sales had gone down was the same percentage as people who vote NDP, Canada's left-of-Liberal party. He tweeted that it was a shame that people had to politicize everything, and that this was only harmful to Canada-based companies.
His complaint about their loss in sales matching the total NDP vote only makes sense if everyone who voted NDP was already buying from Loblaws, which would sort of be a self-tell on how they're running a monopoly. The comment about not supporting Canadian companies is also kind of rich coming from an organization that hasn't been supporting Canadian customers and has been crowding out other Canadian businesses.
Mostly, I find his commentary to be of little value. However, I do find it kind of weird to heard people participating in the Loblaws boycott have replaced them with Wal Mart. When did we stop hating Wal Mart?
Loblaws has made a bit of a comeback though. Recently, the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) has called a strike due to our Premier's decision to cancel a contract and allow beer and wine to be sold through convenience stores.
I've heard our Premier Doug Ford called the "King Midas of Alcohol". Everything he touches turns to booze. It was within my lifetime that we only had three outlets for alcohol: The LCBO, Beer Store, and Wine Store. You weren't allowed to sell alcohol in grocery stores, but some places had a wine store branching off. It wasn't Ford that put beer and wine into grocery stores, but he's followed the trend. One of his campaign promises was to deliver "buck-a-beer" pricing. Now he's paying big to sever a contract and get booze into convenience stores, and apparently he's trying to get scratch tickets sold in beer stores.
I don't think I'm morally opposed to convenience stores being able to sell alcohol, but it still feels like something no one was asking for, and the scratch ticket thing is creepy. There are a lot of things that need addressing right now, like low staffing in education and healthcare, so doubling down on making addictive products more accessible is a weird angle. Especially now when Canadian health care professionals have recently changed policy to say that there is no amount of alcohol that can be safely consumed.
Because grocery stores can sell alcohol, Loblaws is seeing a surge of former LCBO customers go to them. Some supporters of the LCBO are holding off, mostly as a show of solidarity against Ford.
During these boycotts, I've asked myself what my responsibility is as a consumer. After brief consideration, I realized that this doesn't effect me much personally. The grocery store nearest to us is independently owned, so I've already been passively boycotting Loblaws. And this whole LCBO thing was really perfectly timed, as I was planning on trying a month of sobriety already.
I love accidentally joining social movements.
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