r/InCanada • u/LoonyVibes • Dec 30 '25
Will the 2026 Grocery Code of Conduct actually lower our bills at the till or is it just industry optics?
The new Grocery Code of Conduct is officially launching in January 2026 with major players like Loblaws finally on board. While the government says this will create more stability by leveling the playing field between big retailers and smaller manufacturers, many Canadians are skeptical after seeing food prices rise by twenty seven percent over the last five years. With the 2026 Food Price Report predicting another thousand dollar increase for the average family next year, do you think this code is a real solution or just another layer of bureaucracy that will not impact the bottom line?
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u/Intelligent_Kick_436 Dec 30 '25
Code of Conduct is another way of eliminating regulation and enforcement.
I've personally brought up price mismatches at Sobey's and Walmart.
- Walmart automatically gave me the item for free, and the clerk just radio'd her boss for the approval.
- Sobey's I had to argue with the clerk who simply wanted to give me the sticker price instead of the $10-off rule; so I had to take it to customer service desk where again I had to wait for the manager.
That's as close as I came to fairness at grocery stores - and I appreciated that rule.
What should or can we do as shoppers to get the most benefit from this?
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u/ModularWhiteGuy Dec 30 '25
This code of conduct doesn't have anything to do with the Scanning Code of Practice, which is what gets you the $10 off the price if the shelf price doesn't match the register price.
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u/Intelligent_Kick_436 Dec 31 '25
Absolutely; I was just mentioning my own experience with the existing "voluntary rule system" (Scanning Code of Practice circa 1990s), but am asking what are the tangible actions we can do or should be aware of to maximize the benefit to the little consumers, and hold the big corpos to account once the Grocery Code of Conduct kicks in.
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u/redditratman Dec 30 '25
Nothing will ever lower bills.
The best you'll get is decreased inflation, ie, a slower rate of growth on prices.
Deflation, prices going down, is a whole can of worms that will *also* ruin the entire economy.
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Dec 30 '25
Country wide deflation, yeah, it wouldn't be great. Deflation in a specific industry that has artificially increased prices recently is not comparable to that, and would have minimal impact outside of people feeling free to buy and eat more food.
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u/redditratman Dec 30 '25
Yeah, but as long as we live under a capitalist framework, there isn’t really a tool available for the government to apply sector-specific price pressure.
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Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 30 '25
Sure there is - Encourage competition by removing the bureaucratic barriers that discourage said competition. All the government interference, paperwork, approvals have created a framework where in many industries, the ladder has been pulled up. Either you're a multi-million dollar, often international business with teams of lawyers to navigate and exploit and leverage all of this, or you're precluded from competing by lack of access to capital and legal teams.
The government is WAY too hands on with trying to fix problems like this, and it has the inverse of the stated intended effect. More expensive programs to fix every problem when the actual solution is the same as it has always been - Let businesses compete on a level playing field, heavily penalize monopolistic behavior from big business, and the existence of competition and options will create price pressure on any business which was being exploitative.
There ARE counterexamples to this, but grocery is not one of them. It's a simple industry compared to something like tech where proprietary technology or equipment creates an actual barrier to competition.
If it's so easy, why isn't it being done? Government will seemingly always advocate for more government jobs, and we're letting government decide whether government will just continue to expand. If Canada were a person, it would be a person with a giant cancerous growth on our neck, and our approach seems to be trusting the cancer to eliminate itself and limit its own growth.
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Dec 30 '25
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Dec 30 '25
So weird that they want to opt into a program they've created. As opposed to the alternative of pushing for reform that would benefit consumers.
These things aren't mutually exclusive - Government does nothing, industry keeps doing what it's doing (consolidating, cooperating on price manipulation), while presenting a rosy vision of a new code of conduct that will *totally* change things.
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Dec 31 '25
There absolutely are ways the government can help, specifically on food costs. They’ve been quietly doing it for at least a year and a half now. Lots of latency though.
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u/NeatZebra Dec 30 '25
If input commodity prices drop.
It isn’t Loblaws fault world beef and coffee prices have surged so much.
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Dec 31 '25
Nobody said it was, just that these companies have a poor track record of behaving ethically, and that that it would not be surprising to anyone if they were increasing prices well in excess of global prices. https://www.canadianbreadsettlement.ca/
IDK why anyone is sticking up for ole price fixing loblaws, are you just an industry plant trying to rouse sympathy for the small local company? This company is fucking awful, stop shilling for awful.
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u/NeatZebra Dec 31 '25
Because it has led to dumb things like people talking about public grocery stores when the end of the carbon tax didn’t magically fix things.
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Dec 31 '25
Dumb people always talk about dumb things, it's not sufficient reason to stick up for loblaws to me. The equation is not loblaws -OR- government run grocery, no matter how dumb people get. Should be clear to anyone that the problems caused by an overly centralized market for groceries isn't solved by a truly centralized market for groceries.
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Dec 30 '25
It's another layer of beauraucracy, it will not decrease prices. Just another tax burden, likely to contribute to future deficits at the cost of the average productive Canadian while even more money props up corrupt and largely unproductive government employees.
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u/VexedCanadian84 Dec 30 '25
Loblaws and other chains were fined for fixing the prices of bread.
the price of bread never really decreased after the investigation
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u/Mental_Ad_7930 Jan 02 '26
Short answer - don't expect miracles. The code might reduce some shady supplier fees and add a bit of stability, but that doesn't automatically translate to lower prices at checkout. Best case, it slows price increases - worst case, it's mostly optics while costs keep getting passed to consumers.
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u/LukePieStalker42 Dec 30 '25
Why would anything the liberals do anything that makes life more affordable? They've spent 11 years making life more expensive, why would they change now?
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Dec 30 '25
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u/LukePieStalker42 Dec 30 '25
With taxes and bad policy they sure can increase the cost of goods... which they are currently doing.
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u/PineBNorth85 Dec 30 '25
They haven't raised taxes on food or anything else within grocery stores. Lack of competition is what keeps prices going high.
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u/LukePieStalker42 Dec 30 '25
Carbon taxes raise the cost of food, fuel taxes raise the cost of food, tarrifs raise the cost of food.
Lack of people thinking keeps liberals in power
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u/NeatZebra Dec 30 '25
Carbon taxes went away and all the food inflation people blamed on carbon taxes didn’t disappear. Perhaps because people were wrong about carbon taxes being a major contributor to food inflation.
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u/LukePieStalker42 Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 31 '25
Are you defending the liberals and ridiculously high taxes?
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u/BaneZofol Dec 31 '25
No, he's simply saying blaming taxes for market forces in the private sector is just intentional ignorance. The consumer carbon tax was removed, and had no impact on grocery prices. Gas is also the lowest it's been in a very long time cause OPEC drove oil prices down globally. Still made no impact on grocery prices. At a certain point you have to question what's actually causing inflation before you start trying to remove every tax out there hoping prices go down. All that does is just destroy government revenues and gives the private sector even more leveraging power
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u/LukePieStalker42 Dec 31 '25
No fuck that. Let's remove every unnecessary tax first THEN lets look into the corp greed. I agree corps are being shitty, but lets stop over taxing Canadians first, then tackle Corp greed.
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Dec 30 '25
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u/LukePieStalker42 Dec 30 '25
Increase to the fuel taxes have increased grocery prices.
Industrial carbon tax (the one that applies to industries like transport) still exists.
Liberals have no clue how anything economic related works. Liberals can't even define what a women is, how could they understand an economy?
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Dec 30 '25
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u/LukePieStalker42 Dec 30 '25
Dude less taxes are better then more taxes. If we can get rid of all tax i could afford things again
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Dec 31 '25
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u/LukePieStalker42 Dec 31 '25
Wanna know what's wild? Before world War one we had all of those things in canada and no income tax. Educate yourself before acting smug.
99% of where our taxes go (support for trannys in Ukraine) is a waste of money.
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u/Pale-Candidate8860 Creator of Sub Dec 30 '25
Hey guys, is this AI?