For David Hale, the tipping point was Red Rose tea.
A grocery shopper in the Moncton area, Hale says he watched over the past year as a box of 216 tea bags at Atlantic Superstore crept up from $9.99 to $13.99. A couple months ago, he walked into the store and says he discovered a new price: $23.99.
“I said there’s something going on here,” Hale said in an interview.
After speaking with a store manager and not getting a satisfying answer about what was behind the high price, Hale said he left without buying the tea.
A box of Red Rose tea was the tipping point for Moncton shopper David Hale. (Raechel Huizinga/CBC)
His son encouraged him to start shopping elsewhere, and Hale has only been back to Atlantic Superstore for dog food — when it’s on sale.
He stocked up on that at the end of April, ready to join other Canadians in boycotting all Loblaw Companies, which includes Atlantic Superstore, for the entire month of May (a box of 216 Red Rose tea bags was priced at $13.99 on May 7, when CBC visited the Atlantic Superstore in Moncton).
Other complaints about prices at the grocery giant that have circulated online include a $37 package of chicken breasts, $9 butter and $30 for feta cheese.
The prices led to the creation of a Reddit community called “Loblaws is out of control,” and the boycott was born.
Buying local
Forsaking corporate grocery stores can leave consumers — especially in a rural province like New Brunswick — with few alternatives. Buying from smaller grocers or farmers’ markets are a couple of options, but one farmer says New Brunswick doesn’t have enough producers to feed everyone.
Alyson Chisolm is the owner of Windy Hill Organic Farm in Kent County, about 55 kilometres north of Moncton.
She grows produce for farmers’ markets and her community-shared agriculture program, which takes up-front payments from consumers at the beginning of the growing season and in return provides baskets of fresh produce — spinach, tomatoes, zucchini, whatever is growing on the farm — every week until the season ends.
“We’re seeing fewer and fewer young people becoming farmers. We’re seeing a lot more young farmers or startup farms fail,” she said.
WATCH | If New Brunswickers want to abandon corporate grocery stores, a transformation is needed:
Here’s why N.B. farmers say the problem of food prices runs deeper than a boycott
5 hours ago
Duration 2:26
Some Canadians are boycotting Loblaw stores throughout May in response to high grocery prices, but New Brunswick farmers say the entire food system needs a transformation.
New Brunswick’s field-vegetable production reached 7,406 metric tonnes in 2023, according to the Department of Agriculture.
That’s an increase of 0.9 per cent from 2022. Self-sufficiency in vegetable production has also increased slightly, from 7.3 per cent in 2018 to 9.1 per cent in 2022. More recent data is not yet available.
Chisolm said there was renewed interest in buying local during the pandemic, when supply chain issues exposed how reliant New Brunswickers are on grocery stores — but as restrictions ended and the supply chain stabilized, that interest faded.
Alyson Chisolm uses this greenhouse to grow produce on her farm in Kent County. (Raechel Huizinga/CBC)
While her weekly food box subscribers have held steady, she said she believes that’s because other farms are struggling.
“I know quite a few farms who’ve either cut back their [community-shared agriculture] numbers quite drastically or have gotten out of farming,” she said. “It’s enabled me to maintain my numbers.”
Rebeka Frazer-Chiasson co-founded Ferme Terre Partagée, a co-op farm in Rogersville, with her partner Kevin Arseneau, now a Green MLA.
She said her weekly food-box numbers for this season are low so far, though not as bad as last year. This time four years ago, all of her spots were full — not only another sign of decreasing interest in buying local, she said, but also a sign that budgets are getting tighter.
Rebeka Frazer-Chiasson of Ferme Terre Partagée, says she shared this graph on social media to show how her farm’s food box prices have increased by 6.7 per cent over the past seven years, compared to an increase of more than 30 per cent at grocery stores in New Brunswick. (Ferme Terre Partagé / Instagram)
And not just for the average New Brunswickers. If farmers truly paid themselves for the work they do, Frazer-Chiasson said, the cost of their produce would be much higher.
There’s also the problem of housing. In Rogersville, she said the vacancy rate is low, another barrier for new farmers who have to invest thousands of dollars to get started.
“You can’t be making $15,000 a year and buying a house for $300,000.”
It’s ‘not enough’
Suzanne Fournier, executive director of the National Farmers Union of New Brunswick, said data from 2018 shows the net income for farmers was seven per cent of every dollar they made.
“That’s not enough to earn a living. That’s not enough to keep your farm going.”
Fournier acknowledged that the province recently announced there were record farm cash receipts in New Brunswick, but pointed out that most of that money goes to bills and debt.
“Farm debt is increasing at another exponential rate,” she said.
At the same time, so few companies control Canada’s grocery store system that farmers can’t raise their prices, Fournier said.
Chisolm made the same point, adding that’s why it’s so difficult to rebuild the food system.
“It’s not as simple as boycott Loblaw, buy from the farmers’ market,” she said.
“You have to build something. What we really need to do is transition. Transition away from supermarkets, transition towards local food and enable the farmers or the farmer wannabes to help meet that need.”
“Otherwise, it’s going to crash and burn, and we don’t want that to happen.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
