Loblaw recognizes that the Australian example given by its leader, Galen Weston, to justify his refusal to sign the code of conduct on which the Canadian food industry has been working for three years was “inaccurate”. The grocer maintains, however, that the current form of the code could result in an increase in the cost of food.
Earlier in December, the big boss of Loblaw shared with federal elected officials his fear that the code of conduct as it currently stands could cause the price of food to jump by a billion dollars.
He argued that in Australia, the third party responsible for enforcing the code was favorable to suppliers who want to raise their prices, and that adopting a similar mechanism in Canada would harm consumers.
Comments that raised eyebrows among food industry experts who have studied the Australian code in depth, reported La Presse.
In a statement shared Friday on LinkedIn, Loblaw apologized for the parallel drawn by its leader. “We have reviewed the information used to support this and, unfortunately, in attempting to portray in a simple way how consumers could be impacted by the code, we have poorly described how the process works in Australia. This was unintentional and we apologize for it,” said the grocer, adding that its concerns about the current version of the Canadian code nevertheless remained “entirely justified”.
In particular, this would allow suppliers “to escalate disputes over cost increases, thus discouraging retailers from refusing unjustified cost increases,” he said.
“A code of conduct governs how grocers and suppliers work together, not how to lower prices. And it’s important to note that so far, those who claim the code will lower prices have not outlined any mechanism identifying how to achieve this,” Loblaw continued.
Galen Weston’s statements have reignited tensions between the supermarket chain and the Task Force which is trying to provide the Canadian food industry with a code of conduct.
The Group recently said it was concerned that these “simply wrong” interpretations had found their way into the media, even though the articles of the code were “very simple” to understand.
