“Justinflation” vs “Greedflation”: Why is Loblaws letting the NDP-Liberals label the company as the cause of exorbitant grocery prices?

Either Loblaws sucks at government and public relations, has something going on with the Liberals-NDP, or has something that they don’t want the public to know about - or maybe it's a combination of the three.

Yesterday morning, a random Loblaw’s lobbyist, whom I have no personal relationship with, sent an email to my personal work account.

The email, written in an effusively pious tone, announced that Loblaws was going to freeze prices on No Name Brand products. 

PRAISE THE LORD was the desired response. I could palpably visualize the lobbyist pausing for applause as they wrote.

The email implied that MPs should be impressed by this, in the view of the lobbyist, immensely magnanimous act on the part of the grocery megacorp. That the New Democratic Party had a motion set to launch an investigation into price gouging was a simple matter of coincidence on the timing of this announcement, right?

Lolz.

Over the years I’ve seen some pretty hamfisted lobbying strategies, but this one might take the (overpriced, No Name) cake. As a proof point, several MPs I talked to were circulating this TikTok video as an apt summary to describe Loblaw’s response to the probe. This tiktoker said what many Canadians are thinking; if Loblaws cared so much about affordability, why did they freeze prices instead of lowering them, and why didn’t they do it months ago, instead of the day of the vote?

All that said, that really isn’t the most curious part of all of this. 

Rather, there was a clear path out of this issue that Loblaw’s government relations people deliberately chose not to take. It begs the question, why didn’t they?

That path is this: as transparent as Loblaw’s too-little-too-late price freeze was, the NDP’s motivation to rebrand “Justinflation” to “Greedflation” is equally as obvious. 

The NDP is currently propping up Trudeau’s Liberal government. The longer the voting public associates rising grocery prices to the downmarket costs of the failed Liberal policies of carbon taxation, out of control government spending, eschewing energy security for climate cocktail parties, and fertilizer price increases - among many other issues - the more political heat the NDP will take for continuing to support these policies.

In short, it’s more politically advantageous for the NDP to turn the big bad grocery stores into the bad guy than to try to advocate for changes to policies that they’ve supported that have greatly contributed to increased grocery prices in Canada. 

With this probe and narrative they get to look like they’re fighting for the little guy while they keep voting in favour of policies that make inflation worse. In exchange the Liberals get an off ramp from “Justinflation”. Everyone wins but the average Canadian.

So why did Loblaws opt not to go hard and deflect blame on the Liberal NDP coalition government’s policies, and instead chose to lean into a laughable policy of freezing prices at unaffordable levels?

First, the simplest answer is that Loblaws just sucks at government and public relations. Loblaws isn’t a group of saints. There’s certainly a burden of proof on this point - just look at the public relations disasters that were their bread price fixing scandal, and their cancellation of “hero pay” for front line workers during the depths of the pandemic. 

If this is the case, other grocers should be worried. No one is buying Loblaw’s so-called price freeze, and public sentiment might quickly turn on all grocery stores if shoppers who are furious at grocery prices start to place the blame for inflation solely on grocery chains as opposed to shared blame with the government. This could pave the way for the Liberals to enact some sort of massive leftist government intervention on their operations. If grocers think this won’t happen, they are sorely mistaken.

The other reason why Loblaws might be loath to retaliate against the Liberal-NDP coalition is that they’ve received largess from them over the years - remember the $12M taxpayer funded smackeroos Trudeau gave them to upgrade their fridges? 

Lord knows what complex set of requests Loblaws has in front of the Liberal government right now. Maybe going through with this price gouging probe and being willing to be labeled the bad guy so the Liberals and NDP can construct an off ramp from Poilievre’s devastating “Justinflation” narrative is a calculated risk they are willing to take - in exchange for the Liberals playing ball in other areas of policy, of course. This is something the CPC and the Bloc should be focused on during the probe. 

The last reason why Loblaws might have opted for the price-freezing at unaffordable levels narrative versus going after the government is that they’re worried the probe might actually uncover something problematic. 

For example, this happened when the rationale Loblaws tried to lay out as to why hero pay was canceled was undermined when news broke about exorbitant executive bonuses. Today, a simple comparison on the cost of some basic No Name products in major markets in Canada against similar generic products at Walmart in comparable US markets are nearly double, even with exchange rates factored in. Loblaws will have to have some pretty good answers as to why this is once the probe starts. If they aren’t willing to attribute at least part of the blame to Liberal-NDP policies, it will raise questions as to what strategy they’ve been using on pricing.

In any event, the grease Canadians need is lower prices on groceries, not a bottle of No Name canola oil frozen at an outrageous $7. 

And in the meantime, I suspect the next oily email MPs might get from that lobbyist will be a rain check on any potential Loblaws appearance during the probe. That of course, will be on top of more greasy deflection from the Liberal-NDP coalition on their role in inflation.

Over to you, Walmart and Sobeys - with hopes of great value and with our compliments.