SHIFTHEADS: Canada’s Small Towns Often Have One Grocery Store. That's Not an Accident

SHIFTHEADS: Canada’s Small Towns Often Have One Grocery Store. That's Not an Accident

Grocery competition in Canada is vanishing from your town before you ever realize it's gone. The grocer down the street didn't just win your business. They bought the land next door to make sure nobody else ever could. When you drive through rural Canada and see only one option for food, that's not geography. That's strategy.

Canada's grocery store density dropped from 22.1 to 20.2 stores per 100,000 people since 2020, and fewer stores almost always means higher prices. The Competition Bureau has flagged property controls for years without a single meaningful change, because grocers lobby municipalities directly and the federal government can't reach that far down. One premier, in Manitoba, is the only politician in Canada who has publicly named the problem out loud.

The agency called the Competition Bureau cannot stop the anti-competitive behavior. The politicians who could act are the ones being lobbied. And the fix that would save every Canadian $500 to $700 a year on food has been available for years, sitting there ignored, while everyone watches the news from Washington.

Topics: grocery competition Canada, property controls food prices, food inflation Canada, Competition Bureau, interprovincial trade barriers

GUEST: Dr. Sylvain Charlebois | @‌foodprofessor

Originally aired on 2026-02-26

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(2285)

Ryan's Perm Decision Gets the Full Interrogation

Ryan's Perm Decision Gets the Full Interrogation

The hosts spend Good News Tuesday picking apart Ryan's plan to get a perm just before he turns thirty, weighing whether light waves count as a genuine style risk or a full quarter life crisis. It is t...

29 Jul 9min

NEW - Good News Tuesday: The Dog Survived a Sixty-Foot Fall.

NEW - Good News Tuesday: The Dog Survived a Sixty-Foot Fall.

Good News Tuesday leads with the story of Willow, a three-year-old Labrador who fell down a sixty-foot cliff and is now recovering, a moment that will hit hard for anyone who has ever hiked a steep tr...

29 Jul 9min

Shiftheads: Mercury Retrograde Talked Him Into Getting Organized

Shiftheads: Mercury Retrograde Talked Him Into Getting Organized

A workplace seminar on Mercury retrograde turns into a real debate about belief systems, astrology, and whether star charts hold up to basic math. Anyone who has ever rolled their eyes at a horoscope ...

29 Jul 9min

NEW - Why Simple Questions Are the Hardest Ones to Answer

NEW - Why Simple Questions Are the Hardest Ones to Answer

Graham Richardson explains why the toughest questions he asks politicians are almost always the plainest ones, and what that says about spotting a dodge in real time. For anyone tired of watching inte...

29 Jul 9min

ICYMI - The Fitness Test That May Predict How Long You Live

ICYMI - The Fitness Test That May Predict How Long You Live

Dr. Mitch Schulman breaks down the VO2 max test, the gruelling treadmill and mask assessment that measures how well your heart, lungs, and muscles work together, and explains why researchers see it as...

29 Jul 9min

ICYMI - 30 Years of Gold: What Donovan Bailey Learned From Men Talking to Men

ICYMI - 30 Years of Gold: What Donovan Bailey Learned From Men Talking to Men

Donovan Bailey opens up about a side of his life that rarely makes headlines, the friend group that checks in on each other the way he says more men need to. It is a candid look at what changes when v...

29 Jul 19min

NEW - They Want to Clone You Into a Robot, Heartbeat Included

NEW - They Want to Clone You Into a Robot, Heartbeat Included

A haptic suit fitted with forty sensors can record a living person's heartbeat, sweat patterns, and the exact way they walk. The Digital DNA project wants to feed all of that into a humanoid robot wit...

29 Jul 9min

Date Night: The Way They Talk About Their Ex Says Everything

Date Night: The Way They Talk About Their Ex Says Everything

Dating coach Tony Tedesco flips the usual red flag conversation on its head, explaining why the way someone describes a past relationship tells you almost everything you need to know. Anyone tired of ...

29 Jul 9min

Populært innen Politikk og nyheter

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
forklart
popradet
stopp-verden
rss-gukild-johaug
det-store-bildet
hanna-de-heldige
rss-ness
nokon-ma-ga
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
dine-penger-pengeradet
aftenpodden-usa
aftenbla-bla
e24-podden
amerikansk-politikk
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
fotballpodden-2
liverpoolno-pausepraten
rss-optimisten-pessimisten-realisten