Judge approves $500M settlement in Loblaw, George Weston bread price-fixing case
TORONTO — Some Canadian shoppers may soon receive cash from a class-action lawsuit that accused Loblaw Cos. Ltd. and its parent company George Weston Ltd. of engaging in an industry-wide scheme to fix the price of bread.
You're viewing a single thread.
Despite this, price of bread is still ridiculous.
Almost as though lackluster fines as penalty aren't effective at repairing the damage caused by corporate corruption, amirite? Better give them another slap on the wrist instead of breaking up their abusive corporate monopolies. /s We should look to Bell, and break up grocers working in collusion to artificially inflate prices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
Legit. I grew up in Vancouver. When I moved to London (UK) to be with my wife I was blown away by how cheap food was. Prices are rising, inflation, COVID, Brexit, etc. still, I pay less than £2 for 2 pints(bit over a litre) of milk.
A standard shop for 2 weeks is usually around £80-100, but we get easily double what I'd get at a grocery for $80-100 PRE covid.
So you are paying CAD$3.73 for 1 l of milk. Meanwhile, I am paying less than twice that for 4 l of milk in Ontario. You aren't making a very good case for the UK being cheaper.
It's also affected by salaries. The UK minimum wage is about $22 per hour, compared to about 17 in Canada. On the other hand, a web developer like me earns an average of about CAD$68,000 in the UK, versus around $80,000 in Canada.
The big question is the cost of housing, but I don't know what it is in the UK.
I got into the weeds a bit more in this comment.
Before I moved from Vancouver I was working piece work, so paid by the square foot of stone installed(I'm a stone mason). I was making about the equivalent of $40/hr. With cost of food, cell, vehicle insurance, fuel, etc. I had to live with 3 other people, my rent was still about $1000/month, $1500+ with bills. For a room.
I don't mean to discredit the point you were trying to make, but isn't £80-100 worth almost double $80-100? A 1L carton at my local store is about $3 or £1.60 (equivalent of £1.80 for 2 pints). Seems pretty similar.
That wasn't really a great example without context. When I moved to London 2 pints of milk was 60p, 500g of really good cheese was £1.50 maybe. Rent on the last 2 bed my wife and I rented in London was £1100. The last 2 bed I rented in greater Vancouver, so 2017ish, was $3000.
My monthly car insurance before I moved in November 2020, even with exchange rate, is ⅔ of my ANNUAL cost here. My cell plan is £24pcm and I get 500gb of data, plus global roaming. 1kg of chicken breast that I just picked up today for dinner was £2 and change.
Whats it like now?
I have no point of reference because the only time I was there was for 2 weeks in 2010, and the only groceries I ever did was a single run to Sainsburies and a visit to Tesco every other day for 1-2 things
that might as well have been a lifetime ago