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Archive for 'food'

Grocery Wars: Lessons from Canada’s Changing Retail Landscape

As Target Canada tumbled into bankruptcy, Loblaw announced that its fourth-quarter profits more than doubled. What can be learned from this tale of two retailers? The main reason for Loblaw’s surge was its acquisition of Shoppers Drug Mart last March, which turned it into Canada’s largest grocer and pharmacy chain.  Shoppers contributed $3 billion to […]

Posted by Armine Yalnizyan under capitalism, competition, consumers, food, investment, migrant workers, retail trade, temporary workers.
March 2nd, 2015
Comments: none

‘Tis the Season to Rethink Our Charitable Giving

This op-ed by yours truly was published in The Province. The examples are BC-specific, but the message is much broader: donating to charity is not enough, we also have to change the status quo that forces so many people to turn to charity in a rich country like Canada. — It’s December, the season for […]

Posted by Iglika Ivanova under BC, food, homeless, income, minimum wage, poverty, Role of government, social policy, taxation.
December 18th, 2014
Comments: 2

Baskin-Robbins and the Walmartization of Ice Cream

It’s been an unusually hot summer, and soaring temperatures have boosted sales of that quintessential summer food, ice cream. But Baskin-Robbins has decided to shut its production facility in Peterborough, Ont., and lay off 80 workers because of…wait for it… increased demand! From the department of “wait, what?”, here’s the scoop behind this brain-freeze-inducing decision. […]

Posted by Armine Yalnizyan under big business, capitalism, food, free markets, free trade, labour market, prices.
July 20th, 2012
Comments: 9

Why taxing food staples should not be considered a policy option in Canada

Here’s an excellent piece by Sam Boshra, about the recent proposal by Michael Smart and Jack Mintz to apply the GST to food, from Sam’s blog at Economic Justice: Low-income households can’t buy food today with a larger HST rebate they hope to get sometime in the future.  A key objective of the social safety net, […]

Posted by Toby Sanger under food, inequality, taxation.
February 25th, 2012
Comments: 15

Is Social Assistance a “Poverty Pariah?”

An article in the current edition of NOW Magazine looks at social assistance in Ontario. The article is aptly entitled “Poverty Pariah,” in light of how apparently unpopular Ontario’s welfare system has become over the past 20 years. As can be seen at the National Council of Welfare’s Interactive Welfare Incomes Map, a single adult […]

Posted by Nick Falvo under food, guaranteed annual income, housing, human rights, income distribution, income support, inequality, minimum wage, NDP, Ontario, poverty, progressive economic strategies, recession, social policy.
July 24th, 2011
Comments: 13

Songs of the Doomed

There is a lot of talk on this blog and elsewhere about how best to get the economy going again, but it seems that the environment is missing in action from the debate. At best, climate change is a concern mentioned in passing, only to move on to the real action of boosting GDP growth […]

Posted by Marc Lee under climate change, economic growth, energy, food.
January 31st, 2011
Comments: 6

Globe misses the mark on food

Today’s Globe and Mail features an article about the farming crisis in Canada. On close inspection the “crisis” is that Canada has not kept up its share of the global marketplace; that is, it is about our failure to increase exports. Low farm incomes are mentioned with nostalgiac dismay but nothing of the large transnational […]

Posted by Marc Lee under farming, food.
November 23rd, 2010
Comments: none