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 on2026-02-26