See if any of this sounds familiar.

Supply chain bottlenecks during the pandemic allowed major grocery retailers to entrench their dominance. Smaller firms faced difficulties obtaining products.

Government watchdog analysis found that dominant firms used the opportunity to “come out ahead at the expense of their competitors and the communities they serve.”

Consumers?

They immediately felt the effects of skyrocketing prices for groceries, and some product shortages. And today, they still face the negative impact of the resulting price hikes, because “some in the grocery retail industry seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further raise prices to increase their profits, which remain elevated today.”

These may all be familiar sentiments to Canadian grocery consumers, but they are actually findings from a U.S. Federal Trade Commission report released in late March on the impact of the supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

So while Canadian policymakers thirst for more competition, in the land to the south where there is generally more competition, the grocery experience was very similar, according to the staff report Feeding America in a Time of Crisis.

The report describes the same issues facing Canadian policymakers today.

Larger purchasers sought favourable supplier allocations, and threatened fines for noncompliance, one of the key issues that has led to support for the Grocery Code of Conduct in Canada.

Grocery retailer profits rose and remain elevated. Revenues increased to more than 6 per cent above total costs in 2021, a new peak for the industry. In the first nine months of 2023, retailer profits rose even higher, “casting doubt on the assertions of some companies that rising prices at the grocery store are the result of retailers’ own rising costs.

As Canada’s Competition Bureau seeks to facilitate more competition, so does the FTC report. Some firms pondered building or acquiring their own network of suppliers to reduce their exposure to concentrated markets.

The FTC report also noted that manufacturers reduced promotional spending during the pandemic. This harmed those retailers that relied on manufacturer promotion to lower prices, while firms that use lower wholesale prices rather than short-term promotional price reductions were less affected.