Today, CEOs of our biggest grocery stores are explaining to a Parliamentary Committee how come their profits are so high as food prices have escalated at a breakneck pace. No doubt they will supply credible explanations. I might even believe them – except it seems to me these same companies were involved in a bread price fixing scandal just a few years ago. In fact it was a big enough price fixing scandal that Loblaw provided customers with $25 gift cards to make amends. After that, I’m no longer prepared to give these folks the benefit of the doubt.

I do a lot of the grocery shopping for our place, and in the face of inflationary prices, I’ve started paying lots more attention to unit prices and have noticed pricing on some items are simply bizarre. Coffee is a great example. The coffee we buy at our local No Frills fluctuates regularly from $8.99 to $16.99 and back again for a tub of ground coffee. I have found the price to be totally unpredictable from week to week. How can that be? We get a couple tubs ahead of the game when it’s at the low ebb and leave it be when the price is high. I imagine Mr. Weston and his buddies with a set of dice setting these prices, but I’m sure the whole business is far more sophisticated.

Have you become a more careful shopper? Are you as suspicious as I am that we are once again being scammed?