How does Canadas grocery supply chain work? What to know – National [Video]

Over the past year, the CEOs of Canada’s biggest grocery chains have become familiar faces to lawmakers studying food prices.

Executives have faced questions from MPs and battled accusations of profiteering as their earnings rise.

But experts say the main factors that have driven grocery prices up over the past couple of years are global.

“The supply chains we have depended on for many decades now have come under massive stresses over the last five years — COVID, conflict, climate change being the most notable examples of big global macro stresses — and that is translated into broad-based inflation for all goods across the global economy,” said Evan Fraser, director of the Arrell Food Institute at the University of Guelph.

Consumers are acutely aware of increases in food costs because other costs, especially housing, are also skyrocketing, said Fraser, and so food prices have become emblematic of a wider problem.

Because consumers don’t really understand the ins and outs of the supply chain, the bulk of …