Prices: Why Canadians Should Be Outraged!
I’ve been hearing a lot of talking heads lately yammering on about how we’re facing increases in prices for food basics like bread, meat, produce and other imports from around the globe.
Unfortunately, they’re all morons and they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Canada is a land of abundant resources and a dollar that’s appreciating because of a number of factors, the main one being the decline in the value of the US dollar. Other factors include demand for our oil, wheat, soy, corn and other consumable products that are increasing in cost to the rest of the world.
As our dollar appreciates, we should be able to buy MORE goods in exchange for fewer dollars. We should be selling our goods within Canada at Canadian prices, not international prices.
However, because we’ve surrendered our food security and general sovereignty to multinational corporations, most of which price their goods in US funds and then add a 20-50% markup for Canadians, regardless of the value of our currency, we are facing severe price increases.
If you don’t believe me, here’s an example: Margaret Atwood publishes a book and the US price is $10.95. The Canadian price is probably something like $14.95. Canadian paper and Canadian author, but Canadian buyers get hosed.
This is insane. If Canadians were faced with a 20 to 50% increase in tax rates, there would be rioting in the streets.
What’s also going to happen is that this will spike inflation, prompting our sophisticated economists with the Bank of Canada to hike interest rates, driving up the costs for all of us to borrow money. Just when we need it most.
However, when the talking heads with mainstream media tell us that these things are unavoidable (eg. Libyan uprisings mean we pay more for food), we owe it to ourselves to call BULLSHIT.
What astounds me is that we live in a land that is filled with political opportunists, but NO SINGLE PARTY has jumped on the opportunity to demand price parity or price improvements for Canadians.
Until then, do yourself a favour and avoid buying from the companies that are behind these lies. Loblaws and Weston (which is owned by Loblaws) seem to be the central forces behind this big push to increase prices.