REGINA – New Democrats have introduced another new private member’s bill, this one aimed at grocery stores and supermarkets.
Opposition Leader Carla Beck moved first reading of Bill No. 620 — The Restricting Property Controls for Grocery Stores and Supermarkets Act, in the Assembly on Tuesday afternoon.
In speaking to reporters, Beck said the bill is about “addressing those property controls that restrict competitive behaviour when it comes to grocery stores and supermarkets.”
She explained this would cover situations where there might be restrictions on where grocery stores are located, such as how far within that vicinity other other grocery stores can move in. She also pointed to instances where a grocery store might move out of an area, but there are restrictions on the kind of business moving in.
Beck said this bill is based on legislation brought in in Manitoba, and was based on the principles that “competition is good for reducing prices and that we need to be doing absolutely everything that we can in this province right now to give Saskatchewan people a break on groceries, on gas, and a whole bunch of other things.”
She said this is one more tool to ”do everything we can to increase competition” and “reduce grocery costs for Saskatchewan families, because frankly they are struggling again more than almost anywhere else in the country right now.”
This bill is just the latest NDP effort to focus on affordability and on grocery pricing in particular.
Last week, Saskatoon Southeast MLA Brittney Senger introduced Bill 619, The Consumer Protection and Business Practices (Banning Unfair A.I. Pricing) Amendment Act, aimed at making it an unfair business practice for retailers to use artificial intelligence such as personal data, profiling, or algorithmic systems to charge higher prices to customers for goods and services.
When asked about the issue in Question Period last week, Premier Scott Moe called predatory pricing using AI an “important issue” and said the government is “engaged in these discussions, will continue to be engaged in these discussions. And the place for this to happen is nationally, Mr. Speaker, to protect all Canadians through the Competition Bureau.”
The NDP have also kept up their efforts pressing for other affordability measures including repeated calls to suspend the gas tax, so far to no avail.
“Another day in the Saskatchewan legislature, another day that this Sask Party government denies Saskatchewan people with the relief of the pumps that they deserve,” said Finance critic Trent Wotherspoon on Monday. He pledged to continue efforts to get the provincial gas tax removed.
Finance Minister Jim Reiter told reporters Tuesday that the government "recognizes the inflationary pressures," but said what the NDP has asked for is a temporary plan to eliminate the gas tax.
"What we've taken is a plan to move forward with permanent reductions of the income tax so people can keep more of their own money in their pockets… There's inflationary pressures across the board right across the country right now on gas, on groceries, on a number of things. So if people have more of their own money by paying less tax, then they can make the decisions where that money should be spent."
As for Beck’s latest private member’s bill, time is running short in the current session to get that and other NDP bills passed. Just three weeks remain in the current session after this week, at which time the Assembly will go into recess.
When asked about that, Beck said that with consent “we can pass anything that we want.” She expressed hope the government will come around on supporting what they are proposing.
“Again, we keep putting forward good common sense measures whether or whether it’s this one whether it’s around putting controls on AI pricing, whether it’s reducing the gas tax, whether it is making sure that people know when emergency rooms are open or not or what services are available.”
Beck called these “simple common sense measures that really are going to be beneficial to people this province, and it shouldn’t matter which side of the aisle brings the bill forward. If this is something that works and it’s going to benefit Saskatchewan people, I would expect the government to take it up and pass it.”
