Isn’t the root of the problem Canadian protectionism? By law, it’s near impossible to have new (foreign) competitors in the Canadian market. Same for industries like telecom.
It's just that any successful small chains get eaten up by the giants - "Adonis" got bought by Metro, "Farm Boy" got bought by Sobeys and "T&T" got bought by Loblaws. Any new threat gets eaten up by the big players.
Their drawing power was due to offering ethnic and/or specialty foods (Middle Eastern and Mediterranean products for Adonis, Asian products for T&T, fresh products for Farm Boy) that weren't as common at the more established supermarkets.
I remember being surprised at how expensive items generally were at those chains compared to the more established chains I tended to shop at at the time.
For a customer like me seeking low prices, those smaller chains weren't viable or practical competitors to the larger chains. I'd only end up there as a last resort, typically while travelling and facing time constraints.
But we do protect certain specific industries to our own detriment (e.g. we’ve knee-capped dairy to the point that we hardly export any, while in the free(r)-market, we export 80% of our pulse crops, 90% of our canola crop, 3rd largest wheat exporter in the world).
https://www.ecodainc.ca/pulses/
https://www.ccga.ca/advocacy/trade
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/wheat/reporte...
As with oil, we like to export raw resources and let someone else do all the value-add elsewhere. But hey, dairy is very water intensive and it’s not like we enough of that to go around.
https://retail-insider.com/retail-insider/2024/07/why-foreig...