CTV “News” posted this on X to further gin up the villainization campaign that they’ve played a central role in creating and nurturing with their comrades in the Liberal/NDP party. They — the “news” folx — literally used the word “villains” here just to help you form your opinion on the matter:
The word “villain” doesn’t appear in the story. It wasn’t used by anybody — except CTV News headline writers. And in the accompanying news video, we’re shown a chart that shows who the “villains” are. Nearly as many people blame the government for high grocery prices, and more think it’s simply the fault of global pandemic-related problems. Who’s the villain? Grocery stores? Well, the “news” media and politicians on the left worked hard to make it so, but it just ain’t so.
They don’t care enough about truth, and too much about narrative. And that’s problematic because the narrative is wrong and damaging to our country’s economy. The truth will lead to farm-fresh goodness. They don’t care enough to simply inform you, more just to mold your mind and get you feeling, thinking, buying, and voting the way they want you to.
This is like putting cans of utter BS right at eye level on every aisle of your store.
They’re playing ideological team sports where they should be engaged in journalism (or in the case of politicians, engaged in not wrecking the country). This is but the latest in a whole string of such posts and “news” stories on this grocery store Mr. Burns bromide by CTV News and other news or “news” outlets, most of them similarly very short on the salient facts and replete with a progressive, anti-corporate and sometimes full-on anti-capitalist narrative using buzz words and misinformation.
Take this one seemingly benign but very important sentence from their story as one infinitesimal example: “While there has been debate over whether their actual profit margins grew significantly,” their story goes, “in dollar amounts it’s certainly been a good few years for the grocers.”
This sort of statement is Prime, Grade A bullshittery. It betrays their perfidy and their disrespect for you. It’s rotten, folks. Putrid. Don’t buy it.
No investor or anybody analyzing a company’s profit and whether those profits (and surely we hope there are profits, right? Right?) are “excessive” or even “growing” can look at dollar amounts of profit in isolation. Oh I know it’s impressive and shocking to report on that figure when they’re huge multi-billion-dollar corporations, but that’s what dishonest people — or dumb people — do. What matters is PROFIT MARGIN to determine whether their profits (assuming there are any) are rising or not. Or whether they’re excessive is a personal judgment call. Using dollar amounts instead of profit margins is intellectually dishonest. Misinformation. Bullshit.
Read that CTV quote again and shop for perfidy with me. You’ll need a shopping cart! Seems perhaps a wise editor forced them to acknowledge profit margins have NOT gone up, which, yes, wrecks their whole narrative, but then caved: SQUIRREL! — the “DOLLAR amounts” have, which our dumb-ass readers will think means profits ARE up.
Profit margins are not just a “debate,” they’re the actual point. And the so-called “debate” (a word used utterly dishonestly to aid in their narrative-building) was won already if it indeed ever occurred (narrator: it didn’t). It’s so easy to prove these things — even for investigative journalists like CTV’s — because these firms all publish their financial data publicly. “Debate” isn’t needed. Just read.
The profit margins haven’t grown out of whack (all margins go up and down, depending on market conditions and a host of other things, and make no mistake: a lack of a profit margin literally means going broke). But it does require honesty to report this honestly. And when it comes to honesty in media, well, we are very low on stock. Even though taxpayers ordered some a long time ago. NO RAINCHECKS!
Here’s the state-owned CBC —of all people:
“Even if Canadians take them at their word, grocery margins — essentially the amount a company books in profit on every sale after all of its costs have been subtracted — may indeed be about the same as they always have been: in the low single digits.”
(I don’t really understand the congruity of the first eight words. But maybe it’s a little like CTV’s first words, above.)
So what are their profit margins? About 4%, give or take. And what does that mean? Well, they could have put all their money in a bank savings account or GIC and earned a 5% or 6% profit margin — just as you or I do or could do.
One helpful villain hunter — possibly recruited by his reading of CTV News reports — replied to the CTV post on X by offering this gem in the form of a scathing lament about the supposedly massive profits of Loblaws in some very select past years (with my highlighting of what he added at the end of his post):
Loblaws profit comparison…
Date Value
September 30, 2023 3.47%
September 30, 2022 3.41%
September 30, 2018 1.73%
Why aren’t they hurting like the rest of us.
Why aren’t they helping CDN’s
Holy failure to understand, like, anything, Batman.
If I had an investment in a company with profit margins that thin, I’d divest unless they had a solid plan to improve the margins. My money in the bank is 100% risk-free, safe and secure, and earning me more, as I pointed out.
But, you see, if grocery stores are earning anything at all — ie staying in business and not going bankrupt — then they’re somehow evil for not hurting like some of us are (hurting thanks mostly to the government’s actions), and they’re villains for not just doling out their profits to all Canadians (who would then receive roughty two cents each). Let’s review!
“Why aren’t they hurting like the rest of us.
Why aren’t they helping CDN’s”
Wow. So according to this line of thought — this new model of “business” — business people and investors like me have the responsibility to “help CDN’s” as he so illiterately put it, by giving them the money we earned as profit. Scientists call this socialism, or communism. Or mental retardation.
Do you want a real villain? OK: the carbon tax. Axing that alone is enough to bring down inflation a lot. And then there are myriad other taxes at all levels of government, and GST on top of the taxes (yes, taxes on taxes!), all of which could be lowered. And myriad costly rules and regulations and bureaucracy and moreover, the now constant political/government meddling in the free market — which wrecks the free market. And add three cups of progressive left-wing anti-corporate narrative-building by hacks in politics and the media. Bake at 450 until it’s burned to a crisp.
Progressives really need to stop with the cartoonish narration of all companies and their owners and investors as Mr. Burns incarnate. They should realize that Mr. Burns is an over-the-top, comedic character, meant to be taken as a jab at how moronic dumb-dumbs view all corporate heads.
Villainize more, and you’ll get even less competition, not more (which some Liberals pretend they want even as their cohorts in cabinet demonize businesses). Who wants to be villainized? I don’t. I’m personally hard-pressed to invest anything in Canada because of this government’s (and their like-minded media division’s) villainizing of profits, corporations, and of capitalism writ large.
It’s a country that is in desperate — desperate — need of investment from those of us at home and from people and businesses abroad; and a country that is desperate — desperate — for tax and regulatory and bureaucratic and government-meddling relief. We’re getting the opposite. Cans of BS.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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