Two of Canada’s richest grocery store owners got significantly richer in 2025, according to a report published Monday.
Oxfam Canada, a wealth inequality advocacy group, says the net worth of the Weston and Pattison families — who own the Loblaws and Save-on-Foods grocery chains, respectively — grew by more than 14 per cent each.
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The report claims Loblaws and Pattison Food Group are now worth roughly $32.8 billion combined, an increase of $4.4 billion from last year.
Meanwhile, many food banks say they’ve never been busier, with one in four people self-identifying as food insecure according to Food Banks Canada.
Kim Savage, spokesperson for the Surrey Food Bank, has watched that trend grow year over year.
She says there’s been a steady and dramatic rise in people walking through her doors, a 65 per cent gain from 2023.
“We’re over 22,000 visits per month to the Food Bank. That represents about 9,200 unique clients, whereas last year we were more like 8,700 – 8,600 clients per month,” said Savage.
“Those numbers just keep creeping up, and they’re pretty challenging to deal with at points.”
One group of wealthy Canadians is taking action.
The organization Patriotic Millionaires is pressuring the government to impose higher taxes on the richest of the rich.
As Executive Director Dylan Dusseault says, “billionaire families” like the Westons and Pattisons are a reflection of weak points in Canada’s tax code.
“While more and more families are using food banks, and a record number of children are in poverty, there’s something particularly gross about seeing the wealth of these grocery duopoly families … skyrocket like that,” said Dusseault.
“While everyone else is continuing to struggle every year, the gap between the top one per cent… and everyone else continues to expand.”
Dusseault argues that a heavy tax on excessive profits would disincentivize big corporations from exploiting their customers.
“It’s a deterrent on the front end from doing it, because why charge excess profits if you’re not keeping them?”
He feels that Canadian grocery stores are “profiteering and price-gouging” as some people struggle to keep the pantry stocked.
“They make their money from food. There is a crisis of hunger in this country.”
Savage partially agrees, but she also says that much of the food bank’s inventory is donated from grocery stores.
“At the end of the day, we live in a free-market capitalist country, and businesses exist to make money,” she said.
“That is an inherent vulnerability when we’re talking about food because when people sell food… that’s what they’re doing, they’re selling food.”
No matter the cause, she says it’s never easy to think about how many people depend on the Surrey Food Bank’s shelves.
“As the lineups keep getting longer, you keep contending with that same feeling of knowing that there are so many people who are struggling out there,” said Savage.
“So many folks, so many families, so many seniors, so many individuals that are struggling to put enough food on their table, so that does definitely take an emotional toll.”
Data from Statistics Canada shows B.C.’s food prices have been climbing steadily, with figures from November demonstrating a seven per cent increase from the year before.
Oxfam’s report echoes Dusseault’s idea of tax reforms, also calling for an end to offshore tax accounts and recommending a new international committee on inequality.
