"Loblawless": Canadian artist weighs in on price-fixing settlement
Vancouver-based artist No Name Peasant has released a new poster commenting on Loblaw Companies Ltd.’s recent bread price-fixing settlement.
The posters are in the store’s recognizable No Name yellow and show a chart drawing parallels to bread prices and the grocery chain’s profits.
Below the chart is the word “Loblawless,” done in a mock-up of the store’s logo.
“Loblaws’ earning report explained,” the artist captioned their post, where the poster was affixed outside a local No Frills — another grocery chain owned by Loblaw Companies Ltd.
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George Weston Limited, the company that owns Loblaw and affiliated brands, announced this week that it’s decided to settle an ongoing class-action lawsuit over bread price-fixing for $500 million.
The lawsuit alleged the grocer was involved in “an industry-wide price-fixing arrangement… involving certain packaged bread products.”
“On behalf of the Weston group of companies, we are sorry for the price-fixing behaviour we discovered and self-reported in 2015. This behaviour should never have happened. We have the privilege of serving Canadians from coast to coast. That privilege needs to be earned each and every day,” Galen Weston Jr., chairman of Loblaw and chief executive officer of George Weston, said in a statement.
Canadians may have spent more on bread than they should have between 2001 and 2015.
Other major grocery stores, such as Metro, Sobey’s, and Walmart, were implicated in the scandal. Canada’s Competition Bureau said the companies “committed indictable offences under the Competition Act.”
No Name Peasant/Reddit
No Name Peasant has been taking aim at Loblaw Companies recently with posters depicting twists on their house brands as a comment on the cost of living crisis. Their previous posters featured President’s Choice reworked to “Peasant’s Choice” and a can of “No Name Gruel” Andy Warhol style.
“My work is meant to highlight the inequalities in our society,” No Name Peasant told Daily Hive. “Certainly Loblaws has contributed to those.”
With files from Isabelle Docto
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