From the bread pricing scandal, the amount of coordination that was going on between supposed competitors is crazy. The fact that it took "a decade and a half" to prosecute the case means that much more subtle collusion is probably very common.
> “Retail customers would call threatening to reject a price increase if another retailer was offside in terms of pricing alignment.”
> The coordination was particularly tough between discounters including Walmart, Giant Tiger, Loblaw’s No Frills, Sobeys’ FreshCo and Metro’s Food Basics, the document says.
> “None of them wanted to be the first to implement the price increase …There was always a negotiation process going back and forth between the four retailers where the supplier was trying to coordinate it, because somebody had to be the first to move.”
> According to redacted witnesses cited in the documents, the individual retailers involved were all in favour of taking price increases, and full-price grocers such as Loblaw tended to hike prices first, followed by discounters such as Walmart.
