Where oh where has the industry minister been?

Champagne says he secretly visited a foreign grocer to convince them to expand north. But which company?

- JAKE EDMISTON

Industry Minister FrançoisPhilippe Champagne is looking to bring in a new grocery competitor to shake up the domestic market and challenge Canada’s Big Five.

In the middle of a long and cluttered news conference last week, federal Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne made what seemed like a minor, throwaway remark. He said he had paid a visit to a grocery chain in the United States, as part of his controversial campaign to attract a foreign competitor to shake up the domestic market and challenge Canada’s Big Five supermarket chains.

During that meeting, Champagne recalled, an executive at a “multibillion-dollar” foreign chain told him that the government’s recent changes to Canadian competition law had made the market more attractive, and the chain was now reconsidering a move north.

If it’s true, and a major international player is actually mulling a Canadian expansion, it would mean the minister is making headway in his mission, and proving a lot of industry insiders wrong in the process. Many in the Canadian grocery business have rolled their eyes at Champagne’s plan, arguing that any international player who wanted to be in Canada would be here already. And if they’re not, it’s because they’ve sniffed it out and decided Canada isn’t worth the trouble — especially considering the string of failed Canadian experiments by U.S. retailers like Target, Nordstrom and Lowe’s.