The provincial government is taking steps to bring down the cost of groceries by challenging Sobeys, which has property controls preventing competitors from building grocery stores close to it.
Allowing competitiveness in the grocery industry should help lower food prices. Protecting grocers from competition – by allowing their property controls to stand – makes it “easier” for them to raise prices, the government says.
Manitoba premier Wab Kinew and public service delivery minister Mintu Sandhu held a news conference on April 30 at which they discussed taking Sobeys, which is owned by Empire Company Ltd., to the Municipal Board to have four of its property controls removed.
“Today we are taking another step to make grocery prices more affordable in Manitoba, and another step to bringing fairness back to the market here in our province,” said Kinew.
Some of the big grocery chains in the province have over the years used property controls – contracts on their real estate deals – to prevent competitors from setting up shop nearby, he said.
“Now, we passed a law in 2025 to force these companies to register these property controls with us, and that will allow us to challenge them,” said Kinew. “Today, we’re announcing that we’re challenging the first four of these remaining property controls. And by the way, most of the big grocery chains dropped these property controls when we passed this law, all except one – Sobeys. So the four locations we’re talking about today are all within that company’s purview.”
The government passed the Property Controls for Grocery Stores and Supermarkets Act in June 2025, preventing grocery stores from creating “new restrictive covenants or exclusivity clauses.”
There are currently 43 property controls in place.
Of the four property controls the government will be challenging, two are in Winnipeg (915 Leila Ave and 50 Sage Creek Blvd), one in Steinbach (178 PTH 12) and one in Brandon (1645 18th St).
Some controls that stop competitors from building nearby extend into agricultural fields and last until 2040 in one case and the 2060s in another, said the premier.
“We don’t think that is in the public interest and that’s why we’re taking action,” said Kinew. “I think we all understand when there’s more competition, there are better prices. … If this [property controls] wasn’t benefitting the companies’ bottom line, they wouldn’t be doing it.”
Minister Sandhu said the property control legislation resulted in some grocery giants deciding to drop existing controls.
“As a result of that legislation, one third of the existing controls were well and truly removed. Right now, 43 remain in place, all held by the same company,” said Sandhu. “But we are not willing to wait for years of the last of these anti-competition contracts to expire while big chains make record profits and your groceries will keep going up.”
With the new legislation, the government can bring a case against Sobeys to the Municipal Board, which can “strike down” predatory property controls that go against the public interest, Sandhu said.
“We gave Sobeys the chance to do the right thing, and voluntarily put a stop this anti-competition practices in Manitoba,” he said. “They refused.”
The government intends to fight all 43 property controls.
Other measures the provincial government has taken to provide some mitigation against high prices include removing the PST from ready-made food and other edible products sold in grocery stores and in mom-and-pop shops (starting July 1), freezing the price of milk (1 litre), and “cracking down” on surveillance or predatory pricing through the use of customer data, typically from points or rewards cards offered by grocers and online shopping.
