The federal government says it has received commitments from Canada's five biggest grocery chains to enact "concrete actions" – including discounts, price freezes and price-matching campaigns – in a bid to restore food price stability.

Ottawa said in a news release that the country's biggest grocery chains – including Loblaw (L.TO), Empire (EMP-A.TO), Metro (MRU.TO), Walmart (WMT) and Costco (COST) – have identified actions, that will be put in place in the coming days and weeks, aimed at stabilizing food prices.

"Canadians can expect to see actions such as aggressive discounts across a basket of key food products that represent the most important purchases for most households, price freezes, and price-matching campaigns," the government said in a news release.

"If we don’t see results, we will take additional action to restore the food price stability that Canadians expect."

The government also said it will establish a Grocery Task Force within the Office of Consumer Affairs dedicated to monitoring the grocery chains' actions, as well as investigate practices such as "shrinkflation."

Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said "nothing is off the table" when it comes to trying to stabilize food prices in Canada. The government had previously threatened to impose new taxes on grocers if they did not come up with a plan to address rising food prices.

Top executives from Canada's biggest grocery retailers met with federal officials, including Champagne, in Ottawa last month to discuss food prices.

Sylvain Charlebois, professor of food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University, said the measures announced on Thursday will do little to lower food prices in Canada in the short term.

"It's business as usual. Beyond what's already happening in the industry, there's nothing here that will help Canadians out right now," he said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Canada.

"I think the greatest achievement out of the last four weeks was to get the big five (grocery chain executives) in the same room. And that's pretty much it."

The Retail Council of Canada said keeping food prices as low as possible has been a top priority for Canadian grocers since inflation surged at the end of the pandemic.

"As food distributors, grocers buy goods from suppliers and then sell them to customers, meaning that they are heavily dependent on what manufacturers charge for their products," RCC's national spokeswoman Michelle Wasylyshen said in an emailed statement. Grocers have pointed to cost increases from food suppliers as one of the biggest drivers of inflation.

"It therefore remains critical that all members of the complex supply chain address their respective roles in food pricing," Wasylyshen said.

"We are encouraged that Minister Champagne made several clear references to the need for manufacturers to step up with regard their central role in food pricing and we look forward to seeing some concrete deliverables from those government-manufacturer discussions."

Food prices have remained stubbornly high in Canada and above headline inflation, even as the Consumer Price Index has cooled. The price of food purchased from grocery stores in August increased 6.9 per cent annually, a slower year-over-year pace compared to the 8.5 per cent rise recorded in July, but still above the 4 per cent CPI increase.

The Bank of Canada has recently highlighted corporate pricing behaviour as a concern in the fight to bring inflation back to its two per cent target. In a speech made earlier this week, deputy governor Nicolas Vincent flagged that there is a risk that pricing behaviour itself could become sticky. He said normally companies don't adjust prices often, as it can be expensive to change prices and may come at a cost. But Vincent highlighted that grocery stores are now using electronic price tags to reduce the cost associated with changing prices.

"The biggest risk is that the recent practice of changing prices more often and more sharply could become the norm," he said.

"If stores expect their suppliers and competitors to change prices more frequently, and consumers are willing to continue paying higher prices rather than shopping around, then it creates a feedback loop. This could make prices more sensitive to shocks, making it more difficult to get inflation back to our two per cent target."

Alicja Siekierska is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow her on Twitter @alicjawithaj.

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