The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that even as the federal government grumbles about a lack of competition among grocery chains, there is mounting evidence consumers have already massively shifted their grocery shopping away from Canada's supermarket oligopoly. The Globe's Jason Kirby writes that the big winners include foreign giants Walmart and Costco. While Statistics Canada reported a drop in retail sales this week, one big exception was the general merchandise category. Compared with last year, general merchandisers saw inflation-adjusted sales climb 12 per cent, while food and beverage stores suffered a real sales decline of 0.9 per cent. Those numbers do not break out what items shoppers were buying, but retail commodity data released earlier this month by Statscan does, and it shows that food sales at general merchandisers are vastly outpacing those at traditional grocery stores. As of the fourth quarter of 2023, real food purchases at general merchandisers grew nearly 16 per cent from the year before. For every dollar Canadians spent on food at grocery stores in the fourth quarter of 2023, they spent 42 cents on food at a general merchandiser. Statscan notes that in 2019 it was just 26 cents.