Opinion: Worried about grocery prices? Wait till we get compulsory carbon accounting
By Tammy Nemeth
If the federal government is worried about grocery prices now, wait until the global sustainability and climate-related financial disclosures of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) come to Canada.
Among other things, these standards mandate the use of intrusive, burdensome, and expensive CO2 emissions accounting across a company’s entire value chain. For grocery retailers this includes explaining and accounting for emissions in the production, transport, packaging, refrigeration, consumption and disposal of everything they sell. In other words, your grocery store will need to quantify all the emissions of that hamburger meat you bought: whether in producing it (including all steps from farm to processor), transporting it to the store, packaging and refrigerating it at the store, plus your travelling to and from the store, your refrigeration and eventually your cooking of the hamburger, and your disposal of the packaging and any waste of the food.
Needless to say, doing and documenting those calculations for every product in the store will not lower your grocery bill but instead will increase grocers’ costs and therefore their prices, too. What say do grocery retailers and other businesses have regarding the practicality, burden, and cost impacts of these standards in Canada? So far, it seems, not much.
The warrior accountants of the newly formed Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB) recently said that consultations with Canadians on the global standards might begin in 2024. Given how the standards’ far-reaching consequences in terms of costs, reporting and completely altering how businesses — regardless of size — do business, the discussions ought to be as open and
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