Sylvain Charlebois: Why tipping in Canada needs a rethink

Reaching a tipping point

Photo: The Canadian Press

Tipping in Canada needs to be looked at says columnist Sylvain Charlebois.

Tipping fatigue is real — and it’s spreading.

What was once a gesture of appreciation has become an increasingly opaque and frustrating part of dining out. In our cashless, digital economy, Canadians are now routinely nudged — or guilted — into tipping more, often through emotionally manipulative interfaces.

Sad emojis for selecting a 15% tip? Prompts for 20% on a $6 latte? This phenomenon, known as “tip creeping,” has become a serious irritant for consumers.

But there’s a deeper issue, one that many don’t notice. In most provinces, tips are calculated after sales tax is added to the bill. That means a 20% tip on a $100 meal with a 15% tax becomes $23, not $20. This hidden markup adds confusion and undermines consumer trust, especially when it’s unclear whether the extra money, also known as “tipflation,” is going to the server, shared with staff or kept by management. Most diners never check.

Last week, Quebec decided to do something about it. It is now illegal in that province for payment terminals to calculate tips on post-tax amounts. Tips must be applied to the pre-tax total. In addition, restaurant operators must clearly display the total bill, including the tip. No emojis, no games, just transparency.

While some critics argue this is government overreach, the truth is inaction from the food service industry has made regulation necessary. The tipping model, once rooted in merit and service quality, has evolved into something that more closely resembles a wage subsidy. In many cases, consumers feel pressured into tipping simply to compensate for inadequate base pay, rather than to reward good service.

Some restaurateurs are now experimenting with tip-free models, incorporating service charges directly into menu prices. That eliminates guesswork and creates a more predictable income for staff. However, that shift isn’t without consequences. Top-performing employees may seek out tip-based restaurants where they can earn more, leading to talent drain.

There is also credible academic research suggesting tipping perpetuates discriminatory behaviour. Studies have shown tip amounts can be influenced by arbitrary and biased factors, like a server’s appearance or accent, rather than the quality of service.

Unlike in Europe, where gratuities are typically included in the bill, North America has clung to an outdated and often chaotic tipping culture. The restaurant industry has failed to establish coherent standards or lead a serious discussion about reform.

That vacuum has opened the door for governments to intervene, as Quebec has now done.

If the industry does not self-correct, we can expect more provinces to follow suit. For the sake of both consumers and workers, tipping practices need to be more transparent, equitable and consistent. Otherwise, public trust — and the sector’s integrity — will continue to erode.

Sylvain Charlebois is the director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University and co-host of The Food Professor Podcast.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.

Charlebois: Why Canada will lose half its dairy farms by 2030 — with supply management

Protecting dairy industry

Photo: Castanet file

Food profesor Sylvain Charlebois says Canada's dairy industry is in trouble.

Prime Minister Mark Carney is no Justin Trudeau. While the team around him may be familiar, the tone has clearly shifted. His first week in office signaled a more data-driven, technocratic approach — grounded in pragmatism rather than ideology.

That’s welcome news, especially for Canada’s agri-food sector, which has long been overlooked.

Historically, the Liberal Party has governed with an urban-centric lens, often sidelining agriculture. That must change. Carney’s pledge to eliminate all interprovincial trade barriers by July 1 was encouraging — but whether this includes long-standing obstacles in the agri-food sector remains to be seen. Supply-managed sectors, particularly dairy, remain heavily protected by a tangle of provincially administered quotas that limit flexibility, stifle innovation, and restrict national productivity.

Consider dairy. Quebec produces nearly 40% of Canada’s milk, despite accounting for just over 20% of the population. This regional imbalance undermines one of supply management’s original promises: Preserving dairy farms across the country. In reality, the number of dairy farms continues to decline, with roughly 90% now concentrated in just a few provinces — mirroring patterns in the U.S., where there is no federal supply management system.

On our current path, Canada is projected to lose nearly half of its remaining dairy farms by 2030 — even with supply management in place. Consolidation is accelerating, and it disproportionately benefits Quebec and Ontario at the expense of smaller producers in the Prairies and Atlantic Canada.

The prime minister must put dairy reform back on the table, regardless of campaign promises. The dairy sector represents just 1% of Canada’s GDP, yet its outsized influence on policy continues to distort economic priorities — benefiting fewer than 9,000 farms out of more than 175,000 nationwide. This is not sustainable. Many Canadian producers are eager to grow, trade and compete globally, but are held back by a system that prioritizes insulation over opportunity.

It’s also time to decouple dairy from poultry and eggs, which — though also supply-managed — operate with far more vertical integration and competitiveness. Industrial milk prices in Canada are nearly double those in the U.S., undermining both our domestic processors and consumer affordability.

The coming CUSMA renegotiation is a chance to reset. Rather than resist change, the dairy sector should seize the opportunity to modernize. Reforms could include a more open quota system for export markets, and a complete overhaul of the Canadian Dairy Commission to increase transparency around pricing. Canadians deserve to know how much milk is wasted each year — estimated at up to a billion litres — and whether a strategic reserve for powdered milk (much like our existing butter reserve) would better serve national food security.

Global milk demand is rising. According to The Dairy News, the world could face a shortage of 30 million tonnes by 2030 — three times Canada’s current annual production. Yet under current policy, Canada is not positioned to contribute meaningfully to meeting that demand. The domestic focus on protecting margins and internal price fairness is blinding the sector to the broader market realities.

We’ve been here before. The last time CUSMA was renegotiated, Canada offered modest concessions to foreign competitors and then overcompensated its dairy sector for hypothetical losses. This created an overcapitalized industry, inflated farmland prices, and diverted attention from more pressing trade and diplomacy challenges — particularly with India and China.

If Carney is serious about rebooting the Canadian economy, agri-food must be part of the conversation. But that means agriculture itself must step up. Industry voices across the country need to call on dairy to evolve, embrace change, and step into the 21st century.

Sylvain Charlebois is the Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University and co-host of The Food Professor Podcast

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.

LaPointe: Canada flinches at giving Carney the mandate he was hoping for

Not strongest political hand

Photo: Mike Howell, BIV

Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks to a crowd in Metro Vancouver during the federal election campaign, April 24, 2025.

Same song, probably a different dance partner.

We went to bed Monday sending Mark Carney into the lion’s den as an elected Liberal prime minister to stare down and subdue Donald Trump. But Canadians gave him anything but the strongest political hand.

Carney will apparently lead a third straight minority government—only now, one in which, of all things, the separatist Bloc Québécois has leverage for Liberal viability. Mathematically, the NDP can return as the support the Liberals need to rule—they’re four short of a majority, and the NDP has seven seats—but it would be folly to bypass the Bloc Quebecois and not bow to a party with 23 seats in a politically important province. Trump must be chuckling, though, at the prospect of contending with a prime minister beholden to a party that wants to leave Canada.

The result was not quite what the latest polls had predicted—a majority Liberal government, not one falling short by single digits. Quebec delivered it the government, but Ontario didn’t deliver its majority. Still, it amounted to an extraordinary reversal of Liberal fortunes, considering Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives held a two-dozen-point poll lead only a dozen weeks ago, considering also that many thought not so long ago the Liberals might be rendered rubble this election.

What was clear in the result, apart from the remnant considerable division of a tighter-than-expected outcome, was that not even Trump’s threats to sovereignty could make Canadians forgive and forget what the Liberals wrought over three terms, even if under new leadership. Indeed, Poilievre built the party’s base Monday, earning roughly 20 more seats and its largest slice of the vote since 1988. That being said, it was his hesitance at first to denounce Trump—and to call out Trump’s supporters in his own party—that opened a door Carney calmly and luckily walked through.

The fear Trump stoked with every Truth Social post and Oval Office taunt landed clearly with traditional NDP voters, who fled the coop for Carney—if only to ensure it would not be Poilievre across the table from the U.S. president or across the Commons as the prime minister. Its vote collapse was epic; federal politics are, for the time being, a matter of two national parties not three. The NDP will no longer hold official party status in the Commons, and its leader of nearly eight years, Jagmeet Singh, finished third in his Burnaby riding and bade farewell to politics in his concession speech. Carney owes him no small amount of gratitude, and Poilievre erred in making the NDP such a target for so long—he ought to have been keeping them alive to deprive the Liberals of oxygen.

Amid glacial vote-counting late Monday, Poilievre looked like he, too, might lose his seat. Tuesday it was confirmed. It was evident he has no intention of stepping aside as opposition leader, regardless, although he will need to put on the charm offensive to retain his caucus support after such an historic squandering of public support. With no seat in the Commons after seven straight wins in his riding, it’s difficult to see how he makes lemonade out of these lemons. His party has a nasty trait of eating its leaders alive. As with the NDP, the election post-mortem will require Conservatives to rethink. They had the government on the ropes, defined all but one of the election issues, yet could not convince Canadians that the changes they proposed were pressing necessities with an apprehended threat in the wind.

Carney is certainly courageous for taking on the task of taking on the world’s most powerful man. But as he does, he has some domestic healing suddenly on the agenda. He has to deliver on what most winners say on election night—that they’ll endeavour to represent everyone, even adversaries—as he represents the country in its most significant existential moment. The issues he was able to sidestep—affordability, housing, immigration, crime—do not disappear simply because he is at Mar-a-Lago with elbows up.

He will need to renew his party as he seizes control of it from the Trudeau team, set aside some of its tired troops, and multitask as not just a savvy foil to our neighbouring leader but a shrewd enabler of a more prosperous, confident country. He needs to work across the political aisle to apply the force of all parties in the fight ahead with America. It plants a small worry that his campaign lost steam in the home stretch, and that the more Canadians saw of Carney’s pilfering of policy and reticence to be candid about his holdings (or, for that matter, of his conversation with Trump), the less they were enthralled.

"As I’ve been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country,” he said in his late-night acceptance speech. “President Trump is trying to break us so he can own us. That will never happen.”

No one really knows what kind of negotiator, much less what kind of prime minister, we have on our hands. But if he is true to his word—that he will make mistakes, but own them, and that he will lead with humility, as he certainly must have felt Monday in not earning a dominant victory—then perhaps a successful defence of Canada at the bargaining table will prevail as his brand and will carve him quickly into history. Fumble it, though, and the carving will be upon him.

Kirk LaPointe is a Glacier Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism. He is vice-president in the office of the chairman at Fulmer & Co.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.

Charlebois: Liberals win again but will Canada's farmers and food security lose?

Impact of election on food

Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Prime Minister Mark Carney arrives on stage at his campaign headquarters in Ottawa after the Liberal party won the federal election on Tuesday, April 29, 2025.

The Liberal Party, now led by Mark Carney, has secured a fourth consecutive term, albeit once again with a minority mandate.

This time, however, the Liberals have a stronger hand, as they can rely not only on the NDP but also the Bloc Quebecois to maintain power. This broader base of parliamentary support could provide much-needed political stability at a crucial time, particularly as Canada prepares for a new round of trade negotiations with the United States and Mexico.

For the agri-food sector, the implications are significant. First and foremost, carbon pricing will remain a central issue. Carney has made it clear that the industrial carbon tax will stay — a policy that continues to erode the competitiveness of Canada’s agri-food sector.

The tax, currently set at $95 per metric tonne, is scheduled to climb to $170 by 2030. While consumers may not see this tax directly, businesses certainly do.More concerning is the Liberals’ intention to introduce a border carbon adjustment for imports from countries without equivalent carbon pricing regimes.

While this could theoretically protect Canadian industry, it also risks making food even more expensive for Canadian consumers, particularly if the United States — our largest trading partner — remains uninterested in adopting similar carbon measures. Carbon pricing can only work in a North American context if Canada, the United States, and Mexico move in lockstep. Acting alone risks undermining our own food security and competitiveness.

Another looming issue is supply management. Although all parties pledged during the campaign not to alter Canada’s supply management system for dairy, poultry and eggs, it is almost certain to be a topic in trade negotiations. The American dairy lobby, in particular, will continue to demand greater access to Canadian markets.Canada’s supply management system — characterized by quota controls and exorbitant tariffs — is increasingly outdated.

If the Liberals are serious about strengthening the agri-food sector, they would use this opportunity to chart a path toward reform. Modernizing supply management could lead to a more competitive, resilient industry while providing consumers with greater choice and better prices.The previous Parliament’s passage of Bill C-282, which sought to shield supply management sectors from all future trade negotiations, was a deeply flawed move.

Fortunately, the composition of the new Parliament should make it far less likely that such protectionist legislation will survive. A more pragmatic approach to trade policy appears possible.On the domestic front, there are reasons for cautious optimism.

The Liberals have promised to eliminate remaining federal barriers to interprovincial trade and to improve labour mobility — longstanding obstacles to the efficient movement of agri-food products across Canada. Momentum was building before the election, and it must continue if we are serious about building a stronger domestic food economy.Infrastructure investment is another bright spot.

The Liberals pledged more than $5 billion through a Trade Diversification Corridor Fund to improve Canada’s export infrastructure, helping to lessen our dependency on the United States. Canada’s trade gateways are severely undercapitalized — strategic investment here is overdue and critical for agri-food exporters.

Finally, the Liberal platform was alone in explicitly committing to support food processing in Canada — a crucial pillar of domestic food security. An increased focus on manufacturing will not only create jobs but also reduce reliance on imported food products, making Canada more resilient in the face of global disruptions.

Historically, Liberal governments have been more urban-centric, with the agri-food sector — and especially farmers — often left feeling marginalized. The past four years have been particularly difficult, with frequent clashes over regulatory and trade policies.

The hope now is that with greater political stability and a clearer focus on competitiveness, the next four years will bring a more constructive relationship between Ottawa and Canada’s agri-food sector.The stakes are high. Canada’s food security, trade competitiveness, and rural vitality depend on it.

Sylvain Charlebois is the director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University and co-host of The Food Professor Podcast

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.