\n<\/p>\n
Dressed in red suits and backed by masked elves, a group of Santas marched into a Montreal supermarket, loaded their bags with thousands of dollars worth of groceries and disappeared into the night.<\/p>\n
The bandit Santas later released a statement saying the food would be distributed to the needy, and saying the Robin Hood-style stunt was intended to highlight the spiralling cost of living crisis that has pushed basic necessities increasingly out of reach for ordinary Canadians.<\/p>\n
Roughly 40 members of a group called called Robins des Ruelles \u2013 Robins of the Alleys \u2013 participated in the robbery late on Monday.<\/p>\n
The statement, released late on Thursday, and entitled \u201cWhen hunger justifies the means\u201d, said: \u201cWe are working more and more just to be able to buy food from supermarket chains that take advantage of inflation as a pretext to make record profits.<\/p>\n
Allow Instagram content?<\/p>\n
This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no other way to put it: a handful of companies are holding our basic needs hostage.\u201d<\/p>\n The group said the companies \u201ccontinue to suffocate the population to siphon away as much money as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n Metro, which owns eight major grocery brands in Ontario and Quebec, said in a statement that shoplifting was a criminal act and unacceptable. A spokesperson, Genevi\u00e8ve Gr\u00e9goir, said price increases were influenced by factors include disruptions in the global supply chain, volatility in commodity prices, changes in international trade conditions \u2013 and retail crime.<\/p>\n According to the Retail Council of Canada, retail crime is on the rise and accounted for more than $9bn in lost sales in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cIt should be noted that as a retailer, we are the final stop in the supply chain,\u201d Gr\u00e9goire said. \u201cThe prices on store shelves directly reflect the costs of the supply chain.\u201d Gr\u00e9goire also noted that Metro in 2025 donated $1.15m and provided more than $81m in food products to food banks.<\/p>\n Three companies control the vast majority of Canada\u2019s grocery stores and have enjoyed record earnings in recent years. Despite government concern over profiteering, while the profits are near-record levels, the companies say their profit margins are shrinking.<\/p>\n Police told reporters they were investigating the theft, but no arrests had been made.<\/p>\n The Robins deposited some groceries in a public square at the foot of a Christmas tree on Tuesday evening, adding that the rest would be distributed through community food banks.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t forget \u2013 the hunger justifies the means,\u201d the group wrote. \u201cMerry Christmas!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dressed in red suits and backed by masked elves, a group of Santas marched into a Montreal supermarket, loaded their bags with thousands of dollars worth of groceries and disappeared into the night. The bandit Santas later released a statement saying the food would be distributed to the needy, and saying the Robin Hood-style stunt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[318,21103,1725,254,6194,13333,21104,13175,21102,3202],"class_list":{"0":"post-38590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-elves","10":"tag-food","11":"tag-give","12":"tag-grocery","13":"tag-montreal","14":"tag-needy","15":"tag-rob","16":"tag-santas","17":"tag-store"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}