We believe in making a difference in the communities in which we live and work, every single day. This begins with supplying jobs and supporting local economies. With more than 134,000 colleagues working in more than 1,000 corporate and franchised stores, we are a major contributor to local employment and economies in Canada.

Our corporate and community giving efforts (both financial support and programs) focus on President’s Choice Children’s Charity, Healthy Active Kids, Feeding our Neighbours and Greening our Communities.

In 2012, with the help of our customers, vendors, colleagues, franchisees and their employees, we donated more than $45 million to charities and non-profit organizations across Canada.

President’s Choice Children’s Charity (PCCC)  is committed to helping kids. Whether providing support to children with disabilities or ensuring hungry tummies are filled with nutritious food, PCCC strives to ensure that kids have every opportunity to live to their full potential.  The best part – 100% of every dollar donated goes to helping kids across Canada.

PCCC believes that nutrition is fundamental to children’s health and wants to provide the resources necessary to fuel a better learning environment. PCCC’s support of children’s nutrition is accomplished by being the National Premier Sponsor of Breakfast for Learning™ and through the Boys & Girls Club of Canada’s PCCC Basic Needs Brighter Future Program.

PCCC also supports children with disabilities by providing financial grants for essential specialized equipment and essential therapists. Through individual grants, the Charity is able to supply much needed resources and help to provide children with a renewed sense of independence, dignity and freedom.

Last year alone, PCCC granted more than $10 million to more than 1,900 families with children with disabilities as well as $3.9 million to more than 2,900 nutrition programs across Canada.

For more information about President’s Choice Children’s Charity please visit www.pc.ca/charity.

We have made health and wellness a priority by continuing to develop healthier foods, promoting healthy food choices and lifestyles, and, working with industry partners and regulators to shape national food strategies.

In our stores, we offer a variety of healthier foods to address many different health, lifestyle and diet regimens. These include fresh, wholesome vegetables, fruits, meat, whole grains and dairy products, as well as our PC Blue Menu product line.

Launched in 2005, with more than 400 products in market, PC Blue Menu makes healthier eating simple. The healthier attributes of PC Blue Menu products help customers manage their intake of omega-3, fibre, fat and sodium, as well as calories, sugar, probiotics and more. In 2012, we redesigned the PC Blue Menu packaging to include plus (+) or minus (-) symbols which make it easier for customers to see a product’s nutritional attributes.

In 2012, we rolled out Guiding Stars in all Loblaws banner stores in Ontario and at our corporate head office. Guiding Stars is an in-store tool that rates all food up to three stars based on their nutritional value to help guide customers to healthier food options. Products are credited for having vitamins, minerals dietary fibre, whole grains and omega-3s and debited for saturated fats, added sodium and added sugars. We plan to roll out Guiding Stars in more in all our banner stores nationally by the end of 2015.

We also added 22 in-store dietitians in 50 corporate stores in Ontario. Dietitians are offer customers menu-planning advice, food label-reading tours, food demonstrations, health education and cooking classes. Dietitians also team up with in-store pharmacists to offer integrated health programs that can help customers prevent and manage specific chronic conditions.

Furthermore, we offer several in-store health and education programs:

Get Checked Now – Since 2011, Loblaw has collaborated with the Canadian Diabetes Association to raise awareness of diabetes and to provide diabetes information sessions for people newly diagnosed with diabetes and who are looking for information and support on topics such as nutrition, vision care and blood glucose monitoring. Sessions include grocery store tours with in-store dietitians and cooking classes in our President’s Choice Cooking Schools.

Food Allergy Management Assessment Program – Developed in partnership with Anaphylaxis Canada, this program helps parents and allergy patients better manage potentially life-threatening food allergies.

Healthy Heart Checks – Developed in collaboration with the Becel Centre for Heart Health. Loblaw pharmacists in select stores conduct 20-minute heart checks and provide customers with a personalized picture of key cardiovascular disease risk factors.

S.A.L.T. (Sodium Awareness Lifestyle Tips) – Developed in partnership with Hypertension Canada, offers customers educational booklets highlighting low sodium foods and Hypertension Canada guidelines related to sodium intake.

We pride ourselves on offering a variety of great-tasting, better-for-you options through our PC Blue Menu products. However, we are equally committed to providing choice to our customers and ensuring that their favourite foods, from all around the world, can be brought to their tables. Some of those products may not be considered “healthy/healthier”, but with the option of PC Blue Menu products, we believe that we are helping customers make healthier choices as much as possible – without sacrificing taste or quality.

On average, Blue Menu products are comparable in price to our other great PC products. 

Yes. We’re expanding our line of low-sodium and no-salt-added foods, including low-sodium ready-to-serve soups. Since 2010, we have reduced 117.6 metric tonnes of sodium in 428 existing control brand processed products. We also developed  741 new control brand processed products that meet our internal guidelines for responsible sodium content (as established by our team of nutrition researchers, registered dietitians and nutritionists, following Canada’s Food Guide and guidance from Health Canada).

Our in-store dietitians offer Healthy Eating and Healthy Heart tours in-store and educate customers about healthy eating. In 2012, we ran a month-long campaign in stores that offered customers the S.A.L.T. (Sodium Awareness Lifestyle Tips) educational booklets which highlighted low-sodium foods and sodium intake guidelines. Our efforts earned us the Certificate of Excellence from Hypertension Canada.

In partnership with grocery retailers and food vendors in Canada, we established a working group that is setting new approaches to reporting progress on sodium reduction and improving customer education on, and awareness of, nutrition choices.

We will begin to see a focus on the sugar content in foods. Everyone knows that sugar is found in sweets, like candy, cookies, cakes and ice cream, but sugar content is also often hidden in grocery store aisles. Reading the labels on products can help determine if sugar is one of the ingredients, but it has many aliases. While sucrose is a well-known sugar, other types include dextrose, fructose, glucose, lactose and maltose.

We are also focused on removing artificial flavours and artificial colours  from our President’s Choice brand product by the end of 2013.  Currently 93% of the products are free from these ingredients.

We were the first major food retailer in Canada to make a commitment to source all seafood sold in our stores from sustainable sources by the end of 2013. This is an aggressive commitment which includes all canned, frozen and fresh seafood products along with products that contain seafood as an ingredient (i.e. grocery items, vitamins and supplements and pet food).  We are working with WWF-Canada, the Marine Stewardship Council, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, independent marine science advisors, conservation experts and fisheries, to achieve this goal.

Loblaw is proud to partner with the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) – an independent, international non-profit organization that has set a global standard for the certification of wild-caught fisheries that practice environmentally responsible, sustainable fishing methods.

We currently offer 108 MSC-certified seafood products in our stores – more than any other Canadian food retailer.

For more information about the MSC please visit www.msc.org. For more information about Loblaw’s sustainable seafood commitment please visit www.oceansfortomorrow.ca  or www.loblaw.ca/seafood.  

Loblaw is proud to partner with the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) – an independent not-for-profit organization that aims to be the leading global certification and labeling programs for responsibly farmed seafood, The ASC manages a global standard for responsibly farmed seafood and is committed to preserving marine and freshwater habitats while endorsing social standards.

We were the first food retailer in North America to offer ASC products in our stores. We currently offer PC Blue Menu fresh and frozen Tilapia in select stores across Canada and we plan to introduce more ASC products.

For more information about the ASC please visit www.asc.org. For more information about Loblaw’s sustainable seafood commitment please visit www.oceansfortomorrow.ca or www.loblaw.ca/seafood.

Our commitment is to source products responsibly while providing our customers the type of quality products they deserve and have come to expect from Loblaw. We strive to bring Canadians products from across the country and around the world that will allow them to have new taste experiences, and we work diligently with our supply chain to ensure that’s exactly what they get. We believe that our customers should be provided with the information they need to make decisions about their purchases, and at many of our Loblaw banner stores, we also provide clear labelling around country of origin to help shoppers make those decisions.

To date, all of our fresh pork is sourced from Canada and 31% of the produce sold in our stores year-round, are sourced from Canadian growers. This number increases up to 40% during the peak growing season.

PC Organics is the largest organic line of products available in Canada, with more than 300 products in the market, crossing categories such as fresh, grocery, dairy and baby. PC Organics products are third-party certified to ensure that every product meets Canada’s organic standards, which emphasize sustainability and a natural approach to weed, pest and disease control.

We first introduced our President’s Choice Free From product line of beef, pork and chicken in 2009. These products are raised without the use of antibiotics or hormones, and the beef and poultry are grain fed. What makes this product line extra special is the emphasis on local farmers who are showcased on the product package. All President’s Choice Free From poultry and pork are sourced exclusively in Canada. PC Free From beef is sourced from both Canada and the United States. 

Our PC Free-Run eggs are exclusively sourced from laying hens that live in an open-concept, weather-sheltered barn environment, where they are free to roam, feed, perch and nest.

Animal welfare issues are important to us. Loblaw is committed to working with vendors, industry associations and animal welfare experts to ensure animal welfare standards and best practices are in place that promote the care, protection and safety of farm animals and their caregivers. One of the experts we have been in discussions with is Dr. Temple Grandin, an American doctor of animal science and professor at Colorado University.

In 2012, we became associate members of the National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC), a multi-stakeholder forum that facilitates the development of standard codes of practice for farm animals, including revising the current egg layer and pig codes of practice in Canada. This process provides a credible, science-based and balanced approach.

We are concerned about housing arrangements, in particular, battery cages for laying hens and sow crates for pigs. Sow crates are an important issue and we have had several discussions with pork vendors expressing our direction toward and support of loose housing systems. In 2013, we will make a commitment to purchase fresh pork from loose housing environments by year-end 2022.

In 2011, we made a commitment to transition all President’s Choice eggs to cage-free. Our President’s Choice line of eggs is comprised of President’s Choice, PC Organics and PC Blue Menu brands. To date, our President’s Choice and PC Organics eggs are free-run, which means that the eggs are exclusively sourced from laying hens who live in an open-concept environment where are they are free to roam, feed and nest. The next and final step to achieve our target is to transition our PC Blue Menu Omega eggs to free-run.

We insist that all offshore vendors supplying Loblaw comply with our ethical standards. We also use a third-party firm to audit direct offshore vendors (factories, mills, packing houses and growing locations) at a minimum of once a year, to ensure good working conditions, including no child harassment, abuse or forced labour; fair pay and benefits; and adherence to health and safety regulations.

As a retailer, it is important to act responsibly according to well-defined government standards, and to offer consumers a variety of choices. We comply with all government regulations in this field and others as prescribed by Health Canada.

Health Canada has concluded  that there is no evidence to suggest that there is any health risk associated with the consumption of GM  foods and as such do not require us, or the manufacturers who supply us to label.

We are proud to carry a wide variety of organic products in our Loblaw banner stores nationally with select stores, offering Natural Value departments dedicated to providing customers with both organic and "naturally" produced products. Each and every organic product adheres strictly to Canadian and International organic production standards, which includes a prohibition on using GM foods. Organic products are also certified by independent third-parties to provide additional assurance that the organic standards are met.

Furthermore, a majority of single ingredient conventional foods sold in our stores, such as produce items, are not genetically modified. Health Canada's website offers a listing of potential GM food products, the majority of which are corn, soy, and canola based.

For more information please visit http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/gmf-agm/appro/index-eng.php. Additionally, safety information respecting GM foods from Health Canada can be found at http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/iyh-vsv/food-aliment/gm-tg-eng.php.

• Reduce non-recyclable packaging on control brand products by 50% by year-end 2013
• Reduce the total amount of packaging on our control brand products by 5% by year-end 2015

In 2011, we spearheaded an industry project to remove obstacles to recycling thermoformed clamshell packaging. The main issue with clamshells is that most municipalities cannot recycle them because they lack the technology to distinguish polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and other commonly used resins.

To improve recyclability, we now have more than 250 control brand products packaged in a single plastic resin, PET. We also joined with industry partners to initiate a new test protocol for recycling adhesives and labels used on clamshells.