You have found the unit. It is an end space with its own entrance, two doors from a Sobeys, in a plaza whose lot is full by five o’clock. The landlord has been trying to fill it since spring. You have already sketched the fit-out: dispensary at the back, a supplement wall along the front window, a cooler by the till. Then the leasing agent calls back, sounding apologetic. The anchor has an exclusive, he says. No pharmacy, and nothing that sells food.

On September 22, that answer lost its legal footing wherever the anchor belongs to Empire Company Limited, owner of Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Foodland, FreshCo, Farm Boy, Marché Bonichoix and Les Marchés Tradition. The Competition Bureau registered a consent agreement with the Competition Tribunal that carries the force of a court order. Empire can no longer enforce or create exclusivity clauses against specialty food retailers, a group the Bureau says includes pharmacies, and it has given up restrictive covenants altogether.

The agreement does not reach into your landlord’s filing cabinet, though. The exclusive stays in the anchor’s lease, and any covenant stays registered on title, until someone asks Empire to release it. What you get back then turns on two definitions buried in the agreement’s text: whether your store counts as a specialty food retailer, and whether the clause blocking you is about food at all. The independents who read those definitions and move first this fall will get the good units, while everyone else keeps getting the old phone call.

Where Canada’s grocers stand on property controls, September 2026

Why a grocer cares who sells vitamins

Sobeys fills prescriptions inside many of its stores and owns the Lawtons Drugs chain. The executive who signed the agreement for Empire, Doug Nathanson, carries the title General Counsel and Chief Pharmacy & Development Officer, which puts pharmacy and real estate development under one desk. An independent pharmacy two doors down competes for the same prescriptions and the same front-shop vitamin sale. A health food store goes after something the grocer values even more: the shopper whose basket is full of organic, gluten-free and supplement products, the highest-margin cart in the building. Seen from an anchor’s real estate office, an exclusive that keeps both out is cheap insurance.

Covenants were the more durable weapon, because they bind the land itself and survive a change of owner. The Bureau’s guidance calls them “particularly concerning” for exactly that reason. In Crowsnest Pass, a Rocky Mountain community of a few thousand people, Empire’s IGA was the only grocery store in town, and a covenant Empire had held since 2017 kept a competing grocer out. It came off only in January 2025, after the Bureau stepped in, clearing the way for a second store. The same logic means a vacant box where a Sobeys closed years ago can still be fenced off by a document nobody has looked at since.

How many of these documents exist is anyone’s guess, because no national count has been published. The one jurisdiction that forced them into daylight is Manitoba. When its new law gave grocers 180 days to re-register any control they wanted to keep, at least 46 were submitted for confirmation and 23 more were surrendered for removal, in a province of about 1.5 million people.

Which side of the line your store sits on

The consent agreement, now posted on the Competition Tribunal’s website, answers the question the announcement left open. A Grocery Store is one whose primary business is selling grocery food products and which offers a full assortment of them. A Specialty Food Retailer sells only “a subset or limited assortment,” and the agreement names bakeries, butchers, frozen food stores, pharmacies, dollar stores and convenience stores, while excluding any business “operating as tantamount to a Grocery Store.” For most health food stores that is good news. A shop whose primary business is supplements and natural health products cannot be a Grocery Store under that test, however much kombucha sits in its cooler. The exposure belongs to the full-line natural grocer, whose produce wall, bulk bins and frozen aisle start to look like a full assortment.

The same definitions set a limit that no announcement mentioned. Every obligation turns on “Grocery Food Products,” meaning food and beverages customarily sold by a grocery store, from produce and dairy to confectionery and prepared meals. The agreement expressly excludes any restriction that applies solely to other products. Vitamins, natural health products and prescriptions appear nowhere in the list. The deal therefore frees a pharmacy’s snack aisle and a health store’s cooler, while a lease clause that bars a tenant from dispensing or from selling supplements sits outside it. Before you celebrate, find out which kind of clause is in your plaza.

Full grocers get thinner protection still. Empire must stop enforcing existing exclusives in its own grocery leases in only 19 local markets, listed in a schedule to the agreement: Bonnyville, Alta.; Bishop’s Falls, N.L.; Grand Bay-Westfield, N.B.; Paris and Thornbury, Ont.; New Glasgow, New Ross, Pictou, Coldbrook and Truro, N.S.; and Cadillac, Lac Brome, Grenville, Repentigny, Victoriaville, Terrebonne, Contrecoeur, Saint-Hippolyte and Paspébiac, Que. Radius clauses, which reach beyond the plaza, are dead everywhere. Nothing in the agreement, however, stops Empire from signing new exclusives against full grocery stores inside its own plazas. Its promise to narrow those lives only in the voluntary policy it published in July.

Asking for the release

Anyone with a business interest in the site can make the request, including a landlord, a tenant, a prospective tenant, a purchaser or a developer. Empire takes requests through empireco.ca/propertycontrols, and the agreement puts it on a clock. It must acknowledge a request within five business days. Within 20 business days it must discharge, waive or amend the control, or decline in writing with reasons. That clock is the most useful thing in the document, because a landlord will rarely risk a default notice from its anchor on the strength of a press release, but will act on a signed waiver. Keldon Bester of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, reacting to Empire’s first pledge in July, urged regulators to “trust, but verify.” The four questions below are how a retailer does the verifying.

1. To the landlord: “Which clause are you relying on, whose lease is it in, and does it restrict food or something else?” The answer tells you whether you are dealing with Empire, a grocer from the table above, or a restriction the agreement does not touch.
2. To Empire: “Is my store a Specialty Food Retailer as the consent agreement defines it, and will you confirm in writing that you will not enforce against this address?” If the answer is no, the reasons have to come in writing too.
3. To your real estate lawyer: “Is a covenant registered on this parcel, or a neighbouring one, in favour of Empire, a former Empire store or a company Empire partly owns, and has a discharge been filed?” The agreement only obliges Empire to ask such companies for a waiver once it learns of a covenant, and says outright that it need not search the land registry. That matters because Empire holds a 41.5 per cent interest in Crombie REIT, a national owner of grocery- and pharmacy-anchored shopping centres.
4. To yourself, with your current lease open: search for “food”, “grocery”, “supermarket”, “pharmacy” and any cap on floor area devoted to food. A restriction your landlord once agreed with an anchor may be what stops you adding a fridge wall or bulk section at the store you already run.

What comes next

Empire is the first grocer to turn its property control pledges into an order a tribunal can enforce, filed under section 90.1 of the Competition Act. It admits no wrongdoing and says it disagrees with the Bureau’s conclusions, but has agreed not to contest them. The Bureau says its investigation of other grocers continues, and in June it opened a broader examination of competition across the food supply chain, from processing to retail pricing. Landlords should note the section the Bureau used. Since the amendments of December 2023, section 90.1 can reach anti-competitive agreements between parties who do not compete with each other, such as a grocer and the owner of its plaza, and the Bureau’s guidance notes that administrative monetary penalties are available.

For pharmacists and natural health retailers, the result is a new supply of locations. Every unit that comes vacant beside a Sobeys, Safeway or IGA from here on is one they can bid on, and the landlord now has a reason to take the call.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Loblaw’s commitment help a store trying to lease beside a Shoppers Drug Mart?
Partly. Loblaw said that from November 2024, new Shoppers Drug Mart and Pharmaprix leases would carry no restrictions on the sale of food products. It also pledged not to enforce or sign exclusivity clauses reaching beyond the land its own store occupies. Older Shoppers leases fall under its voluntary commitment rather than a tribunal order.

What can I do if Empire refuses a waiver or keeps enforcing a clause?
Report it to the Competition Bureau through its online complaint form. Empire must also file a sworn affidavit with the Commissioner within 90 days and every year after, listing each removal request and how it was handled, so a refusal is on the record. Because the agreement is registered with the Tribunal, a breach can be taken back before it rather than argued from scratch.

Is there a limit on how long a grocer’s exclusivity clause can reasonably run?
The Bureau’s June 2025 guidance sets no fixed term. It says a competitor property control should last only as long as needed to protect the incentive to enter or invest, cover the smallest area necessary and restrict no more products than necessary. Decades-long exclusives covering an entire plaza are the kind it questions.

This is independent editorial analysis by IHR Magazine and is not legal advice. Retailers considering a lease or a waiver request should have the consent agreement, the anchor’s lease and the title record reviewed by a real estate lawyer. Facts are current to September 23, 2026.