Here’s how much you might get from the Loblaw bread price-fixing settlement

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More than one million people have already submitted claims for compensation under the $500-million settlement that Canada’s largest grocer, Loblaw Cos. Ltd. L-T, and its parent company, George Weston Ltd. WN-T, agreed to pay to settle their part in class-action lawsuits over a scheme to fix bread prices in Canada from 2001 to 2015.

So, how much could eligible bread customers be paid? That depends on a few factors.

How much money is available to eligible shoppers?

The settlement, one of the largest in Canadian history for a class action, was announced last year, but included $96-million that Loblaw already paid out back in 2018, through $25 gift cards to the grocer’s own stores.

That leaves $404-million. But not all of that money goes to people who bought bread in Canada during the years-long, allegedly “industry-wide” conspiracy, which Loblaw and George Weston reported to the Competition Bureau in 2015, in exchange for immunity from criminal charges. (The federal watchdog’s investigation into the matter is continuing.)

The court awarded $74-million in lawyers’ fees for the lawsuits, and roughly $62-million in administrative fees and other costs, leaving approximately $268-million for payouts.

How do claims work?

The process for making a claim under the settlement began on Sept. 11, and is open to Canadian residents who bought packaged bread – at any grocery store in Canada, not just those owned by Loblaw – between Jan. 1, 2001 and Dec. 31, 2021. (For Quebec residents, the class period extends to Dec. 19, 2019.)

Those who already received the $25 gift cards are still eligible to make claims, but they are farther back in line.

First, up to $25 will be allocated to each of those deemed eligible who did not receive the card. After that, there will likely still be money left over: to deplete the settlement, more than 10 million eligible people who never received a gift card would have to make a claim.

Ontario judge approves $500-million settlement in Loblaw, George Weston bread price-fixing case

Whatever is left over will be distributed to the entire group, with a couple of caveats.

First, the remaining pool of money has to be at least $5 per person. (Because of the cost of processing payments, a cut-off was established.) If it is less, that money does not just go back to the lawyers. It would likely be distributed another way, such as through charitable donations.

“The whole point of class actions is to have access to justice. So even if it’s not direct justice, I would say, you would want to make a mass contribution to food banks to give back to everybody in the country who needs it,” said Jay Strosberg, a managing partner at Strosberg Wingfield Sasso LLP who represents plaintiffs in the class action. He added that any such plan for alternative distributions would require court approval.

Second, the settlement applies to two lawsuits in the matter, which were heard in the Ontario and Quebec superior courts, and the money is divided by jurisdiction – with 22 per cent applying to the Quebec case and 78 per cent to the Ontario case (which also represents people outside of that province).

That is roughly in line with population, but may mean different per-person payouts in Quebec versus the rest of Canada, depending on how many people register, and how many of those already received gift cards.

The deadline for submitting a claim is Dec. 12.

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So how much could my payout be?

“We can’t estimate, because we don’t know what the take-up rate is,” Mr. Strosberg said.

But what is clear, is that Canadians are unlikely to receive thousands of dollars each for a claim in this settlement.

For example, what if by the deadline, the number of eligible claims reaches three million? On a purely hypothetical basis, let’s assume that the number of eligible claims divides neatly by geographies – 22 per cent in Quebec and the remainder in the rest of Canada – meaning the math is the same everywhere.

If half of those people already applied for the gift cards, 1.5 million people would be first in line for $25 each, and the rest of the settlement would be split among the entire class. That would mean payouts of almost $102 for each person who never received a gift card, and nearly $77 per person for the group who did.

But these estimates are far from precise. If fewer people register, the per-person payment could go up. If more register, it could be lower. And the payments would be different depending on the share of gift-card recipients in that group, and where in the country all the claims come from.

According to Mr. Strosberg, in the first week after opening up the claims process, more than one million were submitted.

Is this the end of the lawsuits?

The class-action lawsuits continue against other defendants, including Canadian grocery retailers who have all denied their part in the alleged scheme.

Bread producer Canada Bread, owned by Mexico-based Grupo Bimbo BMBOY, is also a defendant; Canada Bread admitted to price-fixing arrangements and agreed to pay a $50-million fine in 2023 to resolve its part in the Competition Bureau investigation. At the time of the alleged scheme, Canada Bread was majority-owned by Mississauga-based Maple Leaf Foods Inc., which has denied wrongdoing and sued Grupo Bimbo for defamation.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify that Canada Bread, and not its parent company Grupo Bimbo, admitted to price-fixing arrangements and agreed to pay a $50-million fine in 2023 to resolve its part in the Competition Bureau investigation.