The Minister of Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, said that the process of stabilizing food prices "is not like a switch you can flip," but rather a process that is likely to take weeks and months, after announcing an agreement with major grocery stores this week that he pledged would lead to "soon" price stability.

Major grocery companies and the federal government have promised for weeks to take action to address grocery costs, setting a deadline for the CEOs of the five largest grocery chains in Canada to come up with a "stabilization" plan by Thanksgiving.

This week, Champagne said Canadians would soon start seeing grocery stores take specific actions to address prices - including price freezes, price matching, and discounts on certain products - but he did not specify how shoppers could gauge whether the plan was effective.

Champagne also told CTV host Vassy Kapelos in an interview aired this Sunday that the process of lowering prices is likely to take "several months."

He added: "It's not like the switch you flip and you say, 'Oh, it's Thanksgiving, and suddenly everything is solved.' This is day four. This is just a preliminary set of measures. This is a continuous process."

Champagne emphasized that the Thanksgiving deadline was for grocery stores to come up with a plan, not to actually achieve price stability by the end of this week.

At this time last year, the food inflation rate reached 11.4 percent, the fastest annual growth rate in over 40 years. It has since slowed - to 6.9 percent in August - but it remains much higher than the core inflation rate, which was 4 percent for the same month.

Meanwhile, the Liberals are moving forward with changes to the Canadian Competition Act through Bill C-56, also known as the Affordable Housing and Grocery Act, which aims to enhance protections for Canadians when it comes to competition in the grocery sector in the country.

There are also plans in the works to establish "rules of conduct" for groceries to support fairness and transparency in this sector.

But when pressed on whether the federal government should act more quickly to implement these measures, considering how long grocery prices have been at record levels and seem to be declining slowly now, Champagne said: "It's not that kind of credit."

He added: "I say that if things happen, and we push it and keep pushing, we'll all be in a better position. If I say prices are dropping, that's great. What I'm saying is we were a catalyst for saying: 'You need to do more, and you need to do it now.'

The Minister of Industry also said that his government's actions in the past few weeks have not been influenced by the decline in the Liberal's popularity in polls.

Recent data from Nanos Research shows that if a federal election were held now, the Conservatives would win enough seats to form a majority government.