CALGARY – Canadian grocery bills are getting more expensive as the cost to operate stores rises and local producers face staffing issues.
“Grocers are actually investing quite heavily. They’re spending more money because of COVID-19, following new protocols, new sanitary protocols,” said Sylvain Charlebois, a professor at Dalhousie University who studies food distribution.
“Everything is costing more to do everything in the food industry,” he added.
You may have also noticed selection isn’t as good at the grocery store.
“There’s going to be more of that happening because it’s costing too much for grocers to carry 39,000 different food items,” he said.
As the COVID-19 lockdown began and grocery stores became one of the only places to go, masses of people started shopping online.
Charlebois says this doesn’t come at the same cost as if you were to go shopping in the store yourself though. He said there is a premium of 5 to 7 per cent.
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The pandemic has caused supply issues, and challenges with Temporary Foreign Workers.“We’ve seen about close to 4,500 fewer workers this year than we have in 2019,” said Robert Falconer, a University of Calgary researcher specializing in immigration and refugee issues.
“That’s roughly about a 14 per cent drop in the number of workers, and critically for food prices they didn’t arrive at the beginning of the season.
“Farmers didn’t have enough workers at critical times when they (were) doing seeding, calving, etc. – a huge shortfall in production in the Canadian meat, dairy, and other plant-based agricultural sectors.
Filling those positions with unemployed Canadians isn’t a realistic expectation.
“Many of these workers are hoping to go back to jobs they had before the pandemic, not necessarily take on a new job, especially one that’s as physically intensive for a short period.”
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Charlebois says there is optimism on the horizon.
“The dollar is at about 75 cents against the greenback. Going into the fall it’s actually good news for importers. Their buying power is actually increasing so if our own cucumbers and our own lettuce and tomatoes are too expensive, we can import produce from elsewhere and those prices will remain affordable,” he said.
During the course of the pandemic, buying behaviours have changed. In the long run, many people are still saving money on food because they’re eating at home more often.
“Whenever you spend money in a restaurant you have to pay 40 per cent more to get the same volume of food purchased at a grocery store,” Charlebois said.
He adds a lot of it could just be optics. Food inflation is about 3 or 4 per cent but it’s flat everywhere else making it seem more like 10 or 12 per cent.