Canadians Panic As Food Prices Soar On Collapsing Currency
It was just yesterday when we documented the continuing slide in the loonie, which is suffering mightily in the face of oil’s inexorable decline.
As regular readers are no doubt acutely aware, Canada is struggling through a dramatic economic adjustment, especially in Alberta, the heart of the country’s oil patch. Amid the ongoing crude carnage the province has seen soaring property crime, rising food bank usage and, sadly, elevated suicide rates, as Albertans struggle to comprehend how things up north could have gone south (so to speak) so quickly.
The plunging loonie “can only serve to worsen the death of the 'Canadian Dream'" we said on Tuesday.
As it turns out, we were right.
The currency's decline is having a pronounced effect on Canadians' grocery bills.
As Bloomberg reminds us, Canada imports around 80% of its fresh fruits and vegetables. When the loonie slides, prices for those goods soar. "With lower-income households tending to spend a larger portion of income on food, this side effect of a soft currency brings them the most acute stress" Bloomberg continues.
Of course with the layoffs piling up, you can expect more households to fall into the "lower-income" category where they will have to fight to afford things like $3 cucumbers, $8 cauliflower, and $15 Frosted Flakes.
As Bloomberg notes, James Price, director of Capital Markets Products at Richardson GMP, recently joked during an interview on BloombergTV Canada that "we're going to be paying a buck a banana pretty soon."
Have a look at the following tweets which underscore just how bad it is in Canada's grocery aisles. And no, its not just Nunavut: it from coast to coast:
Three bucks. For a cucumber. pic.twitter.com/xGkygxkxqB
— Steve Ladurantaye (@sladurantaye) January 12, 2016
If the CAD $ gets any weaker we might be able to buy groceries with shiny rocks #Canada
— Josh Landine (@joshlandine) January 12, 2016
@sladurantaye Heh. Had a similar reaction when I saw the price of cauliflower. Welcome to the future… pic.twitter.com/fxloxyePY3
— Craig Saila (@saila) January 12, 2016
The cost of Tide detergent in Nunavut: pic.twitter.com/2t2xA1EmYk
— themsteri (@teririch) December 31, 2015
And while some Canadians might think this is a regional phenomenon ...
... folks in the northern parts of the Great White North do have the most cause to cry foul:
No "Jack Nasty" it's not The Great Depression, but as we highlighted three weeks ago, it is Canada's depression and it's likely to get worse before it gets better. "Last year, fruits and veggies jumped in price between 9.1 and 10.1 per cent, according to an annual report by the Food Institute at the University of Guelph," CBC said on Tuesday. "The study predicts these foods will continue to increase above inflation this year, by up to 4.5 per cent for some items."
If you thought we were being hyperbolic when we suggested that if oil prices don't rise soon, Canadians may well eat themselves to death, consider the following from Diana Bronson, the executive director of Food Secure Canada:
"Lower- and middle-class people — many who can't find a job that will pay them enough to ensure that they can afford a healthy diet for their families" — also feel the pinch of rising food prices"
"The wrong kind of food is cheap, and the right kind of food is still expensive."
In other words, some now fear that the hardest hit parts of the country may experience a spike in obesity rates as Canadians resort to cheap, unhealthy foods. As we put it, "in Alberta it's 'feast or famine' in the most literal sense of the phrase as those who can still afford to buy food will drown their sorrows in cheap lunch meat and off-brand ice cream while the most hard hit members of society are forced to tap increasingly overwhelmed food banks."
And the rub is that there's really nothing anyone can do about it.
Were the Bank of Canada to adopt pro-cyclical measures to shore up the loonie, they would risk choking off economic growth just as the crude downturn takes a giant bite out of the economy - no food pun intended.
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Eat me...
Coming to a shelf near you.
I still say 100 can cases of sardines are the way to go when you stack.
People will be able to hunt you down by the smell alone.
but, what is all this about "free shipping"?
r
In Canada's defense Trudeau just prayed at a local Mosque guys. Every thing is going to be ok.
Allah makes those delicious Frosted Flakes? You learn something new everyday. What about hot dogs though? hahaha.
You know the best thing about kid Commie supporters? They can't tell you why they like the guy. Sure it's the hair and being young but there's not anything he's ever done or has said he'll do. That's because he's NEVER, said ANYTHING, about ANYTHING hahaha. Try and find a real answer about anything from the little douche. Can't be done. It's all generic bullshit. He's been trained very well as a politician. That shit started in the crib with him.
You talking about Trudeau or OBAMA!
allah hu snackbar...
Ah, THATS reassuring! ISLAM, the universal sears wrench that ultimately makes ALL problems go away. Thanks, now I feel much, much better.
It all comes down to the point of the assistence $$$ not feeding the pleebs, when they start to get hungry things will spiral out of control. Robberies, Burglaries, will signal the begining of the chaos to follow.
Now to rub some salt in these fuckers wounds though they'd probably appreciate that as am sure it's also up in price.
Syrian refugees are receiving.... hahah this was in their, 'National Post' paper last week; they're getting $15 for breakfast, $16 for lunch and $30 for dinner. That's each and everyday. Look it up. Such a insult to the citizens.
You forgot rent on a condo, that legally many will get a 'divorce' so they get 2 condos from Mr. Taxpayer, they continue to live together as man and wife, and rent the other condo out.
I just wish I had more silver, gold, but then again I might not ever have enough. End this fiat bullshit already. RESET THE FUCKING PLANET.
And how many people believe that this community in the frozen north will swap to some other form of commerce if people demand their oil to be 30-40 dollars a barrel?
Its Alice in wonderland type of thinking, the sums just do not add up, either we pay enough to extract the large quantities of oil we need, and that means paying enough for these sort of people to survive. Or we downsize our oil consumption, I am guessing we will do the former (with more printed/borrowed dollars, because a large number of the people paying for oil will be broke), but it is sure going to be interesting watching this reality slowly get absorbed.
Articles as uninformed as this make it an embarrassment to recommend ZH to my friends. Groceries are always expensive in off the beaten track locations. The headline is misleading as these prices are the exception and not the rule.
Canadians really have no clues in economics !
The Depression was when prices fell. In Canada, they are going up. Ask any economist worth its salt, this is pure good news.
This is how the satanist shitbags control us.
No problems, that french faggot just approved another 60 some billion in spending to 'revive' our economy. Thanks great, great, great, great grandkids.
And yes the old lady was saying prices were really high, not anywhere near what was posted above, but that's up north and it's always more expensive in remote areas. Sask here isn't so bad yet but people are tightening. And that's why we have a fucking garden. Although we did not plant enough to get us through winter if needed be. We still have beef. Next year, canning spree.
I've been expecting this for years...Canadians haven't seen the bottom of a flour barrel for 80 years and they vote for a supervicial idiot because he has nice hair. Canadians deserve to starve.
Btw...have a garden root cellar, and my own beef too.
Welcome to Hong Kong grocery store prices. BOHICA.
Bad aricle and poorly written. Most of the prices shown are for Nunavut - small town in the high arctic where stuff is expensive and has been for years.
Tide detergent show goes for 5$ on sale in Ottawa area.
Like showing the price of real estate on 5th Avenue and then claiming USA is too expensive to live.
This is the second time in a week Zero Hedge has run an article that is so obvioulsy misleading. This is not to say I believe everything I read here but this is getting rediculous. What's next posts by the Kardashian's?
I noticed this too, I was listening to Ranting Andy Hoffmann on Greg Hunter yesterday, he referenced the complete collapse of shipping traffic - he is basing it on the ZH article about the Baltic Dry which turned out to be a slight exaggeration if you bothered to zoom in on the shipping traffic map! If it turns out this ZH is broken I will have to just start looking for the next one.
I have a freezer of beef, 500lbs of potatoes, two bushel of carrots, two bushel of onions, several braids of garlic, a bin of wheat and a flour mill, a milk cow, several hundred pounds of honey, another freezer of fruit and vegetables, eggs, thirty cord of wood....and more importantly a stack to pay my land taxes.
After watching my fellow Canadians elect Liberals across the country, I actually welcome the nightmare. Bring it on!
Thank God you are going to make it, because after all, it is all about YOU
Yes, it is always about the individual. People who quote "the greater good" are merely those who natural selection would have weeded out long ago if it hadn't been for the innovation of stealing from the productive, the savers to finance the weaks' lives.
Right on, man .... the more one helps the self proclaimed "needy", the "needier" they become. Dixit Ayn Rand, mid 1950-ies. From "Atlas shrugged", brilliant novel. Meet John Galt and Charles Darwin.
HERE IS A FLYER FROM CANADA; MUCH CHEAPER THAN HERE IN FLORIDA:
http://freshco.com/flyer/?set_preferred_store_number=9763
What is up with ZH and this supposed Canadian "depression" and "panic"? Not where I live in the middle of Canada. Telling us that arctic food is expensive is hardly news. Telling us that Alberta has a boom and bust economy is hardly news. Is ZH hoping for economic catastrophes to report? Anyway, the whole world is in a slide; the decline in the price of oil is real; and the slide in the Canadian dollar is real. We will muddle through and Canadians still count themselves lucky to be in Canada.
TIDE isn't food and that;s double the price.
Canada is a progressive country, and thus deserves poverty and starvation. Most Canadians despise Americans. Their stupidity should hurt. They elected a Trudeau scumbag as leader.
Kwitcher bitchin Canucks. They will just have to adapt, i.e. instead of having a Moosehead, they can go out and give a moose head...
Holy Mother of God! My local store wants $1.99 for a box of Kraft Dinner. Should I purchase Kraft shares?
Seriously,all Canada needs to do is import another 200,000 Syrian refugees to feed and everthing will suddenly be OK.
http://crs.coopconnection.ca/
Here are prices for Estevan, SK. There not that bad. Christ almighty Zero Hedge! Get your head out-a your ass and take alook around and tell the truth for once.
http://crs.coopconnection.ca/
Here are prices for Estevan, SK. There not that bad. Christ almighty Zero Hedge! Get your head out-a your ass and take alook around and tell the truth for once.