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.
(59 votes)
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Thanks for the tip 813kml. These fvckers are everywhere - omnipresent in the whole neighborhood, perhaps even this whole area. I'm gonna have to datomaceous the whole of South San Jose.
That's how I've been spending the winter nights - planning the garden upgrade with raised beds, new fencing, and a coop. Will look for a larger storage freezer and a generator as well. Mans gotta eat.
Don't forget the really, really big fuel storage tank for the generator-
I'm all for gett'n the doom chubby on, but seriously, these prices are from a store in Nunavut. It's so far north they haven't seen the sun since November. This time of year everything is shipped at least 4000 miles on ice roads, that costs a lot of money. Show me these prices in Ontario or B.C., and I'll believe it.
Seems like no one here knows how to use Google maps to look up 'Nunavut', and critical thinking to explain the pices. Zero hedge might as well post the Alaskan price of a dozen long stemmed roses to explain American inflation.
But oil is 70% less than it was 18 months ago.
The real issue is full recourse loans in canada. They have to kill the currency to keep the housing prices from falling. Well that and the fact theat they are smug theifs stealing for crown corporations.....but hey you pay them to do it.
EH'
RIPS
Nova Scotia - cauliflower 8.99 potatoes at big store 5.99 for 10 lbs - lettuce 3.99 - Suck it up and start eating local - cabbage 59 lb - turnip 59 lb - apples 5lb 2.49 - pick and choose carefully and have a reasonable diet. Imported foods are the expensive ones.
Yeah, prices are definitely going up but these photos are of isolated Arctic Circle communities. A guy I work with is going back north to finish building a school, and he said they get 60 a day for food. Of course, a steak costs 40 bucks but that's normal for up there.
There is also a Northern Living Allowance for anyone living up there. Basically a daily tax credit.
$7frn for cauliflower in nny. Shrinks my doom chub
Some Women with a certain Fetish wouldnt mind paying that much for pleasure.
right? thats why pickles exist, or whatever.
3.00 CAN SO THAT IS $4.28 USD for one cucumber ?
Look at all the Canadians defending that price too .... LOL Wow and I thought the US was screwed.
Long pig is pretty cheap, and plentiful. Or will be soon
Free ham must be quite the dilemma for you & your boy Sheldon, eh?
Wait .. you think $3 for a cucumber is normal? $.65 in Northwestern US. It must suck to live in Canada.
Sure, but this is NOT consistent with the "no inflation" meme that the state has been consistently saying...
Roll the motherfucking guillotines, NOTHING changes otherwise.
A new supermarket opened near my house. It has an automatic water mister to keep produce fresh. Just before it goes on you hear the sound of distant thunder and the smell of fresh rain.
When you pass the milk cases you hear cows mooing and you experience the scent of fresh mown hay.
In the meat department there is the aroma of charcoal grilled steaks with onions.
When you approach the egg case you hear the cluck and cackle and the air is filled with the pleasant aroma of bacon and eggs frying.
The bread department features the tantalizing smell of fresh baked bread and cookies.
I don't buy toilet paper there anymore.
We nutrition starved some folks, eh?
Silver Maples are still pretty cheap. Quit bitchin' & buy some eh?
Silver maples are useless... you can't eat them!
/s
Sorry, I guess I must have been thinking about potatoes (cause it only costs $5 to dig them out of the ground).
Maybe not, but 5 of them in an old sock, swung in a circle and judiciously applied to the brain stem area can obtain one some free and tasty long pig.
Fresh vegetables from Imperial Valley in CA are through the roof. $5 for a head of cauliflower that is normally $2. Beef is absurd. Chicken is only $2=>$2.50 for boneless skinned breast or thighs. Pork has gotten cheaper too. I guess it depends on what you buy.
The non-Fuki ones not from Cali are better and cheaper.
Yeah that might be the case if you're buying that arsenic laden crap chicken & pork that's being processed in CHINA. No thanks.
...because the US factory raised chicken and pork is better for you?
Now the agribiz has found a gold mine in organic even those standards are nowhere what was intended.On the other hand I know what goes into every egg I eat, now if I can only keep the chickens out of the garage looking for styrofoam to eat.
Nope. Tyson chicken from AK.
Fresh meat doesn't really do well on month long voyages.
You mean that delicious growth hormone injected chicken, ehh!
I believe chicken farmers, especially CAFOs, feed arsenic to chickens to keep them alive.
Then, the chicken shit is sold to beef feed lots.
You'd be amazed at the crap (literally) being fed to animals that ends up on our plates.
I've also heard from someone at the CFIA that they're going to follow the USA and allow the feeding of dead cows to chickens.
No chance of that sparking a sudden uptick in Mad Chicken Disease, is there?
Boneless chicken breasts, no sodium broth or chemicals, is available for $1.99 lb. every week, here in the Southeast. Gotta look at your state government and what costs it imposes on producers. California? Who doesn't know what causes everything to be more expensive there.
That Tyson chicken from AK only available as previously frozen.
BREAKING-now available in never frozen also, courtesy of "Climate Change"!!!
Even when the prices don't go down (or go down much), the quantity purchased for that price has often gone down. I believe the technical term is shrinkflation. Most of us just call it bullshit.
We were told that food prices went up because oil went up. Now oil is 30% of what it once was, but food is not going down...
Housing bubble here in Vancouver is still fat and tidy. New record a month ago.
However, does this mean the Canadians will not buy the other half of Florida?
Is there still lots of Winnipeg Jets jerseys in Florida ? I remember being all over Mexico in 2012 and no matter where I was, there was Jets jersey wearing Canadians. It was a patriotic moment for the country when we stole an NHL franchise back from the seppos. Part of the reason we stole the franchise back was the strong dollar.
To many rednecks.
They should have put their money in gold Maple Leafs.
But one can't eat them.
The agenda now seems to be accelerating at a fast rate of knots......
http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/12/as-events-spiral-ou...
If you're going to spam us to death, use proper English.
I thought NAFTA was supposed to solve all this.
Welcome to the North American suck, Canada.
Yep...Gold at $1594.00 an ounce (Canadian). Was just in Vegas, and as we were waiting to get a table at Carson Kitchen (If in Vegas look this place up...KILLER Tapas) we were talking to a couple from Canada, as well as Australia. They said that their currency is killing them. Their vacation to the US had almost doubled in price. The money they have saved is losing value daily. It was very interesting to hear them talk of these prices as posted in the photos. In Canada....with the OIL price going below $30 and inflation (Currency collapse) like this...what do you do?
They should have gone to Quintana Roo, thats where i go to live and vacation on the cheap.
The Dollar Store always has shit like shampoo and other stuff labeled Made in Canada. It is usually Chinese which is a scam because the Chinese stuff will burn your skin or scalp.
Showing prices of food in Nunavik is fiction. It's where the eskimos live. The nearest highway to southern civilization is thousands of miles away. Our food prices are no where near those shown in this deceptive article. When you live a stones throw from the arctic circle with all goods available by plane only, you're prices are going to be extreem. The article is sensationalistic tripe. They eat seal etc up there. If they want white man's food flown in, that's a luxury. Here's a grocery flyer from Fort McMurray Alberta. You'll see no such pricing as screamed about above. http://tinyurl.com/hjmgt4q
Thanks...I flipped through the flyer..You are right....Only thing I noticed super high was A cooked chicken for $9.00 Here in Oregon...Costco $4.99 Costco uses these awesome chickens to get you in the store. They are huge.