It hasn’t been good news recently for consumers on a tight budget — and that means most of us.
We’ve learned that Canada’s food inflation rate was at a record 9.7 percent in May. Everyone has noticed higher food prices and no section of the grocery store is immune.
What’s hitting Canada is a global phenomenon. The world will see a shortfall in commodity production this fall, which could push prices even higher worldwide. Supply chain issues, coupled with a new inflationary cycle triggered by the Ukrainian conflict, are impacting the food industry’s ability to fill shelves.
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The shift is so incredibly sharp that many vendors can’t agree with grocers on pricing, pushing them to put their business on hold. The macroeconomic picture is one thing. But some policies in Canada are making things worse.
The Canadian Dairy Commission, a crown corporation, believes a second milk price increase is necessary for dairy farmers. Milk prices paid to farmers will rise again by 2.5 percent, after a record increase of 8.4 percent in February.
Dairy Farmers of Canada, one of the most powerful lobby groups in the country, requested another mid-year increase due to “exceptional circumstances” without providing a data source.
To add insult to injury, the commission’s decision to raise milk prices was made by a federal public body operating for several months without a full complement on its board. The board only has two members and both are in dairy farming.
Conflicts of interest are rampant at the commission, just as in politics and academia. The dairy boards have power and influence beyond belief. The fact that DFC and the CDC work as one is disturbing. Canadian consumers need to be heard.
Many Canadians would empathize with dairy farmers, who face higher production costs, if only the commission would share more data.
The lack of disclosure is very much about asking Canadians to support an inefficient dairy sector more than properly compensating farmers. And by fall, this new increase will price the dairy section at the grocery store out of the market for many consumers.
Ultimately, we stand to lose many more dairy farms as their sales decline.
The federal government is also coming forward with new labelling rules for saturated fats, sodium and sugar. Health Canada’s front-of-package labelling was long overdue, but the new policy also aimed at a key single-ingredient product that many Canadians enjoy: ground meat.
Ground beef and pork are among the most affordable sources of animal protein we havewe have, but if the federal government hadn’t backed off on plans to label ground meat, grocers would have stopped carrying more affordable ground meat, making the meat counter even more expensive. It’s would have been ridiculous.
The federal government is the consumer’s worst enemy right now. It needs to think through some of these ill-timed policies that will make food more expensive.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s so-called anti-inflation plan won’t do much for Canadians at the grocery store. Many of us hoped for tax breaks, anything to ease our fiscal burden, as many countries have done in recent months. But Freeland opted to make a “microwave” announcement, basically reheating programs already in place.
Sylvain Charlebois is senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University. This article first appeared on the Troy Media website. It has been edited for length.
