Guest Post by Francis Marion
Prologue:
Please note that food prices in the territories have always been unreasonably high due to isolation. In the early 80’s I lived for a short time near the border of Alberta and the North West Territories. A medium pizza could run you upwards of 20 bucks Canadian or more in the small community I resided in…. that was 30 years ago.
We have been through this before.
The provinces are now feeling the pinch as well with the collapsing dollar. Anything bought and paid for by retailers in US$ has seen inflation of roughly 30% in the past year and a half. This includes some domestically produced product – which when bought is ironically paid for in US$ and sold in CAD.
I have seen cauliflower here for as high as $9.00 CAD a head. A box of ammo that was $10.00 a year ago is now $13.00 to $14.00
Fuel has stayed relatively expensive even with declining oil prices. A litre of regular grade fuel will run anywhere from .85 cents CAD per litre to 1.05 CAD per litre.
I believe this is what is eventually in store for the US $ as it slowly but surely loses it’s reserve currency status. I am not a huge believer in hyper inflation but inflation – and I would add an uncomfortable level of it – is on the horizon.
Welcome to our world.
Canadians Panic As Food Prices Soar On Collapsing Currency
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/13/2016 23:18 -0500
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:
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.
more globalist equality ..soon we’ll all be equally poor and hungry…i wonder if Canada will also adopt the Argentinian method of crime preemptive prevention?
Bbbut…. Canada is socialist! And peace loving! And better than us greedy Americans in all ways!!! How can this possibly be happening? /sarc
More seriously, Nunavut is way the fuck beyond the edge of nowhere. I’d like to see prices in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver, where the vast majority of Canadians live. Yes, I did read the essay. My grocery bill in the US keeps climbing and our currency is nominally strong. I’m wondering what proportion of this increase was stealth inflation that was ignored, but present, when the oil was selling strong.
Well you know Canada is way ahead of the US – everyone there has free health care – it’s the best.
Costco (Minneapolis) lamb chops $7.99 lb – great deal.
Honestly, Costco sells food for 1/3 to 1/2 the supermarket price. There’s only two of us, so we can’t buy a car load of everything, but meat / pasta / frozen foods / etc are a real bargain.
Those prices will come here soon (no ships on the high seas today to even bring us more food!) That screeching sound (but it’s not coming from the BLS or the MSM) is our economy slamming on the brakes just before going over a dollar crash cliff (brought to you by welfare and warfare money printing and Obama pissing off all his supposed adoring allies).
Flash,
We’re working on it. We’ll be able to sell the technology to your government for ten times what its worth shortly. Stand by. 🙂
Persnickety,
I live in the GVRD area. Grocery bill is up in general here too but not as extreme as the territories. Isolation comes with a price. Businesses like Costco do not exist in these regions and are not accessible to the residents.
To sum up – if you are middle class and you can’t hunt, garden, raise your own live stock or barter for with your butcher you may want to revisit your plans for taking a vacation this summer. This is not world shattering but it is life style changing. It is simply another nail in the coffin of the middle class.
everything is more expensive everywhere, and so the answer is….
stock up on pepper. Laundry soap. Toiletries. T-pap, (h/t Maggie)
and anything else your family takes for granted and really needs
or deems essential. Just got my 1/4th steer, grass fed, and the siblings
live down the road.
I am realizing the PTB would just as soon see the majority of “us” dead.
Poison in the food and water and the air. Manufactured racial strife and
division. Unfettered immigration of people that do not read or speak English,
or German or whatever. Wars by proxy and directly to “destabilize” one
country after another. There is a long list.
BDI? If goods can not travel hither and yon to all the former markets?
Societies/Civilizations may fall as a result. And we will see violence everywhere.
Thank you Francis Marion for warning us with your post. We are indeed in the
long awaited collapse.
You worry-warts! Every economist knows there is no inflation because of substitution effects. Take the case of cucumbers- if they are now costing 3 dollars a pop, smart Canadians will simply substitute away from them since elk turds are only 10 cents each.
Suzanna… yes indeed, T/P is top on the list.
But, really, there are so many things that I continue to learn how to make for myself now that we are actually hitting the ground running. And, I’ve let footless slide, by the way. That was shaping up to be a real drag on my time and energy with zero ROI.
Everyone get yourself a big block of salt. After Fukushima, I not only bought a crate of MISO, I also bought a 50 lb block of North Atlantic Sea Salt. Well, if you don’t realize you need it, don’t bother, but even cheap bags of commercial salt are better than nothing.
Don’t forget the salt.
Maggie- Why not buy Himalayan Pink salt in quantity, it is the purest salt that I know of and has 81 essential minerals to boot. Sea salt is too contaminated to make the list now.
Canada grows a lot of rutabagas. So you got that.
Well Francis I’m just across the water from you on the “rock”. Gotta say that groceries have really spiked higher in the last 3 months sans the XMAS deals. You notice it more on the rock because of transportation costs (Ferry, fuel, etc) but the real kicker is some items are being sold out real fast as most know the price is only going higher. Costco ran out of Basmati rice, and Kirkland TP just the other day. Not that it’s a problem as I can source from others, but it goes to show many people are aware that prices are going higher, so stock up now, before the increase!!
Canadian beef is expected to rise 34% this spring, at the wholesale level! That’s after a 45% increase last October. The list goes on!!
2% inflation my ass!!!
This is what happens when your government places their bets on a “one horse” commodity (oil)
and the dollar tanks to .70 heading for .65 and perhaps lower.
Himalayan Pink salt or Real Salt for consumption.
Big bags of cheap salt to preserve meat when the power goes out and does not come back.
Pick up road kill when you can.
Bow or cross bow to poach quietly.
Traps.
As the fed continues to solve a debt problem with more debt and the US has the reserve currency, our number one export to the rest of the world is, inflation.
Please do not blame Americans, blame our un-audited federal reserve and our politicians, our turn is coming.
FW
If prices spiked to the point of which you speak here in the USA!USA!USA!, we have a cure for that……the FSA. The crazy FSA fuknuts would burn down half the country including the grocery stores and steal anything and everything in their path which is why Corporate America can’t let things get out of hand here as there would be nothing left. 🙂
As civilization ends with rapists running rampant in Europe and gradual starvation spreading across the globe, I wonder what our ancestors would think of us?
CO2…get “Sailcats” for entertainment . A “Saicat ” is a cat that’s been flattened by a semi and baked in the summer sun . They are flat and you can throw them just like a frisbee .
I have a friend that lives in Argentina, it’s almost impossible to exchange Arg Pesos to US$, he has to go to the black market, the banks are asking an exchange of 13 pesos per dollar but the black market is asking 18-20 peso per dollar.
He came to Michigan last summer trying to find work as he could no longer afford to live, it cost him 60,000 peso to fly here and back.
He didn’t last long as he never got his work visa, he worked a series of cash jobs so he went back broke even and moved in with his mom. He teaches swim and pilates with his smoking hot Argentine girlfriend.
As a former Argentine Olympian from 1992 and current Argentine master Olympian swim champion. I had him a job as a Jr Olympic swim coach but no visa, adios amigo.
O susanna! You sure know how to wreck a guys lunch break with optimism.
Just as well soon see us all dead? I don’t think theyre at all ambivalent about that plan.
@ Bea… I bought my sea salt before the sea was contaminated. Our group ordered it from North Atlantic a couple weeks after Fukushima. I have a lot of Himalayan Chrystal salt in storage and it is what I use for day to day use, but once things stop being easy to find, salt will be precious.
Like TP.
Francis said: “To sum up – if you are middle class and you can’t hunt, garden, raise your own live stock or barter for with your butcher you may want to revisit your plans for taking a vacation this summer. This is not world shattering but it is life style changing. It is simply another nail in the coffin of the middle class.”
So – it sounds like Toronto in the 1990’s? I remember being absolutely shocked at the practical nonexistence of restaurants in the Toronto suburbs when I visited in the late 1990’s. And it seemed like all the stores, even at Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto, were loudly proclaiming themselves as discount stores. Upscale was invisible. This is before the oil boom, 9/11, or strengthening of the Canadian dollar. Having grown up in Michigan I visited Ontario quite often, and I always remember it as being clean, orderly, and greatly lacking in retail and dining compared to Michigan. My 2 cents.
Persnickety,
I think that is an apt description. It is the luxuries of life that get abandoned first. But it will take time and pain (no more credit left on the cards or in the house) for change as it appears here on the left coast anyways – it is business as usual.
Francis, this is not meant as an insult, merely an observation. It seems to me that Canada’s relatively prosperity of the last 15 years was based almost entirely on oil prices and Chinese demand for real estate. I can’t see that Canada did much to develop real value (other than the dirtiest heavy industry in tar sands) during that time.
Now, if Canada were Venezuela or Nigeria, I would treat this as normal. But it isn’t. Canada has high levels of education and intelligence among its population, very little social strife compared to almost anywhere else (save Iceland, perhaps), hardly any need for a military and not much expenditure on one, few natural disasters, few challenges generally, the second largest land mass of any nation on Earth, and outside of north-central Alberta, a relatively unspoiled landscape. Canada even tends to get immigrants who actually want to work and are generally not sleeper-cell terrorists (unlike Europe).
I find it puzzling how Canada can be blessed with practically every advantage, and yet not be creating wonderful technological advances all the time. I’ve had various Canadian acquaintances over the years and I remember a vague story about how commerce in Canada tended to be focused inward, with people stuck with the mediocre local product (I seem to remember a comment specific to Canadian Tire or some similar national chain) even when the better product is widely available, cheaper, on the global market. I would have thought NAFTA would end this. I don’t know. But is there some peculiar Canadian outlook, bias or social norm that prevents progress, when all other factors would seem to prepare Canada for globe-leading success?
A frozen, isolated, low populated area in the middle of its yearly ice age, and I find out fresh vegetables are expensive! I am simply stunned, I tell you.
Please, I cannot handle any more shocking news.
@Loopy: FYI, Australia gets hot and dry in its summer time, which by my reckoning is about now. BEWARE!
P – depends where you are. Some of it goes hot and wet.
What a load of bullshit.
Too bad Canadians voted in the fuckwit Harper for 9 years so that he could kill innovation and manufacturing in all sectors except the oilpatch, while doing everything to make the Canadian economy a one trick pony built on resource extraction. Didn’t turn out to be a very wise strategy did it, Alberta?
If you want a really good laugh check out a comparison of Alberta vs. Norway.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/01/11/oil-fund-norway-millionaires_n_4576887.html
The oilpatch people had plenty of opportunity to pay their mortgages, debts and stash money away. Instead most of the blew it all on monster trucks, boats, quads and vacations. Like I’m supposed to be sympathetic? Fuck the idiots. Hopefully they will learn something.
If you cant afford an $8 cauliflower then buy some onions, potatoes, turnip and cabbage – healthy, and cheap, especially if you buy a 50lb bag.
And I am so fucking tired of hearing from the ‘food poverty’ people that less money means people kill themselves buying ‘cheap’ fast food. This is a choice, it is not mandatory. People can still eat a healthy diet for way less than buying KFC or McShit by buying some bulk grains and veg and making stew, you can even buy a bit of meat to throw in.
Also, any idiot can plant some potatoes and Kale.
Canadians are a bunch of dependent whiners who still have it good, and dont realize how shitty it’s going to get in the near future.
Persnickety,
Why would I be offended? What you say is true. The truth is what it is.
You wrote:
“Now, if Canada were Venezuela or Nigeria, I would treat this as normal. But it isn’t. Canada has high levels of education and intelligence among its population, very little social strife compared to almost anywhere else (save Iceland, perhaps), hardly any need for a military and not much expenditure on one, few natural disasters, few challenges generally, the second largest land mass of any nation on Earth, and outside of north-central Alberta, a relatively unspoiled landscape. Canada even tends to get immigrants who actually want to work and are generally not sleeper-cell terrorists (unlike Europe).”
Wow. Sounds like paradise to me. From the perspective of physical beauty and space it truly is. This is a nation with the potential to be the best place on earth to live. But it isn’t.
There are a lot of reasons for it of course but it boils down to some pretty basic stuff. They are the same basic problems that all western countries are suffering from socially and politically; mostly complacency and a lack of introspection or critical thinking. That combined with our history and what we were taught as children has left us with a vision of who we are that is quite different from yours. When I was in grade school I was taught that Canadians were “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. Think about that for a bit. Our culture and our economic system is built around this piece of propaganda.
The reason for this?
Canada is a colony of the Anglo-American empire. It is really not a truly sovereign nation in this sense. We have managers who masquerade as politicians. Anyone who dares act like a statesman is crushed. Think of what Gaul might have been to Rome but without all the bloodshed and you will get a better idea of why and who we are.
Our job is to supply the empire with natural resources and to keep what what is buried in the ground and sitting on the land secure for our masters. It might not be the best analogy but you sort of get it. We are an unofficial vassal state in this sense. IMHO our sovereignty is nothing more than a well told myth.
This is it on the surface – it is not a perfect or concise explanation and Canadians are no more “all the same” than Americans are. As with all things who we are and how we got here is far more complicated than I can explain in a blog post.
In some ways we share a lot in common with the US. We have a common ancestry – recently and not so recently. We have a similar culture on the surface, speak the same language, drive the same cars and watch the same TV. All of this is less important though than our common interest – freedom. Whether our countrymen are able to recognize it or not is another topic. But it is why Francis Marion and the other Canadians that read and post here keep coming back. I suspect there are more lurking about than my American counterparts realize.
Cdubbya,
This isn’t the first time oil has crashed and wrecked Alberta. Nobody learned then and nobody learned this time either. Not holding out much hope for the next time either.
What we have here is not a failure of government but a failure of people to prepared for bad times… thinking the good times will never end. It’s the same story over and over again.
Australia mirrors Canada to a great extent. Large. Isolated (way more so than Canada). Resource reliant. Significant welfare state. Not cold though. Dry.
The US is not alone in being stupid. Canada wasted its boom years. Australia did too. Addiction to debt and other people’s money and free shit is the core cause in my opinion. Bread and circuses to befuddle the masses while Rome burns.
It is going to be a shocking ride to the bottom.
Comparing the cost of food in the Territories to the rest of Canada would be like comparing the cost of food in Nome Alaska to the States south of Canada.
How many in the States pay $11.00 for a gallon of milk?
@Dave, I’ve bought groceries in Juneau, AK and it bears little resemblance to prices in Seattle or the midwest. And Juneau isn’t as isolated as Nunavut.
Francis, Canada had it made. Oil, wheat, fish, timber, meat just walking around waiting to get shot, and Toronto had the hottest dancers on the world. How could you fuck that up?
Cdubbya says: “And I am so fucking tired of hearing from the ‘food poverty’ people that less money means people kill themselves buying ‘cheap’ fast food. This is a choice, it is not mandatory. People can still eat a healthy diet for way less than buying KFC or McShit by buying some bulk grains and veg and making stew, you can even buy a bit of meat to throw in.
Also, any idiot can plant some potatoes and Kale.”
Right on. Eating fast food shit may seem cheap, and may taste good due to the exitotoxins added to the food, but the cost to health is enormous. Obamacare leading to single payer leading to politically weaponized rationing makes it a no brainer to eat healthy. The state and big pharma wants you sick, just sick enough to stay on shit food and expensive meds and not too sick to die.
Keep some layers and a rooster. Do a few rounds of meat birds in the summer. Raise some rabbits to feed your dogs. Avoid gmo’s, find a local farmer and get some grass fed beef. Use coconut oil instead of rancid vegetable oil. Plant a garden. Get a pressure canner and can some soup and meat broth. And on and on….
Starfker,
The women are still hot. Vancouver is loaded with any flavour you’d like. As to how we fucked it up? I’m blaming Molson Canadian. Have you ever tasted that shit? It’s terrible…. and it’s been straight down hill ever since.