If you think food prices are rising more quickly than inflation generally, they are. And thanks to tariffs, counter tariffs and federal policies like carbon tax, it’s not going get better any time soon. That’s the discouraging news from ‘The Food Professor,’ Dalhousie University’s Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, tonight’s guest on Hannaford..On the good side, he has some hope that the Liberal government now led by Mark Carney will 'look at food security through an economic lens.'So how bad are things? What Statistics Canada will admit is a year over year increase in April of three percent. What the consumer sees is substantially more.“It is more than three per cent alright,” says Dr. Charlebois, the vastly popular host of the syndicated radio show, The Food Professor. "Part of it is tariffs. When Canada counter-tariffs US products, those products become more expensive when existing inventories run out. Then grocers will shop the world to find a replacement. However, it usually costs more. If you get grapes from South Africa for example, it’s going to cost more than getting them from California."That's a big part of the problem, then. When we apply counter-tariffs we like the tough anti-American talk, but we hurt ourselves..Also working against Canadians is the federal policy of taxing carbon, although the exact effect may be difficult to isolate at the retail level — though not, says Charlebois, at the wholesale level where there is a strong correlation between the tax and rising prices.In this Hannaford discussion, Dr. Charlebois talks about the data deficiency in Canada that makes the observed supermarket prices hard to reconcile with the inflation figures provided by Statistics Canada. He also talks about why food prices are coming down in the US but going up in Canada — and why the supply of some products has become spasmodic if not ceased altogether. And as a supporter of food banks for their ability to respond quickly to changing circumstances, he has plenty to say about rising food bank usage in Canada..Is there any hope?Yes. "I am hopeful things will stabilize. The challenge we have coming out of the Trudeau regime is that we have seen many policy-induced inflationary phenomena. Like the GST holiday was a bad idea, it allowed opportunistic pricing. As soon as you eliminate a tax temporarily, retailers cover the spread, that's what we think happened in the last several months.""And of course we've talked about carbon taxes and bureaucracy and interprovincial trade barriers. But we're having discussions now to eliminate all that. I am hopeful that the new government led by Mark Carney will look at food security through an economic lens, because the years have been difficult, especially for younger people.Meanwhile, is there anything the poor old consumer can do about it?“Yes, stockpile. In particular, coffee and beef. If you see it on sale, buy it."Meanwhile, if you want to know when what you're buying is affected by tariffs, look by the shelf price sticker. When you're shopping in a Loblaws brand store — there are more than 2,400 in Canada — if you see a small 'T', it is an American product that has been tariffed by the Government of Canada.This episode of Hannaford airs at seven o'clock.
