Thursday, January 14, 2016

Canadians Panic As Food Prices Soar On Collapsing Currency

Tyler Durden reports:

 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 usCanada 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:








3 comments:

  1. I'm a Canadian, and while there has been a rise in grocery prices, it's hurting at the margin. It's interesting to read that Canadians a flipping, because I don't see it and I shop all the time. It makes you pause and rethink some of the doom and gloom were peddled daily about how bad things are, then see an article like this which I would refute unless I was quite poor. Gas prices have remained stable even though oil has dropped far more than our dollar, which I find odd. Food prices while up, aren't crushing the average canuck. Makes me step back personally and rethink how far dooms dayers will go to get eyes on a web site.

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  2. Everything is probably pretty expensive in Nunavut. It must cost an arm and a leg to ship stuff and there can't be much competition. The entire province has 32,000 people in 800,000 square miles.

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  3. Yeah, you just have to shop smart- if cauliflower is too expensive, eat cabbage, brocoli isn't too bad right now either. Red peppers are high but green peppers aren't bad. If something costs too much- don't buy it and the seller will be forced to drop the price- perishable.

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