True Patriot Love - The Food Professor on Canada’s Grocery Crisis ft. Sylvain Charlebois

00:00:00.000 Hi, and thanks for joining us. I'm Mike. This is tplmedia.ca. Please subscribe, tell a friend,

00:00:06.000 and don't hesitate to comment. We love when you do. Today, we're diving into the cost of living

00:00:10.800 where it hurts the most, your grocery bill. Canadians are paying more than ever for food,

00:00:15.980 and the big question is why? Is it global supply chain, carbon taxes, corporate profits,

00:00:21.460 or something closer to home? Joining us now is Sylvain Charlebois, better known as the food

00:00:26.780 professor, one of the country's leading voices on food pricing, inflation, and supply chains.

00:00:37.660 Sylvain, thanks so much for joining us. You know Sylvain Charlebois from television and radio

00:00:43.620 interviews. And of course, he is, as I pointed out to him just before we began, he's kind of

00:00:50.360 the man of the moment when it comes to talking about food supply chain and what it's costing

00:00:55.960 for people to eat in this country. Thanks, Sevan, for joining us. I really appreciate this.

00:01:01.700 Well, thank you for the invitation.

00:01:03.980 Now, really, this whole conversation stems from us having a discussion, as we do as a group here,

00:01:10.220 about what stories we want to cover. And of course, war and supply chain management seems

00:01:18.620 to be the next major concern, the cost of food based on inflation of gas prices, overall fuel

00:01:25.380 prices and i thought it would be a good place to check in with you and see what the perspective is

00:01:31.780 that you're seeing currently and where you expect us to go when it comes to impact from the uh the

00:01:38.340 warren yeah i mean yet we're dealing with another geopolitical shock uh so of course the last one

00:01:47.620 was ukraine four years ago and uh so on february 24 2022 uh everything went up like everything

00:01:57.140 just got disrupted fertilizer prices uh commodity prices energy of course it all went up at once

00:02:06.580 um and very brutally like violently by by july uh we all knew that we were all in trouble and so it

00:02:14.500 was just a matter of time before it was going to hit the grocery aisles essentially in canada

00:02:21.940 this time around is a little different uh for a couple reasons one uh it is about access to energy

00:02:30.340 and fertilizers uh but fertilizers tend not to affect odd commodities right away and we'll see

00:02:36.660 later in the year how markets react to forecasts and how yields are going to be impacted by the

00:02:43.300 lack of fertilizers across North America, essentially, because farmers, we don't know

00:02:49.760 exactly whether farmers will decide not to buy or will decide not to put money into the ground.

00:02:56.540 And that's when we'll see. I mean, yields are the most important thing to measure. So we don't know

00:03:00.340 yet how food prices, input costs will be impacted. But right now it's all about energy. And so

00:03:08.640 So knowing that 25-30% of all nat gas and oil goes through that Strait of Ormuz, I mean, right now, oil is, what, at $92 a barrel.

00:03:21.240 The rally started in January. I know the attack started on February 28th.

00:03:26.420 But really, when you look at charts, the market was anticipating some sort of attack as of January 7th.

00:03:35.700 That's really when you started to see this swing from $55 US a barrel to $116 at some point.

00:03:45.080 And so this swing, the swings that you're seeing with oil prices is even worse than seeing this consistent progression with oil prices that we saw with Ukraine.

00:03:58.080 Because, I mean, if you're transporting food, you're going to highball the price of energy.

00:04:03.920 you're going to highball the price of gas or diesel. And so it doesn't matter if actually oil

00:04:08.320 drops, companies will charge more. You're still pricing at that level, even at the wholesale

00:04:14.720 end of it. So now it's interesting that you point out that the market began to shift even before

00:04:20.980 things began to take shape officially in a war aspect. That leads me to believe that we can

00:04:30.880 probably have a little bit of foresight now although we don't know uh you know what's going

00:04:35.560 to happen with peace talks we don't understand necessarily what's going to happen in the

00:04:39.240 Strait of Hormuz but the one thing that we might be able to do is take that sort of highball note

00:04:44.240 and look out maybe three or four months from now if prices began to skyrocket almost overnight

00:04:51.740 and they're taking the high-end pricing on things what do you predict the next few months to look

00:04:57.900 like for Canadians maybe not just even on groceries but on overall consumer yeah so we just

00:05:04.640 got numbers for March so we landed at four percent for general food inflation in store

00:05:13.760 was at 4.4 percent I would qualify those numbers as bottoms so so yeah so we are expecting the

00:05:23.640 inflation rate to uh to rise in april right now we're we're in april and we're seeing produce

00:05:30.520 prices uh increasing and meat prices as well so i mean these products are are energy intensive

00:05:38.360 because you need a cold chain and cold chain cold chains are about refrigeration so yes yes you have

00:05:44.600 to transport stuff you have but you have to keep it cool and fresh and safe as well and so that's

00:05:51.400 i mean the entire food supply chain is incredibly energy intensive so i do i do expect food

00:05:57.320 inflation to rise i mean we actually did forecast all of this five months ago i mean we were we

00:06:04.200 were forecasting for inflation to be anywhere between four to six percent and we're probably

00:06:08.440 going to be landing by the end of the year i would say at around six percent but it is food inflation

00:06:14.600 so it's six percent above what we were seeing last year 12 months ago yeah yeah uh so that is a huge

00:06:22.680 hike uh you know where would you think we would have been let's say that we don't have an energy

00:06:28.040 crisis right now um but we are headed into a new negotiation process over kuzma i've noticed that

00:06:34.680 they dropped the sea from kuzma maybe we're not part of that deal anymore but well actually it

00:06:40.920 depends who you are if you're an american it's funny because all the weekend i was in kamloops bc

00:06:46.200 talking to 300 people half of the room were americans half of the room were canadians so

00:06:52.120 on the one half it's the us mca yeah united states and for canadians it's it's cosma it

00:06:59.320 starts with canada that's that's the rule i think everybody starts with their own country so

00:07:04.680 exactly uh but having said that you know we're leaning up against that if we don't have an

00:07:10.280 energy crisis at the moment where do you think we would have landed on inflation in store

00:07:18.520 uh well i mean right now i would say i don't think we were seeing much of a difference uh

00:07:26.760 well actually i would say that probably food inflation would have been lower than four percent

00:07:32.280 slightly lower but certainly what we're going to get for april may june will be would be lower

00:07:38.040 for sure right and so uh but i mean the deal is this there's always something i mean this is the

00:07:46.760 reality of of of modern food systems there's always going to be something impacting food prices

00:07:53.960 if it's not climate change it's going to be geopolitics if it's not geopolitics it's going

00:07:59.160 to be the currency if it's not currency it's going to be a labor dispute of some sort i mean

00:08:05.160 there's always something and and the difference between today and say 20 years ago 30 years ago

00:08:11.720 is that the intensity of all of these factors events are are becoming much larger and scalable

00:08:21.000 and that's really the difference between say 2000 2010 versus now and of course the entire world

00:08:28.040 is interconnected so if something happens in the straight of our moves if something happens in

00:08:33.000 in Ukraine it impacts also all of us even though we don't buy anything from Ukraine but very very

00:08:39.140 little it did end up costing us a lot at the grocery store. Now this really does affect Canadians

00:08:47.140 at the grocery store level the average Canadian is going to be the one paying the price what do

00:08:53.380 you see the government doing if anything to step in and try to offset this do we see subsidies in

00:09:00.980 in your mind uh down the road do we start to subsidize certain food industries within canada

00:09:07.140 what do you what do you predict will be the response to this yeah i mean so you you did

00:09:13.380 you did mention kuzma i mean i when the video came out on sunday i was not surprised and uh and

00:09:21.300 frankly i think that's exactly what ottawa wants it wants uh canada to slowly less depend economically

00:09:31.860 on on the united states and in the ag food sector 75 of all exports go to the west and most of it

00:09:38.580 is tariff exempt so if most of our trades in the u.s uh aren't tariff exempt anymore that's going

00:09:47.460 to be a absolute game changer because unlike other sectors i mean you can't move farmland i mean

00:09:53.300 farmers will farm and will sell and your number one customer right now is the us and if all of

00:09:58.820 a sudden you're not as attractive as you used to because of tariffs or whatever is going to happen

00:10:04.900 in the us that becomes a problem but what i'm hearing and i think right now uh beyond iran

00:10:11.780 that's probably the one thing that industry is concerned about the most what's going to happen

00:10:16.900 to customer and as of sunday like if you read between the lines customer is basically dead

00:10:24.500 and that's that's my interpretation of what we're seeing right now with uh with ottawa and its trade

00:10:31.780 policy and it is a decision that is being made by ottawa we haven't negotiated with amer with the

00:10:38.980 americans in months uh i believe over five months now but that's the conclusion that we're making

00:10:44.820 in ottawa what i can tell you right now is that many companies and i actually met some in cam

00:10:50.820 loops by the way and and it was funny on the weekend because everyone was there to do business

00:10:57.380 and the two words i did not hear at all during the two days i was there is trump and carney

00:11:05.220 interesting it was all about business and i mean politics are about noise and so it's just

00:11:10.740 Right now, we're seeing the slow privatization of trade policy, essentially, because companies are hiring lobbyists to make sure that they're able to continue to trade with specific consumers or customers in the US and Canada, making sure that there's no, I would say, entanglements at the border as much as possible.

00:11:34.700 so there's a lot of negotiations between companies and uh and other companies but also

00:11:41.660 at at state level there's also some involvement especially blue states in particular

00:11:48.300 yeah it's interesting that there's going to be these fine lines of negotiation that either

00:11:53.100 sidestep the cost of that tariff or share it in some way but i think we do discount the

00:12:00.780 uh tenacity that the uh that the business world has on finding their way to make money finding

00:12:07.020 their way to the market the same way consumers find their way to products at the right price

00:12:12.380 uh it's just that when everything elevates dramatically all at the same time

00:12:17.980 there's this uh settling period i think and hopefully that we come back to a more reasonable

00:12:24.460 pricing it's almost like we never unring that bell uh you know for whatever the reason like

00:12:30.860 you point out there's always a reason but we never come back we never solve it financially to the

00:12:35.900 point where we get back to a pre-problem or pre-crisis pricing uh and so i i can see here

00:12:43.660 in canada right now uh that consumers probably will just have to adjust and in that negotiation

00:12:51.420 process hope that we're getting the deal that we need otherwise we're going to have to rely

00:12:56.780 on corporations to deal with each other to get the items that we want and to get the trade

00:13:01.100 moving the way that it needs to that's right i i agree with that for sure and that's why when

00:13:06.460 people say well supply management is under threat with trump is i don't think it is under threat

00:13:12.460 because there's probably not going to be a deal at all and so that's easy it's easy to resolve

00:13:17.260 but we're still stuck with a very archaic policy domestically in canada which is called supply

00:13:23.500 management and so i i'm hoping that at some point we won't necessarily missed uh an opportunity to

00:13:30.300 make supply managers stronger and more competitive and i'm just afraid that we're just going to say

00:13:35.580 oh we're good we're not we don't have to bother we can actually keep it as is and that's the last

00:13:41.580 thing you want to do it but it's a very canadian thing to do uh because people don't want conflict

00:13:46.540 They don't want to have tough conversations, but I would say that Kuzma is critical, and I would say that for the agri-food sector, it's even more critical than many sectors because margins are so tight.

00:14:00.220 An extra 10% of the border, say 5%, 10%, makes a big difference for a jam manufacturer or someone who actually produces pies or whatever you're exporting to the U.S.

00:14:17.380 It actually makes a big difference.

00:14:19.060 And so what is likely to happen is that if there are tariffs at the border, you could see many companies eat up the tariff to retain customers in the U.S. in hopes of developing more or getting more customers and developing the market further in the U.S. 0.86

00:14:38.560 Damn, so then that's a really tough business model.

00:14:41.560 It seems to be what we do as well. 0.99

00:14:43.240 you're right uh okay look we'll suffer the price because we hope the bell will unring

00:14:47.720 or we'll find a larger market or whatever and keep in mind it's very important for canadians

00:14:51.960 because that impacts canadians here people will say well we'll have more food for ourselves well

00:14:56.040 yeah perhaps but that food is going to be more expensive you see trades subsidize our own food

00:15:03.640 right here at home because it makes our companies more efficient and we actually benefit from those

00:15:09.800 efficiencies as consumers here uh any advice you have for consumers as we enter what looks like

00:15:16.280 one of the most costly times certainly the most costly time in canadian history defeat ourselves

00:15:20.760 and clothe ourselves uh any any uh light on the horizon i know that that's a tough thing to

00:15:27.720 actually offer but i think that uh we do owe canadians a little bit of an understanding of

00:15:32.920 wow here's what you're going to see in the next year uh brace yourself or or uh look for these

00:15:39.240 glimmers of hope i'd say i mean right now i would say that uh we're not in 2022 anymore

00:15:47.400 uh in four years i mean in 2022 really it was the first time in many many

00:15:54.040 decades uh well in a few decades i guess 12 20 years uh that we saw food inflation rise above

00:16:02.120 10 it was painful for a lot of people and most most of us weren't ready uh four years later

00:16:08.520 i would say that consumers aren't as ticker shocked because they do their homework before

00:16:13.160 leaving the leaving the home the market base the consumer market is much uh better tooled

00:16:22.920 today than four years ago and that really puts a lot of pressure on food prices over time people

00:16:29.320 don't realize it but they actually have an impact on food prices if you actually know

00:16:34.040 that a product is overpriced and you walk away that's a powerful move that's actually a vote

00:16:41.640 and saying that is unreasonable that is unacceptable and if people do that more it

00:16:48.520 impacts food prices over time so i i think that the consumer market will actually play a much

00:16:54.680 larger role this time around to keep prices at bay like unlike in 2022 when people were sticker

00:17:00.200 shock and still bought that very expensive piece of beef or that very expensive carrot

00:17:05.960 i i noticed that i'm shopping at more localized and many different places rather than the same

00:17:12.280 top three grocers uh that we're used to going to here in canada uh any indication that those

00:17:18.200 grocers are making any changes that would be beneficial to uh the consumer uh well grocers

00:17:25.480 are are focusing more on on private labels i mean there are way more private labels now than before

00:17:32.280 because the market is much more frugal than it used to be so that's certainly a change there

00:17:37.320 and obviously there are more food rescuing apps being used so you can actually buy easily from

00:17:43.880 your phone uh food that is that are discounted 50 60 70 off through uh apps like food hero

00:17:53.400 flash food that that's that's helping so the food rescuing business which used to be very

00:18:01.080 public and socialized for food banks is slowly becoming privatized and and that's really

00:18:09.480 changing and of course beyond the apps you're also seeing more independent stores as you noticed

00:18:17.000 that are actually offering some pretty good deals because they actually work they actually work with

00:18:24.840 with the supply chain very differently than uh than the regular grocers so so there's there is

00:18:31.800 some competition out there uh it's just you can't really see it as as much as the larger players

00:18:38.680 so then i really appreciate this now i want people to check out your podcast it's really

00:18:42.600 good what is the name of it it's called the food professor yeah the food professor podcast

00:18:49.080 it's fantastic it's where i got my introduction uh to some of the discussions that you have

00:18:54.120 uh and people can download that i think everywhere you get your podcasts and you guys are enjoying

00:18:59.400 some success with this show let's talk about that yeah absolutely i mean seven years ago

00:19:04.280 michael oblong my producer called me do you want to do a podcast and i say well first of all i

00:19:09.400 don't listen to podcasts and i don't have time and then covet hit and then he called me and say well

00:19:14.040 do you have time now i do in fact have time now so in may our first episode was on may 5th 2020

00:19:24.360 and we never looked back and you know at first it was one show a month uh and uh because i just

00:19:32.040 wanted to test things out and then it became one show every two weeks and uh and people were asking

00:19:39.000 for stuff every week so it's a weekly show now and we're so we basically if you look at apple charts

00:19:46.440 uh right now we're number five in canada under management but we're the number one canadian

00:19:52.840 podcast that's fantastic the food uh the food professor is the name of the podcast and um you

00:20:00.280 know we had a chance today to speak to the guy who's really got an eye on what's going on with

00:20:04.120 our uh food chain here in canada uh and it's a big deal so uh so then thank you so much for joining us

00:20:11.320 my pleasure

True Patriot Love - April 22, 2026

The Food Professor on Canada’s Grocery Crisis ft. Sylvain Charlebois

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