Western Standard - March 24, 2026


Survey shows 34% of Canadians using savings or credit to buy groceries


Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

152.97882

Word count

2,008

Sentence count

87


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Our guest today is Dr. Sylvain Chalbois, who runs the Agri Food Lab at Dalhousie University. He talks about a recent survey he conducted on food inflation, and how Canadians are feeling about it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hello, everyone. My name is Leah Mashett. I'm a reporter here at the Western Standard. And
00:00:08.160 today our guest is Dr. Sylvain Chalbois, also known as the food professor. He runs the Agri
00:00:14.760 Food Lab at Dalhousie University. And he's going to talk to us today about a survey he recently
00:00:21.000 published on his Substack, talking about how Canadians feel about food inflation. So thank
00:00:27.660 Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Sylvain Chalmont.
00:00:31.100 How are you doing today?
00:00:33.100 Very good.
00:00:34.100 Very good.
00:00:35.100 How are you?
00:00:36.100 I'm good.
00:00:37.100 Thank you very much.
00:00:38.100 Why don't you just start out by telling audiences what the survey was about?
00:00:43.560 Every now and then, every six months, we actually surveyed 3,000 Canadians.
00:00:47.480 We asked them questions about a variety of different things, food-related, of course.
00:00:54.540 And one of the things that we actually ask Canadians is what they do at the grocery store or what they don't do at the grocery store.
00:01:02.280 So, of course, we do ask them how they see food prices behaving right now.
00:01:08.280 And right now, 81% of Canadians actually do see food prices as being one of the main issues that they see when managing their budget.
00:01:19.560 And so 81% is the highest percentage we've seen in three years.
00:01:24.900 And so that's pretty high.
00:01:26.540 Even with lodging, rent, insurance, daycare, all of these things have lower percentages.
00:01:34.180 And 34% of Canadians have actually claimed that they're using savings to pay for food.
00:01:41.120 Again, that's a very, very high number.
00:01:43.340 We haven't seen that before.
00:01:45.580 Wow.
00:01:46.000 Okay.
00:01:46.220 um so first question i have is do you guys um take note of any of the demographics by chance
00:01:53.960 because i would also want to know of the 81 is there like an age range that it people are saying
00:02:00.460 are being impacted the most according to the people surveyed uh it's a good question i have
00:02:05.440 i actually just got results and wrote the substack article about it so i haven't really
00:02:12.260 looked at demographics, but I think you raise a good point. We may actually see some differences
00:02:18.280 between age groups, for example, and even with regionality, with different parts of the country,
00:02:27.720 we may actually see different results there. Interesting. Okay. Well, I would be curious
00:02:32.460 to know when you do get to see those results. But also, I guess, since you were talking about
00:02:39.100 you've never seen the 34% reaching into their savings or going into debt to purchase their
00:02:46.120 groceries. What was it like? Do you remember the stats for last year for that same number?
00:02:52.100 What was the stats for that? I think it was actually below 70%. And so, of course,
00:02:59.940 food inflation was already a problem at the time, but it wasn't even close to 80%. So,
00:03:05.980 it's quite high. And obviously, with that perception, you see different behaviors at
00:03:11.460 the grocery store, things that people are doing. And in fact, we just saw this week
00:03:16.340 results from Dollarama. You can tell that Dollarama is getting more business when it
00:03:21.600 comes to food sales because of food inflation. People are avoiding expensive stores, expensive
00:03:28.260 items. And so they flock discount banners and dollar stores as well, which is something
00:03:35.220 we really wouldn't have thought of just a few years ago. People are avoiding expensive brands
00:03:40.820 as well. They're looking for privately labeled products. They're using more coupons, of course.
00:03:50.500 Most importantly, and this is the one thing that we've actually noticed, is that more and more
00:03:56.660 Canadians are actually visiting new stores to actually get to different discounts.
00:04:04.260 Okay. On that point as well, I'd be interested to note, what about Costco? Is there an increase
00:04:09.460 in people going to Costco? Because I think you said something about more people buying in bulk
00:04:13.940 as well, if I'm correct? Yeah, absolutely. Now, there is a cost to go to Costco. Obviously,
00:04:19.140 there's a membership fee there, but Costco is incredibly busy. The thing about Costco Canada
00:04:26.580 is that uh i'd say probably every five years probably 10 15 20 years ago you saw costco
00:04:34.580 opening up a store every five years now it's like two a year in canada they're about to open up a
00:04:41.540 store number 119 i believe it's an edmonton and we are expecting more stores uh to open up in the
00:04:51.700 gta area in ontario and so so just just because just that you can tell that there's more demand
00:05:00.260 for costco but we don't know for sure that people are actually you know what's the actual number in
00:05:06.500 terms of sales because costco makes its money by selling memberships they don't necessarily make
00:05:11.860 money by by with margins they just go with volume in particular it's a very different model it's a
00:05:18.820 wholesaler not a retailer okay yeah that's interesting um i also wanted to ask you about
00:05:26.660 one point that you made um i wanted to know what your thoughts are on this okay so you called this
00:05:34.180 new kind of food insecurity in canada gradual erosion of quality choice and dietary diversity
00:05:41.220 and so would you say this is like kind of a canadian invention like have you is has there ever
00:05:46.740 I mean, I do think that there is going to be a shift.
00:05:54.180 So we've been talking a lot about food insecurity, obviously, or food affordability.
00:05:58.180 But the thing about food insecurity, acute food insecurity is that you're basically forcing
00:06:03.700 households to actually make nutritional compromises.
00:06:07.340 So I think the shift will be from, so the discussion will be, will go from talking about
00:06:12.640 food security to nutrition security.
00:06:16.740 So the quality of food being bought or the quality of food being avoided, uh, as well.
00:06:23.820 So, so for example, instead of buying nutritious products, you may end up just buying calories
00:06:29.820 and that makes a big difference.
00:06:32.440 Yeah.
00:06:33.300 Uh, okay.
00:06:34.860 I kind of, I kind of liked the, the way you it's not, well, it's a Canadian invention.
00:06:39.480 It's not really Canadian invention because we've gone through wars and things like that.
00:06:42.920 So when when when when societies impropers themselves, you tend to see that people will eat out of a can or will actually eat more processed foods.
00:06:55.380 They're more shelf stable. They're cheaper, but they're not as nutritious.
00:07:02.440 OK, yeah, because, yeah, when we're going when some country is going through war or something, yeah, you definitely see that.
00:07:08.880 um but since this is like what i'm thinking about as well is like how much regulatory uh
00:07:16.160 policies canada has um oh absolutely yeah i mean i know of many companies in canada that actually
00:07:23.680 only do business in the u.s because it's much easier to get approval to sell a certain food
00:07:28.240 product in the u.s it it's it's a matter of weeks you can get approvals uh while in canada you can
00:07:34.640 wait months and months and when you have tight margins and not a whole lot of cash flow if
00:07:40.400 you're starting up or you're trying to scale up it's really not something you don't have the
00:07:45.520 luxury of time and so that's why it's always been extremely difficult to scale up companies in
00:07:51.840 canada as a result wow well i also wanted to ask is this food inflation that we're experiencing now
00:08:01.680 is this indications of a recession? I guess going back to history, has it been a pattern
00:08:07.200 in the past where one of the first things we see is this high spike in food inflation?
00:08:14.960 Well, it depends on how governments react. The more a government will print money and
00:08:21.360 inject money into the system, the more likely you'll see a recession because things get more
00:08:27.680 expensive everything gets more expensive and we we tend to see that like the grocery benefit program
00:08:33.760 that we saw a few weeks ago that's exactly that and so it was that was certainly was a step in
00:08:39.040 the wrong direction so if uh provinces uh and the federal government actually stop uh doing that
00:08:46.320 then yes we have a chance of avoiding a uh a recession manitoba is is announcing today that
00:08:52.800 it's actually stopping. It will actually take out the PST at the grocery store, which is certainly
00:09:02.160 good news. You want to reduce taxes. You want to reduce the fiscal burden on people and not increase
00:09:08.480 it due to monetary and fiscal policies. On that Manitoba point, I remember you
00:09:17.200 talking about this before about how when the federal government did their tax break grocery
00:09:24.320 stores increased their prices as a result is that that's how it worked right yeah good memory so
00:09:29.520 it's called opportunistic pricing so whenever like if you actually take out a tax temporarily
00:09:37.040 you'll see certainly you'll see uh the private sector or retailers grab that void temporarily
00:09:44.720 even though it's temporarily they'll actually do that so it is now that we're measuring the impact
00:09:50.960 of opportunistic pricing a year later after the gst holiday and so yes people saw the break last
00:09:58.320 year but what we saw what we're seeing now is how much more food became and and now it's no surprise
00:10:05.840 that canada has the highest food inflation rate among g7 countries uh if you even if you take out
00:10:13.120 the effects of the GST holiday a year ago. Wow. Okay. So I would like to know, do you think
00:10:19.920 that the federal government would ever do something similar again?
00:10:25.200 I think to eliminate the GST temporarily is much worse than to leave it there. So what I argued to
00:10:34.240 Senate in Ottawa last year was, if you actually remove the GSC, do it permanently. It won't
00:10:45.720 distort market conditions as much. The worst thing you can do is actually take it out temporarily,
00:10:53.240 which is exactly what they did.
00:10:55.560 Oh, is it because the grocery stores will increase prices, and then on top of that,
00:11:00.180 there'll be another GST?
00:11:01.000 And then when the tax comes back, it's slapped on higher prices.
00:11:05.360 You do not want to do that.
00:11:07.200 Right.
00:11:07.580 That doesn't sound wise.
00:11:08.700 I mean, Stephen Harper, when he was prime minister, he actually reduced the GST by 1% permanently in 2006 and 2008 by 1%.
00:11:20.200 It was 7%.
00:11:21.240 Now it's down to 5%.
00:11:23.160 And people felt, well, inflation will drop.
00:11:27.420 It actually went up because of opportunistic pricing.
00:11:30.200 but things stabilized afterwards and so that's what you want to do so you'll see a bit of a
00:11:35.720 bump at the beginning but you'll see right now what you're seeing is basically in the
00:11:40.760 gsc holiday there was a bump during the holiday and now of course you're seeing more issues
00:11:47.640 affecting the food supply chain with higher prices so that stabilization if it were to happen that
00:11:53.320 is usually like a year afterwards what's the timeline on that that's how you that's that's
00:11:58.200 when you can measure it yeah okay okay well it's hard to measure in real time but it's a year later
00:12:05.320 when you compare year to year you can actually you can tell what what happened to food prices
00:12:10.440 if you compare say cane prices with american prices or prices in europe uh typically food
00:12:16.680 inflation tends to be a global problem all at once and uh and you could see that canada was really
00:12:24.040 is is a case study on its own right now yes well okay that's all the questions i had unless you
00:12:32.720 have anything else to add feel free no i think we've covered plenty yeah okay well then thank
00:12:38.820 you very much for joining me today sylvan i appreciate it my pleasure thank you thank you
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