Grocery bills set to climb 4 per cent for each family in 2020
The average Canadian family can expect to pay four per cent more next year for groceries led by meat because of a complex interplay of environmental, biological, geopolitical and trade issues, new university research says.
The cost of food for the average Canadian family will rise by $487 to $12,667 next year, according to Canada’s Food Price Report by Dalhousie University in Halifax and the University of Guelph.
British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec, and Prince Edward Island are expected to exceed the national average increases, while price hikes in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia are forecast to be lower, the researchers said. Consumers in Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador are likely to see price hikes similar to the national average, according to the report.
“Food inflation is desirable, but when prices increase quickly families can be left behind,” Sylvain Charlebois, the report’s lead author and a professor at Dalhousie, said in a statement Wednesday. “One in eight Canadian households is food insecure and food affordability is a major issue,” Guelph project lead Simon Somogyi said.
Meat led the forecast with a projected price rise of four per cent to six per cent, while vegetables may rise two per cent to four per cent, fruits may cost 1.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent more and seafood two per cent to four per cent extra, the report shows. Dairy items are marked for a one-per-cent to three-per-cent hike while bakery goods may come in at up to two per cent more expensive, according to the forecast using predictive analysis and machine learning algorithms.
Most of those estimates are near double Canada’s current overall rate of inflation of less than two per cent. The Bank of Canada held its benchmark interest rate at 1.75 per cent for its ninth consecutive meeting on Wednesday, a move in part to stem rising household borrowing.
“Canadians aren’t making more money, so they’re taking money away from other parts of their budgets just to eat and that gets tougher and tougher,” Somogyi said.
“The ever-increasing use of food banks across the country shows us how many Canadians can’t afford to put food on their plates.”
Some 863,000 Canadian use a food bank each month, a 28-per-cent increase since 2008, according to a Nov. 29 report by the United Food and Commercial Workers union.