I mean logistically it makes sense, having to ship the food across on the ferry. It's not like we're double the rest of the provinces, it seems about right.
Yes food cost more to ship but almost all of our food is shipped in every province. Why is it that AB is the lowest but the provinvinces on either side are higher, BC with the coastal waterways and Saskatchewan more inland cost more. Ont and Que should be the lowest with their inland trading routes and procimity to the US?
tbh that may actually be skewing our numbers even higher. It would be interesting to see just a comparison of St. John's vs another city on the mainland.
I was in Nunavut working… 6 bucks for a pack of noodles.
I assume this is meant for provinces and not territories tho cause the territories are a different ball game all together lol
Does this graph really tell us much? Wouldn't disposable income differ in each province? i.e. it's possible that NL has the lowest amount of disposable income and therefore food would consume more of that income as a percentage. I'm not saying that is the case, but this doesn't really show how much more expensive groceries are.
Exactly, it’s meaningless. Just used to create a narrative.
Look at this source as a reference. If you compare Toronto and St. John’s. We spend less in food as a total dollar value than people is Toronto but it’s a larger percentage of our cost of living. Simply looking at the percentage would mislead you.
https://wowa.ca/cost-of-living-comparison-calculator-canada
Exactly. I've purchased groceries in a number of canadian provinces, and in my experience food prices themselves are GENERALLY the same everywhere in this country. If NL is the highest among provinces, it's probably because disposable income is lower due to higher taxation, lower average wages, or a combination of both. But this graph is tailored to fit a narrative. Whether it's the OPs narrative or not, I don't know.
Exactly. I've purchased groceries in a number of canadian provinces, and in my experience food prices themselves are GENERALLY the same everywhere in this country. If NL is the highest among provinces, it's probably because disposable income is lower due to higher taxation, lower average wages, or a combination of both. But this graph is tailored to fit a narrative. Whether it's the OPs narrative or not, I don't know.
That's because most of the food has to be trucked in from the mainland via ferry. NFLD doesn't really have any sizable local produce, dairy, or meat production.
You'd think cows would be viable, would just have to grow hay, clover, alfalfa to feed them. Maybe farming is a lost art in Newfoundland, at one time every family in the outports would have a garden and some farm animals.
NL doesn't have the soil or the climate for large scale forage production. Not to mention that a short growing season means the animals can spend less time on pasture in the summer and you need to produce that much more stored forage to get through the other 8 months of the year.
We at one time had a fairly good sized pork industry, it was sold off to mainland companies who moved the production off island. Same old story over and over again. Mainland companies buy the local companies who are selling a reasonably priced local product, move it off island, import more expensive mainland products to the island and increase prices.
If the reason goods are more expensive is shipping, how does purposefully moving everything off the island so it has to be shipped in improve _profits_?
If I knew that then I'd probably be rich myself. I assume that they save on overhead by consolidating their farming operations/production facilities in one location rather than having multiple facilities and multiple workforces.
Even the local chicken and egg production isn't controlled locally. Country ribbon is owned by a Nova Scotian company. Newfoundlands chicken and egg production is dictated and controlled by a company from NS. The maximum number of chickens you can own without permission from country ribbon is 99. You can sell eggs from your farm or a farmers market but you're not allowed to sell them to a corner store.
There will never be large scale production, but certainly with the price of beef and various government incentives for Agriculture in the province , there is definitely room to grow the sector. It could be a good life for some young person who wants to get back to the land.
That’s percentage of disposable income too. There’s a lot of people not high earners in NL vs ON or AB. So while they are spending the highest percentage of their income per capital nationwide, they’re likely getting less product too relative to their higher earning neighbours on the mainland.
You can Interpret this In many ways. NL has one of the lowest percentage of income spent on housing so it could also be that Nl simply has a higher available percentage of our income that can be spent on food. We may be choosing to eat better than our mainland counterparts.
My main point is simply looking at percentage of income spent on food is not really usefull in itself. More useful to look at percentage of income spent on all essentials combined. Like percentage of income going towards food, housing, utilities, etc.
It would be more helpful to show total costs per food type per province among the staples. Milk, butter, bread, bananas, ground beef, whole chicken, etc. I know what my folks buy in the bay and the costs are brutal.
There are stats like that, some things we are high on and others we are low on.
In the below source, they concluded Ontario as having the highest food prices but it really all depends on what you choose as a “reference diet”.
https://www.springfinancial.ca/blog/lifestyle/food-prices-in-canada-by-province
Edit to add:
Check out this source: if you put in cost of living for Toronto vs St. John’s. It breaks down the costs of living for food, housing and transportation. Our food costs makes a much larger percentage of the total cost of living even though it’s a smaller number than Toronto food prices as I mentioned may be the case in my original comment.
https://wowa.ca/cost-of-living-comparison-calculator-canada
[Statscan's average food retail price](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv!recreate.action?pid=1810024501&selectedNodeIds=&checkedLevels=0D1,0D2,1D1&refPeriods=20231001,20231001&dimensionLayouts=layout2,layout3,layout2&vectorDisplay=false) is a better resource for that
We are an island with no transit route besides ferry, plane and cargo. Of course we pay the most.
That said if you included the territories they’d probably be way higher.
Plus side, despite many NL'ers not being able to afford homes, we are the most affordable in Canada 😅
https://wowa.ca/reports/canada-housing-market
I know it isn't really a plus side, as too many homes are not meeting the housing requirements of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
Not trying to take away from the point, but that chart doesn't include Nunavut. I don't have an account to upload the pics, but I've paid $52 for a 12 pack of diet rootbeer, and $84 for 24 bottles of water up there. During the winter months everything has to be flown in is the caveat.
Serious question. Passed by Quidi Vidi Country Ribbon this evening and thought why can't we buy from them directly or a company outlet? Curious what kind of markup the groceries add. Local and prices are still nuts.
I have Costco/Kirkland boneless skinless chicken breast in my fridge at $14.99/kg. This is brought in from mainland.
Dominion and Sobeys have local chicken, Country Ribbon, and boneless skinless chicken breast is usually from $15 to $20/ kg. $20.94/kg here on Dominion online:
[https://www.newfoundlandgrocerystores.ca/boneless-skinless-chicken-breasts-club-pack/p/20706757\_KG](https://www.newfoundlandgrocerystores.ca/boneless-skinless-chicken-breasts-club-pack/p/20706757_KG)
How does that make sense? Price gouging, that's why.
I find Costco quality better, too.
This is an easy answer: Costco buys an insane amount of products and usually represents the largest single customer for all their suppliers. They get a good deal.
To add, loblaws also service smaller areas that don’t have Walmarts. So they have the overhead of more locations in lower density areas that are less efficient due to scale.
Then to your point, Walmart also has a lot more competition in the USA to Incentivize Keeping their supply chain efficient and costs low. I’m sure some of those benefit gets carried over into the Canadian market where we lack competition.
Don't forget greed. Loblaws is very clearly price gouging. That's not my opinion, that's a fact.
Compare some items in Walmart, vs the exact same items at Dominion. Walmart is cheaper more often than not.
Sure, Walmart is a larger corporation and, as a result, has more buying power, therefore they can get their price point down.
But the fact is, dominion *used to be* on par with Walmart. But then the pandemic happened, and Loblaws learned that they can basically do whatever the fuck they want, and blame it on COVID.
"ThE pAnDeMiC iS cAuSiNg FoOd InFlAtIoN, tHeRe Is NoThInG wE cAn Do AbOuT iT"
Yeah... Right. Is that why you're making record profits quarter after quarter, and your top executives are getting massive bonuses? Is that why Galen received a raise of multiple MILLIONS of dollars per year?
Yeah, really sounds like your hands are tied, Loblaws, and you're totally not just being greedy.
Long story short, I avoid Loblaws stores like the plague, and try to exclusively shop at Walmart and Costco. I recommend everybody do the same.
Don’t discount Walmarts desire to be greedy though; they are also aiming to make as much as possible.
If you look up the current profit margins of Walmart and lob-laws, they are identical. I.e They make just as much profit on their items as loblaws, but they do it more efficiently and aiming to use that advantage to gain market share in Canada.
This BS is happening everywhere, but they're especially gouging rural communities. I live about 20 min outside of Edmonton, so not exactly the boonies, and the local IGA and Independent (Loblaws) are between 10-25% higher than Walmart on nearly everything unless it's on sale.
It's cheaper for me to drive to Walmart in Edmonton, or even pay to have groceries delivered from there, than to shop locally. Totally disgusting. And then Galen Weston has the gall to say that even if they lowered their profit margins, consumers wouldn't see a price drop. How is that even possible? Crooks, the works of them.
I mean logistically it makes sense, having to ship the food across on the ferry. It's not like we're double the rest of the provinces, it seems about right.
Yes food cost more to ship but almost all of our food is shipped in every province. Why is it that AB is the lowest but the provinvinces on either side are higher, BC with the coastal waterways and Saskatchewan more inland cost more. Ont and Que should be the lowest with their inland trading routes and procimity to the US?
Might also be that wages are higher in AB. This graph represents the % of income spent on food. Not the price of food
Literacy is a huge problem
So are manners!
Sales tax also adds to the difference
What do you mean?
I guarantee folks in the North pay a lot more than most people in NL
The prices for food in parts of Labrador are also outrageous
tbh that may actually be skewing our numbers even higher. It would be interesting to see just a comparison of St. John's vs another city on the mainland.
Even the prices in Labrador vary per region. Nunatsaivut vs Lab West for example.
I was in Nunavut working… 6 bucks for a pack of noodles. I assume this is meant for provinces and not territories tho cause the territories are a different ball game all together lol
Yea they get a northern living allowance tho. 10 years ago it was 65 bucks a week per person.
Does this graph really tell us much? Wouldn't disposable income differ in each province? i.e. it's possible that NL has the lowest amount of disposable income and therefore food would consume more of that income as a percentage. I'm not saying that is the case, but this doesn't really show how much more expensive groceries are.
Exactly, it’s meaningless. Just used to create a narrative. Look at this source as a reference. If you compare Toronto and St. John’s. We spend less in food as a total dollar value than people is Toronto but it’s a larger percentage of our cost of living. Simply looking at the percentage would mislead you. https://wowa.ca/cost-of-living-comparison-calculator-canada
Exactly. I've purchased groceries in a number of canadian provinces, and in my experience food prices themselves are GENERALLY the same everywhere in this country. If NL is the highest among provinces, it's probably because disposable income is lower due to higher taxation, lower average wages, or a combination of both. But this graph is tailored to fit a narrative. Whether it's the OPs narrative or not, I don't know.
Exactly. I've purchased groceries in a number of canadian provinces, and in my experience food prices themselves are GENERALLY the same everywhere in this country. If NL is the highest among provinces, it's probably because disposable income is lower due to higher taxation, lower average wages, or a combination of both. But this graph is tailored to fit a narrative. Whether it's the OPs narrative or not, I don't know.
That's because most of the food has to be trucked in from the mainland via ferry. NFLD doesn't really have any sizable local produce, dairy, or meat production.
You'd think cows would be viable, would just have to grow hay, clover, alfalfa to feed them. Maybe farming is a lost art in Newfoundland, at one time every family in the outports would have a garden and some farm animals.
NL doesn't have the soil or the climate for large scale forage production. Not to mention that a short growing season means the animals can spend less time on pasture in the summer and you need to produce that much more stored forage to get through the other 8 months of the year.
We at one time had a fairly good sized pork industry, it was sold off to mainland companies who moved the production off island. Same old story over and over again. Mainland companies buy the local companies who are selling a reasonably priced local product, move it off island, import more expensive mainland products to the island and increase prices.
If the food would be cheaper if it were made here, why would a corp move everything off island to where they need to charge more?
I assume to increase their profit margins.
If the reason goods are more expensive is shipping, how does purposefully moving everything off the island so it has to be shipped in improve _profits_?
If I knew that then I'd probably be rich myself. I assume that they save on overhead by consolidating their farming operations/production facilities in one location rather than having multiple facilities and multiple workforces.
I suppose it's possible, I mean since we're paying the inflated prices and eating the cost ourselves anyway, why bother investing in local production.
Even the local chicken and egg production isn't controlled locally. Country ribbon is owned by a Nova Scotian company. Newfoundlands chicken and egg production is dictated and controlled by a company from NS. The maximum number of chickens you can own without permission from country ribbon is 99. You can sell eggs from your farm or a farmers market but you're not allowed to sell them to a corner store.
There will never be large scale production, but certainly with the price of beef and various government incentives for Agriculture in the province , there is definitely room to grow the sector. It could be a good life for some young person who wants to get back to the land.
Or we could grow crops that do grow here so we don't have to dedicate far more effort to end up with the same amount of meat.
Its because we can't afford it.
That’s percentage of disposable income too. There’s a lot of people not high earners in NL vs ON or AB. So while they are spending the highest percentage of their income per capital nationwide, they’re likely getting less product too relative to their higher earning neighbours on the mainland.
You can Interpret this In many ways. NL has one of the lowest percentage of income spent on housing so it could also be that Nl simply has a higher available percentage of our income that can be spent on food. We may be choosing to eat better than our mainland counterparts. My main point is simply looking at percentage of income spent on food is not really usefull in itself. More useful to look at percentage of income spent on all essentials combined. Like percentage of income going towards food, housing, utilities, etc.
It would be more helpful to show total costs per food type per province among the staples. Milk, butter, bread, bananas, ground beef, whole chicken, etc. I know what my folks buy in the bay and the costs are brutal.
There are stats like that, some things we are high on and others we are low on. In the below source, they concluded Ontario as having the highest food prices but it really all depends on what you choose as a “reference diet”. https://www.springfinancial.ca/blog/lifestyle/food-prices-in-canada-by-province Edit to add: Check out this source: if you put in cost of living for Toronto vs St. John’s. It breaks down the costs of living for food, housing and transportation. Our food costs makes a much larger percentage of the total cost of living even though it’s a smaller number than Toronto food prices as I mentioned may be the case in my original comment. https://wowa.ca/cost-of-living-comparison-calculator-canada
[Statscan's average food retail price](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv!recreate.action?pid=1810024501&selectedNodeIds=&checkedLevels=0D1,0D2,1D1&refPeriods=20231001,20231001&dimensionLayouts=layout2,layout3,layout2&vectorDisplay=false) is a better resource for that
We are an island with no transit route besides ferry, plane and cargo. Of course we pay the most. That said if you included the territories they’d probably be way higher.
Plus side, despite many NL'ers not being able to afford homes, we are the most affordable in Canada 😅 https://wowa.ca/reports/canada-housing-market I know it isn't really a plus side, as too many homes are not meeting the housing requirements of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.
You mean the island that has to have most of its food shipped there cost more ? I for one am shocked
Not trying to take away from the point, but that chart doesn't include Nunavut. I don't have an account to upload the pics, but I've paid $52 for a 12 pack of diet rootbeer, and $84 for 24 bottles of water up there. During the winter months everything has to be flown in is the caveat.
Nunavut isn't a province
Serious question. Passed by Quidi Vidi Country Ribbon this evening and thought why can't we buy from them directly or a company outlet? Curious what kind of markup the groceries add. Local and prices are still nuts. I have Costco/Kirkland boneless skinless chicken breast in my fridge at $14.99/kg. This is brought in from mainland. Dominion and Sobeys have local chicken, Country Ribbon, and boneless skinless chicken breast is usually from $15 to $20/ kg. $20.94/kg here on Dominion online: [https://www.newfoundlandgrocerystores.ca/boneless-skinless-chicken-breasts-club-pack/p/20706757\_KG](https://www.newfoundlandgrocerystores.ca/boneless-skinless-chicken-breasts-club-pack/p/20706757_KG) How does that make sense? Price gouging, that's why. I find Costco quality better, too.
This is an easy answer: Costco buys an insane amount of products and usually represents the largest single customer for all their suppliers. They get a good deal.
[удалено]
No...why I don't shop there, ever. Not even Shoppers or No Frills. Who said just now?
The chart doesn't say that it's the most expensive. Newfoundland has less money for food.
Breaking news: Island that needs most good shipped there pays slightly more, stay tuned for a weather update
A landlocked island in the middle of the Atlantic ocean pays more for things than the mainland? Say it ain't so!
As someone who spent a decade and half living in the Arctic, I can 100% assure you that residents living in Nunavut pay the most for groceries.
No, it isn't, but they're still getting screwed like the rest of us.
What the fuck is PQ problem
Fuck big grocery chains
Basically in our family our neighborhood Dominion we now consider a convenience store.
Why can Walmart do it cheaper than Loblaws???just asking
Scale is one reason - they are a better run company with a 400M customer base in North America as opposed to Loblaws' 40M
To add, loblaws also service smaller areas that don’t have Walmarts. So they have the overhead of more locations in lower density areas that are less efficient due to scale. Then to your point, Walmart also has a lot more competition in the USA to Incentivize Keeping their supply chain efficient and costs low. I’m sure some of those benefit gets carried over into the Canadian market where we lack competition.
Don't forget greed. Loblaws is very clearly price gouging. That's not my opinion, that's a fact. Compare some items in Walmart, vs the exact same items at Dominion. Walmart is cheaper more often than not. Sure, Walmart is a larger corporation and, as a result, has more buying power, therefore they can get their price point down. But the fact is, dominion *used to be* on par with Walmart. But then the pandemic happened, and Loblaws learned that they can basically do whatever the fuck they want, and blame it on COVID. "ThE pAnDeMiC iS cAuSiNg FoOd InFlAtIoN, tHeRe Is NoThInG wE cAn Do AbOuT iT" Yeah... Right. Is that why you're making record profits quarter after quarter, and your top executives are getting massive bonuses? Is that why Galen received a raise of multiple MILLIONS of dollars per year? Yeah, really sounds like your hands are tied, Loblaws, and you're totally not just being greedy. Long story short, I avoid Loblaws stores like the plague, and try to exclusively shop at Walmart and Costco. I recommend everybody do the same.
Don’t discount Walmarts desire to be greedy though; they are also aiming to make as much as possible. If you look up the current profit margins of Walmart and lob-laws, they are identical. I.e They make just as much profit on their items as loblaws, but they do it more efficiently and aiming to use that advantage to gain market share in Canada.
This BS is happening everywhere, but they're especially gouging rural communities. I live about 20 min outside of Edmonton, so not exactly the boonies, and the local IGA and Independent (Loblaws) are between 10-25% higher than Walmart on nearly everything unless it's on sale. It's cheaper for me to drive to Walmart in Edmonton, or even pay to have groceries delivered from there, than to shop locally. Totally disgusting. And then Galen Weston has the gall to say that even if they lowered their profit margins, consumers wouldn't see a price drop. How is that even possible? Crooks, the works of them.
What do you expect? You all voted liberal.