The long, cold and hungry month of March

By Bill Bowman

Was it by some strange stroke of luck or twist of fate, that Paddy’s Day should fall almost smack in the middle of what our forebearers called, “the long, cold and hungry month of March?” Long and cold are self-explanatory. But the hungry bit stems from a time before supermarkets, when most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians raised, harvested (picked), shot or caught most of their food, from the land and the sea around them. Stored away in root cellars and pantries since early fall, by mid March, supplies were getting sparse, and there was still April and May to get through before the summer fishery resumed.

The plebians of that era were always and forever beholdin’ to the fish merchant classes. They were little better off than the serfs of Europe or the slaves of Louisiana, who worked, “them old cotton fields back home.”

Their plight was immortalized in the Newfoundland ballad, Hard, Hard Times.

Now, much has changed, and for the better, since those bad old days.

Still, in the new economy, in a new century in which we find ourselves, we are still dependent, to some degree, on a brand-new class of entrepreneur. One whom we still rely on to supply us with our food and other necessaries of life, at reasonable prices we can all afford to pay. At least we live in hope. But our expectations are being dashed every time we visit our favorite grocery store or supermarket, and end up staggering out, reeling with sticker shock.

At the same time, while the Canadian economy is doing well, thank you very much, use of food banks is at record high levels.

The whole food inflation issue came into sharp national focus last week when the heads of three major food chains, which control 60 percent of Canada’s food market, appeared before a special parliamentary committee in Ottawa to face the music. Loblaws, the largest, and parent company to Dominion, cleared $529 million in the third quarter of 2022 alone. Empire, which runs and operates Sobey’s, took home $178 million, while, their poor cousin, Metro Inc., had to scrape by on a paltry $168 million in the same three-month period.

As grocery prices keep soaring, lawmakers turned up the heat on the country’s top grocery execs. Watching the grocery titans twist themselves into pretzels in responding to the inquisition made for some interesting television.

The most heated exchange took place between NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, and Loblaw’s’ CEO Galen G. Weston, when the NDP leader repeatedly pressed the CEO with the rhetorical question, “How much profit is too much profit?  Right now, we’re not just going through an unprecedented cost of living crisis. We have families going into your stores, looking at the price of items, and putting them back ‘cause they can’t afford them. Families struggling to buy food for their kids, in this, a G7 country. And they look at you and see you’re making record profits. How can you justify that, when families are struggling to put food on the table for their kids?”

Not too blame

“We feel and understand 95 per cent of Canadians are concerned about food prices,” the CEO asserted, but grocery chain profits are not the reason for food inflation.”

A company needs some degree of profit,” the CEO countered, when he was interrupted by Singh, who pressed on, “record profits? You’re making more than you ever made. How much is too much?”

Pointing out Loblaws is a big company, and the numbers are very large, the CEO explained, “it still translates down to the bottom line at $1 of profit for every $25 of groceries.”

The NDP leader suggested to the supermarket magnate, “no one feels sorry for your profit margin, when you’re making a million dollars in excess profit a day, at the same time Canadians are experiencing the most unprecedented inflation in their lives. How can you look a family in the eyes and tell them what you’re doing is okay, Singh asked?

And so, round and round the ring they went, taking jabs and pulling no verbal punches, until the referee cut Singh off when he, apparently, was coming a little too close to the jugular.

Job’s comforter

Todd Hirsach is the former Calgary based chief economist with ATB Financial. In a special opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, Hirsch warns Canadians to “look beyond grocers such as Loblaws: food insecurity is going to get a lot worse,” before any light appears at the end of the tunnel.

In his informed and insightful piece, Hirsch explains the whole issue of rising food costs, “is so much bigger than them,” the Canadian grocers. “Even as central banks raise interest rates in an attempt to get inflation under control, food prices are not going to fall back to where they were.”

Which means, “food prices will continue to rise, only a bit more slowly,” if that’s any consolation to anyone.

Look here, I’m only a poor scribe, who struggled with math in school. Numbers always give me a headache. But, if you’ll accept a fool’s advice, never put all your eggs in one grocery basket. Unless you have more money than brains, never, ever buy all your groceries at one store. There are only three supermarkets in Carbonear. But you may be surprised by the price discrepancies on some staples, like butter and Minute Rice, sometimes as much as $2 or $3 difference, especially if the item is on special. That’s why I could never pay full price for anything at any one of those shops, not on the subsistence pension of a retired, non-union, private sector journalist. if I can get a better price at the competition, a key word here. My late father used to say, whenever he saved 50 cents on an item, that 50 cents is just as good to me as it is to Mr. Merchant.

And don’t forget those angels of mercy at the Food Bank in Carbonear, and elsewhere. And the good Samaritans at the Salvation Army. Without them, our time and place could be reminiscent of the Great Irish Famine of 1846-47.

As far as Paddy’s Day goes, well all I have left to say is: Slainte!