Cookies and milk for Santa go hand-in-hand with Christmas but a bitter sugar strike is taking some of the sweetness out of the holiday baking season.
The ongoing Rogers Sugar strike in Vancouver is starting to hurt bakeries in Calgary, while some grocery stores are also being affected and prices are going up.
The owner of Sucre Patisserie & Cafe, a popular French pastry bakery with three locations in the Alberta city, said the almost two-month-old strike is making it difficult — if not impossible —to find the key ingredient at the busiest time of the year.
“Initially, not so much because we did have some backup — but right now it’s coming into Christmas and our supplier is not providing us with any sugar for, you know, over the past month now,” owner Yin Sung said, adding some of her best treats are in jeopardy.
Sung said her bakeries use over 320 kilograms of sugar a month. She’s looking for the sweet stuff — especially brown and icing sugar — wherever she can.
“We do go to places like Wholesale Club, Costco — even Safeway to try and get some of those smaller packs, one kilogram bags of sugar.”
Tasha Henderson, manager at Sinfully Sweet Cathedral Bakery in Regina, said while she thinks she has enough sugar right now to make it through the holiday season, the strike at the Rogers refinery has already doubled her wholesale costs.
“We used to pay $24 to $28 a bag, and now we’re paying about $50 to $62 a bag,” Henderson said, adding she expects the bakery will need to increase its own prices in the new year as a result.
“For now, we’re just trying to hold tight for the Christmas season, because we’ve already done all of our promotional documents for our holiday pricing.”
According to the Canadian Sugar Institute, Canada produces approximately 1.2 million tonnes of refined sugar annually — around 94 per cent of which is refined from raw cane sugar imported in bulk to three refining operations in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.
The Toronto refinery is owned by Redpath Sugar, while the Vancouver and Montreal refineries are operated by Rogers Sugar Inc., which markets its products under the brand names Rogers and Lantic.
The sugar supply issues being experienced in Western Canada stem from the Vancouver refinery, where 138 striking workers have been off the job since Sept. 28.
Adrian Soldera, president of Public and Private Workers of Canada Local 8, said the union is at odds with Rogers Sugar over issues like wages, benefits and the company’s proposal to increase refinery operations to 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.
Right now, the union said the refinery operates 120 hours a week between Monday and Friday.
For its part, Rogers Sugar said its Vancouver refinery continues to operate, but at a reduced level, and the company is using its other facilities to support its customers in Western Canada.
In an email last week to The Canadian Press, Rogers Sugar chief financial officer JS Couillard acknowledged the strike has resulted in localized supply impacts in Western Canada, particularly for brown sugar and some packaged white sugar.
Sung says she hasn’t been forced to layoff any employees — yet.
But if the strike doesn’t end soon or a new sugar supply found, something will have to give — and that could be a happy Christmas.
“It’s horrible — it’s just not the right timing.”
Making it worse, Sung says her COVID-19 small business loans will be coming due in January.
The federal government’s Canada Emergency Business Account offered interest-free loans of up to $60,000 to small businesses during the pandemic.
The repayment deadline for the emergency loans to qualify for partial loan forgiveness is Jan. 18, 2024.
“It doesn’t seem to be a cycle that ends, which is kind of frustrating,” Sung said.
The strike is also affecting supplies at some grocery stores. Waseam Souraya was buying Sucre’s croissants Wednesday but he said losing out on mom’s home baking takes the cake.
“That’s going to suck back home then, because it affects everyone,” Souraya says
“It takes away from everything, really.”
— With files from Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press