Local food prices affected by low Canadian dollar

WINNIPEG — The price of food is on the rise thanks to a low Canadian dollar and it’s not expected to improve next year according to experts.

A recent Statistics Canada report says food prices were up 3.4 per cent in the last year, it rose 4.1 per cent in October alone.

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Fresh vegetables and meat prices contributed the most to the increase.

Edward Cantor at Cantors Meat’s says everything is going up “dramatically” and says it’s tough passing the costs onto the consumer.

“Broccoli is a bad one right now it’s almost over the $3.00 mark lettuce is bad almost $3.00 a head we used to sell it for a $1.49 a head,” Cantor said.

Clothing and shoe prices are also more expensive.

“The Canadian dollar is down because it’s propped up by resources particularly oil and with oil now being down that impacts the Canadian dollar,”said Rob Warren, economy expert.

Warren says for the average homeowner it’ll mean shopping around more but he doesn’t think consumers will change their spending habits.

“The big savings we’re going to find in this part of the world is on fuel because we’re doing a lot of driving and this time of year we’re heating our houses a lot.”

Gas prices are expected to remain below a dollar all of 2016.  He predicts it’ll be at least five years before the Canadian dollar is on par again with the US dollar.