B.C. government promising help to local food producers amid cost pressures

The B.C. government is promising to work with local food producers as food prices continue to stay higher than expected.

Darren Wilson at Two Rivers Meats in North Vancouver says they are seeing customers buy less due to climbing costs.

The cost of meat has gone up more than 7.5 per cent in Canada over the past year and increases are higher than expected for staffing, transportation and packaging costs.

“People are really feeling the pinch right now and it is a little harder for them to spend a little extra to support local,” Wilson said in an interview.

“It is much more expensive to produce local products, on Canadian soil. It is cheaper to export from the States.”

2:27 Consumer Matters: Festive foods more expensive this holiday season

Premier David Eby says his government is working to support both local food producers and consumers.

In November, the province announced a one-time $100 cost-of-living credit for BC Hydro customers and a new BC Affordability Credit to help low and middle-income earners with rising costs.

23:38 Focus BC: Conversation with the premier

The new BC Affordability Credit will provide as much as an additional $164 per adult, and $41 per child, or as much as $410 for a family with two children earning $43,051, with a sliding scale of credits for families earning as much as $150,051.

Eby says the province continues to support Buy BC, a provincial program encouraging the purchase and labelling of local products. The province has also ensured meals served in hospitals and schools utilize local products first.

The next phase will be an increased focus on local food processing.

“Looking at ways we can do more on the processing end. So when they are harvested here they don’t need to be shipped out of the province only to be sent back here to be sold,” Eby said.

Experts say customers are looking more and more often for sale and discount labels.

Canada’s Food Price Report for 2023 found food prices should start levelling off by the summer.

“They are not going to come down, but they are not going to keep going up and I say that because it is very seldom that prices go down once they have gone up,” Kelleen Wiseman from the Master of Food and Resource Economics program at UBC told Global News.