Province’s grocery study offers little price relief

Manitobans who had hoped the province’s new grocery price study would reveal some hidden lever governments can pull to bring down food prices are likely to come away disappointed.

In fact, one of the most important findings in the report released Monday is that grocery prices are expected to rise faster this year than they did in 2025, despite a variety of government initiatives aimed at improving affordability.

The Manitoba Bureau of Statistics says food prices are projected to increase by 5.5 per cent in 2026, up from the 3.8 per cent increase recorded last year.

That forecast should be front and centre in any discussion about food affordability because it underscores a reality politicians are often reluctant to acknowledge: governments have limited ability to control grocery prices.

The report also highlights another troubling trend. The price of food purchased from grocery stores in Manitoba increased by 28.5 per cent from 2020 to 2025. During the same period, median wages rose by only 23 per cent.

That gap helps explain why so many households continue to feel squeezed. Food prices have risen faster than incomes, and many families are trying to catch up.

The Manitoba government deserves credit for conducting a comprehensive study. It offers a detailed examination of food affordability and proposes several measures designed to help consumers.

Among them are mandatory unit pricing in grocery stores, a revived nutritious food basket program to monitor food costs across regions, support for food redistribution through Harvest Manitoba and efforts to encourage greater grocery competition.

Those measures may help around the edges. Some will save consumers money. Others could improve transparency and competition. But none address the primary drivers of food inflation.

That’s because most of the forces pushing grocery prices higher originate far outside Manitoba and, in many cases, far outside Canada.

The study repeatedly points to global supply chains, energy markets, environmental conditions and geopolitical instability as major contributors to rising food costs.

Food production today operates within an extraordinarily complex international system. Farmers depend on fuel, fertilizer, machinery and transportation networks.

Food processors depend on energy. Retailers depend on trucking, rail and shipping systems. When costs rise anywhere along that chain, consumers eventually pay more at the checkout.

The study notes fertilizer prices have increased by more than 40 per cent in recent years while fuel costs have risen 60 to 70 per cent.

When diesel prices climb, it costs more to operate farm equipment, transport crops, deliver food to processing facilities and stock grocery store shelves. Every step becomes more expensive.

Governments can reduce taxes and change regulations, but they cannot insulate consumers from global energy markets.

Nor can they control the geopolitical events that often drive those markets.

The report specifically cites Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and instability in the Middle East as factors that have disrupted energy, fertilizer and commodity markets.

The timing of the study’s release is particularly revealing. Statistics Canada reported Monday that higher gasoline prices linked to the conflict involving Iran helped push Canada’s inflation rate to 3.2 per cent in May (4.6 per cent in Manitoba).

Food purchased from stores increased by 4.3 per cent year over year, marking the 16th consecutive month food inflation exceeded overall inflation.

That is a reminder of how quickly events thousands of kilometres away can affect grocery bills in Manitoba.

No provincial government can end wars in Eastern Europe, stabilize the Middle East, or prevent disruptions to global shipping routes or commodity markets.

And no provincial government can stop droughts, floods, wildfires or other climate-related events from damaging agricultural production around the world.

Yet these are precisely the factors that increasingly shape food prices.

The pandemic provided a vivid demonstration of how vulnerable global supply chains can be. Many of those disruptions have eased, but the underlying vulnerabilities remain.

A poor harvest in one region, a shipping disruption in another or a geopolitical conflict elsewhere can ripple through the entire food system.

That is why political promises to “fight grocery prices” often sound far more impressive than they prove to be in practice.

Governments can help mitigate the impact. They can provide tax relief, improve competition, support food banks, strengthen local food systems and monitor market conditions more effectively.

Those are worthwhile goals.

But they cannot repeal the laws of supply and demand, nor can they control the international forces that increasingly determine what food costs.

The Manitoba government’s study is valuable not because it identifies a magic solution, but because it largely acknowledges the complexity of the problem.

Its most honest conclusion may be the simplest one: despite government efforts to improve affordability, food prices are expected to rise even faster in 2026 than they did in 2025.

Which means governments would be wise to consider more targeted relief to lower income people. Removing the PST from all grocery items that were still taxed (scheduled to begin July 1) — including junk food — will do little to control grocery costs and will benefit higher income people the most.

That money would be better spent providing direct support to those struggling with food price inflation the most. That might be the biggest takeaway from this study.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca