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Not long ago, one of my pals noticed something curious at the grocery store: a woman had her entire cart loaded with only one item — bag after four-litre bag of milk, maybe a dozen in all.
In the cashier debrief that followed, it was discovered the shopper was not running an orphanage but was from Quebec and this was a regular cross-border occurrence.
Why? Well, the price of a 4-litre bag of two per cent milk in Ottawa this week was $4.27 at a major grocery store. In Gatineau it was $6.33, or almost 50 per cent higher.
Why? Well, while cows are simple, milk is actually complicated.
The short answer is this. Both provinces have their own supply-management systems, but Quebec has an added layer — called the Régie des marchés agricoles et alimentaires. In the distinct society, this is a government outfit that regulates the price of certain food staples, like milk.
The minimum price for four litres of two per cent milk? $6.33 in the Outaouais, but a figure that rises or falls in other regions of the province.
Marie-Claude Thibault is an economist with the association of Quebec dairy producers. She was quick to point out the retail price difference does not mean farmers in La Belle Province are getting a sweetheart deal.
She said producers in Ontario and Quebec — who account for about 85 per cent of Canada’s supply — are paid the same amount for their milk.
“Milk cannot be used as a loss leader in Quebec, as it is in Ontario.”
She said she isn’t surprised to learn that some Quebec shoppers would be buying their milk in Ontario, especially if they live in one province and work in the other (hello, national capital region).
“I used to live in Toronto and I was amazed at the prices. A few years ago, I could get a four-litre for $1.99.”
What’s interesting about milk, she said, is that fluid consumption is flat or declining while dairy products are doing well.
“People don’t drink milk anymore. They eat it.” She said sales of low-fat or skim milks are slipping, while demand for butter is “exploding.”
Field Agent Canada is a crowdsourcing company that uses a smartphone app to audit prices across the country, using as many as 68,000 paid agents spread out in hundreds of stores.
It has done a couple of surveys on the price of milk. The results are surprising. Ontario is consistently the cheapest province, with milk usually available at an average price of about $1 a litre, if bought in large quantities. St. John’s, NL., was the most expensive, about double the Ontario levels.
General manager Jeff Doucette points to the “invisible fences” of marketing boards, inter-provincial trade barriers and even corporate concentrations as factors in making the prices of milk tricky to sort out.
“When you start to pull at that sweater, the thread gets really tangly.”
Which is odd, since dairy is pretty much a closed, price-managed, quota-controlled system across the country.
“If you look at milk, there are varying prices all over the map in Canada, but if you walked into any Walmart, you would find a two-litre of Coke or Pepsi within a very narrow margin (of cost) of each other.”
One of my contacts for this column suggested that Quebec shoppers buying in bulk in Ontario might actually be doing so for resale in corner stores across the river.
And they’d probably get away with it, suggests Doucette. “I doubt there’s milk police going into depanneurs in Gatineau.”
As if the pricing weren’t complicated enough, there is the matter of packaging. Milk in bags is common in central and Eastern Canada, but not so out west.
In Newfoundland, said Doucette, there are no bags of milk. At a major grocery store chain in Ontario, these were the online prices for two per cent milk on Thursday: $2.59 for a one-litre carton (on sale), $4.27 for a two-litre carton, and $4.27 for four litres in bags.
Doucette, meanwhile — who lives in Newfoundland, supposedly the most expensive place for milk — said he paid $3.37 for a two-litre carton Thursday, or cheaper than in Ontario.
So go figure.
In unrelated but somehow connected news, the cheapest price for gas in Ottawa on Thursday afternoon was 100.9 a litre at Costco, while the cheapest in Gatineau was 105.9. And a case of 24 bottles of Molson Canadian was selling for $38.95 at the Beer Store but $36.88 at Marché Gravelle, better known as the Beer King, in Aylmer.
Cheap milk, beer, gas — even real estate. My, the things a river separates.
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com.
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
In the cashier debrief that followed, it was discovered the shopper was not running an orphanage but was from Quebec and this was a regular cross-border occurrence.
Why? Well, the price of a 4-litre bag of two per cent milk in Ottawa this week was $4.27 at a major grocery store. In Gatineau it was $6.33, or almost 50 per cent higher.
Why? Well, while cows are simple, milk is actually complicated.
The short answer is this. Both provinces have their own supply-management systems, but Quebec has an added layer — called the Régie des marchés agricoles et alimentaires. In the distinct society, this is a government outfit that regulates the price of certain food staples, like milk.
The minimum price for four litres of two per cent milk? $6.33 in the Outaouais, but a figure that rises or falls in other regions of the province.
Marie-Claude Thibault is an economist with the association of Quebec dairy producers. She was quick to point out the retail price difference does not mean farmers in La Belle Province are getting a sweetheart deal.
She said producers in Ontario and Quebec — who account for about 85 per cent of Canada’s supply — are paid the same amount for their milk.
“Milk cannot be used as a loss leader in Quebec, as it is in Ontario.”
She said she isn’t surprised to learn that some Quebec shoppers would be buying their milk in Ontario, especially if they live in one province and work in the other (hello, national capital region).
“I used to live in Toronto and I was amazed at the prices. A few years ago, I could get a four-litre for $1.99.”
What’s interesting about milk, she said, is that fluid consumption is flat or declining while dairy products are doing well.
“People don’t drink milk anymore. They eat it.” She said sales of low-fat or skim milks are slipping, while demand for butter is “exploding.”
Field Agent Canada is a crowdsourcing company that uses a smartphone app to audit prices across the country, using as many as 68,000 paid agents spread out in hundreds of stores.
It has done a couple of surveys on the price of milk. The results are surprising. Ontario is consistently the cheapest province, with milk usually available at an average price of about $1 a litre, if bought in large quantities. St. John’s, NL., was the most expensive, about double the Ontario levels.
General manager Jeff Doucette points to the “invisible fences” of marketing boards, inter-provincial trade barriers and even corporate concentrations as factors in making the prices of milk tricky to sort out.
“When you start to pull at that sweater, the thread gets really tangly.”
Which is odd, since dairy is pretty much a closed, price-managed, quota-controlled system across the country.
“If you look at milk, there are varying prices all over the map in Canada, but if you walked into any Walmart, you would find a two-litre of Coke or Pepsi within a very narrow margin (of cost) of each other.”
One of my contacts for this column suggested that Quebec shoppers buying in bulk in Ontario might actually be doing so for resale in corner stores across the river.
And they’d probably get away with it, suggests Doucette. “I doubt there’s milk police going into depanneurs in Gatineau.”
As if the pricing weren’t complicated enough, there is the matter of packaging. Milk in bags is common in central and Eastern Canada, but not so out west.
In Newfoundland, said Doucette, there are no bags of milk. At a major grocery store chain in Ontario, these were the online prices for two per cent milk on Thursday: $2.59 for a one-litre carton (on sale), $4.27 for a two-litre carton, and $4.27 for four litres in bags.
Doucette, meanwhile — who lives in Newfoundland, supposedly the most expensive place for milk — said he paid $3.37 for a two-litre carton Thursday, or cheaper than in Ontario.
So go figure.
In unrelated but somehow connected news, the cheapest price for gas in Ottawa on Thursday afternoon was 100.9 a litre at Costco, while the cheapest in Gatineau was 105.9. And a case of 24 bottles of Molson Canadian was selling for $38.95 at the Beer Store but $36.88 at Marché Gravelle, better known as the Beer King, in Aylmer.
Cheap milk, beer, gas — even real estate. My, the things a river separates.
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com.
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
