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With food prices high, middle-class Canadians say they’re feeling the pinch too
Poll

Food prices are rising, the loonie isn't going as far as it used to, and Canadians of all income levels say it's increasingly hard to feed their families, according to a new Angus Reid Institute poll released Monday.

MURAT YÜKSELIR and EVAN ANNETT

This article was published more than 8 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

FRED LUM/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

About 71 per cent of respondents to the online survey, conducted Feb. 22-25, said they were switching to cheaper brands to stretch their money further. Forty per cent said they were choosing less healthy options as a result.

Fifty-four per cent said their food bills were still either "very" or "somewhat" easy to afford, but far fewer said that paying for groceries had gotten easier in the past year – only 4 per cent.

About 63 per cent of respondents said the issue of high food prices hasn't been getting enough attention from political leaders.

In his mandate letter from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year, federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay was tasked with crafting a national food policy. Last month's federal budget promised to improve food-safety regulations and nutritional labelling in Canada and set aside $13.8-million in ongoing annual funding to expand Nutrition North, a subsidy for northern communities, where the cost of importing groceries can be astronomically high. (In Nunavut, a kilogram of carrots can cost more than $6, compared with $2 in the rest of Canada.) But the issue of affordable food prices in the rest of Canada was not addressed.

The survey of 1,515 Angus Reid Forum members has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

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