It seems the turkey has flown the dinner table this Thanksgiving.
The Gazette spoke with St. Albert residents and people stopping into the city about their plans for the long weekend and found that soaring food prices have forced some to get creative with Thanksgiving dinner.
Couple Giorgio and Sabine Bloise said that they normally cook a full Thanksgiving meal for friends and family, but this year they’re doing a potluck.
“And we’re not doing turkey; we’re doing chicken,” Giorgio Bloise said. “It’s getting really expensive to do [turkey].”
Giorgio Bloise works in St. Albert but lives in Edmonton. The couple migrated from Ecuador to Canada eight years ago, and they said that although they are happy living Canada, sky-high prices have made it harder to recommend to friends and family.
“We have family in the UK and Germany and in the US,” Giorgio Bloise said. “We can compare prices. [Sabine’s] nephew came here and he was shocked by the prices of food. It’s almost half in Europe. It is the same in the States. Why is Canada more expensive on every single item?”
The couple visit more grocery stores than they used to as they search for the best prices. They’re buying cheaper food and they’re using apps like Flashfood, which notifies users when they can find deals at the grocery store.
They believe the problem can only be solved with more forceful government regulation of the grocery industry — and they said the government hasn’t done enough.
“We’re looking for more actions — not so much talking,” Sabine Bloise said.
Resident Joanne Lesaux is also attending a Thanksgiving potluck.
She said that because she lives alone she doesn’t often stray out of her food budget. But the family hosting the potluck don’t plan on making turkey this year.
“They’re going to change it over to ham because hams are a bit cheaper,” she said. “They have about 20 people coming so that’s quite pricey.”
Canada’s Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne met with the big five grocers this week and told reporters that price freezes and price-matching campaigns are on the horizon.
“If they’re capable of doing it or if it will happen, I don’t know,” Lesaux said. “It’s just talk again.”
Residents Rebecca and Corey Foley said that a Thanksgiving without turkey isn’t unusual for them. Rebecca Foley is vegan — although she warns against tofurkey.
“One of the things we’re talking about is doing a nontraditional Thanksgiving dinner — let's see if something weird spikes us instead of having the set menu,” Rebecca Foley said.
They’ve largely avoided getting squeezed by high grocery prices because they’re big gardeners and make lots of food from scratch. But the high prices haven’t gone unnoticed.
“We have a toddler, so half our food bill is fruit,” Rebecca Foley said. “But a lot of the time …it’s like eight dollars for a bag of avocado. One week it was eight bucks for a clamshell of grapes, the next week it was four. There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”
“You have to break up the limited competition,” Cory Foley said.
Nancy Love, who has a place in St. Albert and lives in the city part-time, was almost finished making Thanksgiving turkey when she spoke with the Gazette.
The only thing left to do? The turkey.
Love seemed hopeful that the government could negotiate with grocers to calm rising prices.
“I know they’re trying to get grocers to work together,” she said. “That would be a really excellent thing if they could do some price fixing, to keep people honest and not pass on all of the costs to the consumer — especially when we’re trying to keep ourselves fed.”
