Maritime businesses adapt as tariffs drive up prices across Canada

Tariffs are driving up prices on nearly everything in Canada.

Carolyn Labolt’s business survived the pandemic and it’s supply chain issues, but new tariffs and the associated fallout could be more price shock than her store can handle.

“We have a very, very small mark-up on our product,” Labolt said. “For us to take on another 25 or 30 per cent and keep our prices where they are now, I don’t know that feasibly we would be able to do it.”

Labolt sells jams, baked goods and niche retail items like puzzles. A lot of her product is impacted by the tariffs.

“Part of the process of the puzzle making actually happens in the states.”

She said she sources some ingredients south of the border and expects to feel the impacts immediately.

Sylvain Charlebois is the director of the agri-food analytics lab at Dalhousie University. He said the movement to stop buying American is inflating costs further and driving grocers to look for other sources in South America, Asia and Europe.

“People want to buy Canadian, great, but the anti-American sentiment is much, much stronger,” Charlebois said, adding that American produce is going bad on shelves.

“There was a lot of waste as a result and waste tends to cost money to grocers and eventually to all of us.”