Alberta grocery prices have nearly doubled since 2002. About half that increase happened in 2020s

Billy Demers wakes up at 6 a.m. on Wednesdays and moves to his dining room table, where he will spend hours on his laptop, analyzing the week’s upcoming grocery store deals and draft reports for tens of thousands of his followers.

Demers, a 76-year-old retiree, spent decades in the industry as a meat cutter and meat department supervisor. Years ago, he had started posting the best deals on his Facebook page for his friends. But in 2022, his daughter encouraged him to start a Facebook group: Demers Meat Deals and more.

It had roughly 65,800 members as of Wednesday afternoon. Demers said he is just trying to save people money, as so many people look for relief from inflation.

“It’s sad to say, but the reason I did it was mainly because there are people whose wages haven’t kept up with inflation, and as a result, many of them are living payday to payday,” Demers told CBC News in his home in Wetaskiwin, Alta., a city about 65 kilometres south of Edmonton.

The price of a good or service in Alberta — like rent, utilities and clothes — last year, on average, was more than 70 per cent higher than in 2002, the base year of Statistics Canada’s consumer price index (CPI), a key measure of inflation.

But the price of groceries, specifically, have nearly doubled from 2002 levels — and almost half of that increase happened in the 2020s.

Annual CPI data shows the price of food bought in stores last year was 94.5 per cent higher than 2002. But monthly data shows in November 2025 groceries were 99.7 per cent more expensive, dipping to 98.8 per cent in December.

It took 18 years for grocery prices to rise 50 per cent for the first time, in January 2020, monthly data shows. Then, just five years for costs to inflate 49 points more — or, about one-third.

Some products have outpaced the general rate of inflation for groceries, including beef, which has tripled in price since 2002. Although, other items, like cheese, fruit and pork, are still below the trend line.

“Governments are going to rise and fall, within the next five to eight years, based on how they address food scarcity in general,” said Chetan Dave, a University of Alberta economics professor.

He believes food scarcity, which includes the quantity and quality of food, in addition to prices, is probably the country’s No. 2 issue, behind housing, in the medium- to long-term.

“It’s also something that has … obvious policy [solutions] that should have been done a generation ago,” Dave said.

Amid rapid inflation, in October 2022, the Competition Bureau of Canada — a federal law enforcement agency that aims to protect and promote business competition — started examining the country's grocery sector. Its market study notice noted, among other things, the concentrated market, dominated mainly by Loblaws, Empire (which owns Sobeys and Safeway, for example) and Metro.

The final report, released in June 2023, stated higher input costs, the war in Ukraine — the country considered the breadbasket of Europe — and supply chain disruptions contributed to rising grocery costs. "But we have also seen a longer-term trend that pre-dates those events, of Canada’s largest grocers increasing the amount they make on food sales," it said.