Are grocery stores running out of food? Here's what's really going on

Never mind hockey, maple syrup or Tim Hortons. Canadians seem to have found a new national obsession in recent weeks: Documenting the state of affairs at their local grocery stores, to try to gauge whether or not the country is in the midst of a food-supply crisis.

Provincial premiers, federal MPs, members of various opposition parties and even members of the bastion of sober second thought that is Canada's Senate have weighed in on the matter, taking pictures of local grocery store shelves as evidence — or a lack thereof — of a looming crisis in Canada's food supply.

Since most of those doing the picture-taking have a particular agenda to push, as with anything political, the reality is likely somewhere between what partisans on either side are saying.

While no one can pretend there isn't a lot of empty shelves out there right now, it's also unfair to suggest there's some sort of slow-moving famine underway across the country.

Industry experts agree that the country's food supply is nowhere close to collapse.

"I don't think we're going to be running out of food at grocery stores," said Simon Somogyi, a professor who studies Canada's food industry at the University of Guelph.

Canada's food supply chain is always a delicate balancing act, Somogyi said, as a relatively short growing season, coupled with vast distances, makes maintaining and distributing supplies tricky under even ideal circumstances.

And the current ones are anything but, he said.

The Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the food industry hard, particularly as labour shortages became acute as more workers either got sick or had to quarantine because of exposure. A lack of employees to keep shelves fully stocked has been a problem for a while now, even before the federal government's vaccine mandate for cross-border truck drivers dealt the industry another curveball, making it harder to get food to the loading dock in the first place.

"The Canadian food system rides on the back of a truck … particularly at this time of year, where it's cold and we have to import a lot of fresh food, like fruits and vegetables, into Canada," said Somogyi.

WATCH | Why some are blaming the vaccine mandate for empty store shelves:

Gary Sands, with the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers, said there are indeed shortages of certain goods in certain regions. But on the whole, he said, they are expected to be temporary while the country rides out the "tsunami" of Omicron.

"We're absolutely seeing product delays and shortages," he said, especially of fresh fruits and vegetables — a large amount of which come from the U.S. this time of year.

"It doesn't mean the shelves are completely barren or anything like that. But we're already starting to see for some products … they're just not coming in time, or we're not getting them in the quantities that we need."