Hurricanes Ian, Fiona could drive up grocery costs on these items in Canada

Canadians may have to pay more at the grocery store in the weeks ahead as hurricanes battering Atlantic Canada and the southern U.S. disrupt agricultural operations.

Hurricanes Ian and Fiona could have grocers that source food from Atlantic Canada and the southern United States passing higher costs on to Canadian consumers, experts say, as some businesses on the east coast begin to rebuild their battered industries.

Any disruption to supply chains, which have seen major improvements in shipping costs and reliability over the past six months, is thankfully expected to be brief.

“The effects of things like hurricanes tend to be short-lived,” Fraser Johnson, professor of operations management at Ivey Business School, tells Global News.

That could be cold comfort to Atlantic Canada’s fishing industry, which was devastated when Fiona, classified then as post-tropical storm, hit the east coast this past weekend.

Entire harbours in Newfoundland’s Port aux Basques were washed off the coast as two-metre-high storm surges hit the shore and will need to be rebuilt. Others have seen fishing equipment and entire ships washed out to sea or beached on land.

Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray said Thursday that it will take more time to assess the full extent of the damage to the fishing industry, but added she’s willing to work with fish harvesters across the region on requests for a season extension.

Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax, experienced the damaging winds and torrential rain from Fiona first hand, recalling in an interview with Global News how the storm hit in the middle of the night and left his home without power for five days.

For residents in Atlantic provinces, lengthy power outages mean short shelf lives for food in fridges and freezers. The need to throw out food comes at a costly time for households, as costs at the grocery store were up 10.8 per cent annually in August, a new 41-year-high.