JOHNSON – Bakers and sweet makers – a shortage of sugar for Christmas?

LAST WEEK WE were at Walmart, shopping for ingredients to launch our annual Christmas baking cycle; the family does enjoy the usual Nanaimo Bars, Butter Tarts, Rocky Road and a number of other treats … and we needed sugar as well as a list of other stuff.

Imagine our surprise when we discovered that Walmart’s sugary shelves were as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboards. Not a single bag or box of granulated, icing or brown sugars … and we needed all of them. No biggie I figured, must be the pre-Christmas baking rush, I will try other stores during the following week.

So, I did try a number of different stores, only to discover the same scarcity of the sweet substance that documents much of our Christmas recipes.

Odd, but OK … I’m bound to stumble into some somewhere once the trucks arrive.

Famous last words.

Fast forward to today, I was in Independent Grocer in North Hills, where the same shelves were barren … so I asked the nice lady at the till “what’s the deal with sugar?”  “Oh,” she said “Rogers Sugar is on a labour strike.”

Wait … what?  A deeply sinking feeling began to invade the depth of my stomach.

Christmas without … just without … cold shudder time.

My second thought was, ‘I keep up with news pretty well … why haven’t I heard of this one?’  Probably because of the Google and Facebook freeze on providing links to media publishers’ websites on the topic, keeping news pieces like this from getting to readers like me, but that’s another story.

A quick Google filled me in nicely, and I read up on a number of stories across Western Canada of bakeries and sweet shops being unable to prepare for the season which makes up much of their annual revenue.

Apparently, Canadians consume 1.2 million tons of refined sugars annually, and 94 per cent of it is refined from raw cane sugar at three refining operations in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.  The Toronto refinery is owned by Redpath Sugar, while the Vancouver and Montreal refineries are run by Rogers Sugar.

The supply issue I discovered stems from the Vancouver refinery, where 138 striking workers have been off the job since Sept. 28.

Apparently, the union is at odds with Rogers Sugar over wages, benefits and the company’s proposal to increase refinery operations to 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. “Right now, they do about 120 hours a week, which is Monday to Friday, 24 hours a day,” a union official said. “So, they’re encroaching on our weekends.”

This official is aware the strike is impacting … just as demand from home bakers begins to spike. “I mean, this must be the highest sugar demand time of the year,” not knowing when the strike will end as the union and employer positions remain far apart.

“Even if we went back to work tomorrow, the sugar won’t really be hitting the shelves in full capacity until the first or second week of December.”

Hang on … back up, back up, hold your horses.

From another … albeit a Hot Take … of a perspective, they are seemingly disagreeing with a company proposal to increase their operations to a 24 hour – 7 day model.

Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to literally increase their union dues paying staff body by 28 per cent over the existing five-day operations model, the union instead comments that “they’re encroaching on our weekends.”

I doubt that.

It appears from a cursory glance that this union has dragged out a strike from Sept. 28 until Christmas, knowing full well that it would have a massive impact on a huge number of people preparing for the season, both commercially and home bakers alike.

Smells like intentionally softening up the company to agree to wages and benefit increases, and is fine with damaging our family Christmas to get the job done, as well as harm a lot of commercial businesses trying to get through the year.  And all along putting out a completely tone-deaf comment like, “I mean, this must be the highest sugar demand time of the year” … ya … right.

As news reports have pointed out, bakeries, candy makers and the like are managing with reduced deliveries for now, but expect to run out long before the Christmas rush.

I did take a quick check on Amazon.ca (the infamous shopping site full of distributors hoping to make a buck) to find a 2Kg bag of refined granulated sugar going for $75.  Here we go, I think to myself.  Capitalism at its finest.  Add to it all, the reality that sugar refining in Western Canada … is actually a monopoly.

Who knew?

A little more online searching found stock on the shelf today at Walmart, they seem to have reacted to the shortage by bringing in stock from the eastern Redline producer, and it was $3 a bag.  I also heard that Costco was bringing in the glorious white stuff from disparate places to satisfy the need, but that was a lot more hit and miss for the average shopper.

In the car I go, whisking up to Walmart, where I bought the last two 2kg bags of granulated on the shelf and a couple smaller bags of brown and icing, toting them out of the store ready to scream “START THE CAR,” but feeling a little more like a toilet paper hoarder at the beginning of Covid.

Whatever … we are good to go this year, provided for by a retailer that managed to circumvent this union’s plan to ruin our Christmas baking routine.

Maybe this sweet profit-making 1.2 million tons a year monopoly needs to be broken in western Canada, and room for competition and resilience in the marketplace needs to be made.

A panic moment surely for me today, but I got this.

Someone reading this just looked over at their cupboard where their own sugar resides and thought “… oh, oh …”

Good luck.

David Johnson is a Kamloops resident, community volunteer and self described maven of all things Canadian.