Last Sunday evening, during a family dinner during which the heated discussions were linked, we broached the subject of the exorbitant cost of the grocery basket. It seems to me that no matter how hard we try to lower the bill, we never get below $ 250-300 per week for the three adults we are at home.
This by going to Costco to achieve economies of scale, by going to wholesale distributors of market garden products and by going directly to the market of a large family of farmers not too far from home. Despite the fact that we cook everything ourselves, buy little or no products already prepared and pay attention to specials, nothing to do, we have to face the facts, food monopolizes a large part of our income.
Always more expensive
This weekly amount, although already quite high for my taste, can climb quickly as soon as we start entertaining for dinners with friends and family. I do not question the fact of spending to create moments and evenings between us, on the contrary it is one of the great pleasures of life to eat well in good company, but I question the increasing proportion of the cost much more. the basket of groceries in our family budgets.
As we talk to my family, we realize that, as a rule, we pay as much for groceries as we do for our respective mortgages. This realization shocked me. I thought to myself that either we all have a serious problem with compulsive grocery store-shoppers, or else, more likely and sadly, we shouldn’t be the only ones seeing this lately.
As I talked to my office mates about this, I realized that for many people and their families, groceries cost as much, if not more than their rent or their monthly mortgage payment. All this, without taking into account the small “take out” in a hurry and once in a while dinners at the restaurant.
If the same goes for my family, my entourage and my colleagues, what about other Quebec families? But, beyond realizing that there are many of us in this same situation that I find exaggerated, do you find it normal to pay as much to simply feed yourself as to find accommodation and invest in the living environment that your home represents? you?
A growing gap
I dare not imagine the destructive effect of this increase in food for families with lower incomes and whose wages are not increasing at the debilitating rate of the rental boom, the explosion in house prices, and the price of housing. gasoline at an all time high. A growing gap is currently being created between the rich and the less well-off, a phenomenon rapidly accentuated by the pandemic. I am afraid of the precariousness that is spreading in our families who struggle daily to make ends meet.
Honest workers in different areas of our society can no longer meet even the minimum needs of their families. For my part, I find it deplorable and frustrating that the economic situation is increasingly difficult for many to cope with.
In the era of the ultra-rich and their tax havens, of the growing proportion of wealth in the hands of a minority, what is being done concretely to restore the balance and ensure that Quebecers have a decent life?
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Jonathan Brisebois-Lépine, Bachelor in Social Work and holder of a BAA Prévost
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