Family Foods in Redcliff, AB March 13, 2020 (photo courtesy Ross Lavigne)

By Chantal Wagner

Locals stock up on toilet paper, cleaning products, and food amid COVID-19 worries

Mar 13, 2020 | 4:30 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, locals and people worldwide have been stocking up their fridge and pantry to be prepared in case of an emergency.

On Friday the Costco parking lot in Medicine Hat was full of vehicles.

Inside, shoppers were calm and carts were heaped with a variety of groceries, hand soap, and cases of water.

But with no toilet paper to be seen on the store’s shelves, shoppers had kleenex and paper towels in their carts.

BREAKING

Medicine Hat's Mustard Seed adding new shelter space at Alberta government's request

10m ago

HOLIDAYS

Medicine Hat Kiwanis hosting Christmas dinner, applications due Friday

2h ago

IN THE COMMUNITY

'Compassionate Friends' offer peer support for bereaved in Medicine Hat

18h ago

There were lines at checkout and the Costco cashier said it’s been non-stop and similar to the Christmas rush.

Meantime, at Family Foods in Redcliff, store manager Sue MacInnis agrees that people are doing an abundance of shopping.

She’s seeing a lot of people buying canned food, packaged food like pasta, and milk products.

As for the store’s toilet paper supply, they have a limit on how many people can buy -at two per customer.

And they ordered 50 more cases for their store, but didn’t receive that or any sanitizer or cleaning materials.

MacInnis had a different experience at Costco however, she says she went to buy toilet paper for her senior customers this morning, and Costco only had one pallet.

“I went through total chaos at Costco today (Friday) trying to get some supplies and we only took our limit of three and people were up in arms. One man tried to run us over with the car, they were using foul language. It was just like, we’re Canadians, we’re not like this.”

As for supply and demand in the agri-food market in the near future, the Grain Growers of Canada Chair Jeff Nielsen, he says he hopes to see meatpacking plants remain open and going strong to keep the product on the shelf.

As well as imports of fresh vegetables and fruits coming on store shelves.

He says we need to have our commodities continuing to be moved out of the country as well.

“Railroads are slowly getting back to normal, the ports are receiving grain cars, we’re shipping out but, we don’t need any more hiccups on that side and once again imports coming in, the containers coming in need to be moved smoothly across Canada.”

Meantime, the Bank of Canada has cut its key interest rate due to the economic fallout from COVID-19.

The central bank lowered its overnight rate target by half a percentage point to 0.75 percent.

That followed a similar cut just last week.

Nielsen says this is good news for the agriculture sector as well.