By Steve Hubrecht
Don’t panic: headlines elsewhere in British Columbia about how the flooding and mudslides have disrupted supply chains and left grocery store shelves empty of food and other essentials do not apply in the Columbia Valley. Here the supply chain is connected to Alberta, not to the coast, the shelves are full and you don’t need to go right now and buy several dozen packages of toilet paper rolls.
“No, no shortages at all. All of our stock, except for a few import items comes from a warehouse in Calgary,” Invermere Sobey’s assistant store manager Braden Schager told the Pioneer on Friday, Nov. 19. “And it’s a 1.3 million square foot warehouse, so there is a lot in there. A lot.”
Most of the food items coming into that warehouse come from further east in Canada or come up from the U.S. added Schager.
“If we were pulling our stock from Vancouver it might be a different story, but we don’t and it’s not. There may be a few super specific import items or some seafood items we may not be able to get, but nobody’s going to go hungry,” he said. “The only way it could theoretically become an issue here is if people made it an issue, if they panic and decided to start hoarding, taking more than their fair share.”
It was the same scenario at AG Valley Foods.
“All our major suppliers come from Alberta, so at this point we haven’t been affected,” Valley Foods co-owner Sydney-Anne Porter told the Pioneer. “We really just want people to stay calm, and so far, so good. This issue is out on the Lower Mainland, not here. Sometimes our location has disadvantages, but in this instance, it’s an advantage and we’ve haven’t really been affected. People here also haven’t been panic buying, like when COVID-19 hit. That is what could create a problem, but we haven’t seen that in our store. Hopefully our valley remains calm.”
Porter’s sentiment was echoed by Invermere mayor Al Miller.
“Locally, in the Columbia Valley, we are in good shape, and there’s no reason for anybody to be panic buying. Buy what you need for the week, as you normally do. It’s when some people decide to start hoarding that we could run into problems,” Miller said. “And when we have something like we had a week or so ago, when Kootenay National Park is temporarily closed, keep in mind that it’s not the end of the world. It won’t break any supply chains. People just need to be a little calmer, a little more level-headed, and perhaps a bit more prepared for that.”
Miller was ironically stuck in Vancouver when he spoke to the Pioneer on Monday, Nov. 22. He had gone there with family for a medical appointment and then been stranded when the flooding and mudslides hit.
“The roads closed behind us,” he said. “But we’re fine. We just have to wait longer to come back to the valley. A lot of people have been much more deeply affected than that. It is interesting to see here that the grocery store shelves are a bit light on some items. There seem to be some people here in Vancouver that are succumbing to panic buying. And of toilet paper again, of all things, as it was during COVID-19. I’m very glad to hear there’s no panic buying in the valley.”
