'I’m very worried': Maritimers concerned as inflation takes its biggest jump in over 30 years

SYDNEY, N.S. -

From gas to food and just about everything else, prices are soaring, and it's making it tougher for families to keep up financially.

“Our grocery bill, we used to budget about $175 a week and now we're up to $230, or $250 a week,” said Sydney, N.S., resident Amanda Carroll.

Statistics Canada says the annual inflation rate rose to 5.1 per cent in January -- its biggest jump in over 30 years.

“We're struggling ourselves to be able to provide the financial support to the programs that support these folks,” said Lynne McCarron, the executive director of United Way Cape Breton.

Even charities like the United Way are feeling the pressure.

One in three children in Cape Breton live in poverty, and McCarron fears that number will only get worse.

“I'm very worried where we're going to be in order to be able to recover from COVID-19 and this inflation and all of the impacts it's having,” she said.

Small businesses are also struggling to deal with higher prices without passing the buck to the consumer.

“The consumers are not ready to have big specific price increases rapidly. Maybe in the long term, but in the short term they are stuck with the quantity of money they have right now,” said Patrick DeLamirande, a business professor at Cape Breton University.

Some of the big increases are in essentials like housing, food and gas, but the question many are asking is why?

“First of all, the supply chain is not as efficient, and what that means is it's taking longer to move everything around, whether it's on water or on land for a variety of reasons,” said Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie University's Agri-Food Analytics Lab.

Charlebois is encouraging people to recoup rising costs any way they can.

He says dairy and fuel prices will see the biggest jumps in the coming months.

“It's getting closer to our forecast to be honest. We're expecting the food inflation rate to continue to increase in particular, which may even drive the general inflation rate even further,” he added.