'Most of the city is evacuating': Gridlock on Alberta highway after evacuation order in Fort McMurray
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Helmi Ansari could get espresso makers and stainless steel water bottles manufactured within three months and delivered to Canada by boat for about US$4,500 per shipping container.
Between labour shortages, rising stainless steel costs and overwhelmed ports, those days are long gone. Ansari's products now take almost a year to make, and he pays about US$28,500 to get 10,000 of them to Canada -- assuming he can get them shipped at all.
He's often outbid for boat spots and has to stop shipping companies from sending his goods back to the factory by offering more cash.
"All our margins are gone. We're selling product, but we're not making any money," said Ansari, who owns Grosche International in Cambridge, Ont.
"It's insane. There's absolutely no way that a small business like ours can really continue to cope with this."
The pressures Ansari faces as he fights to keep his company alive are being mirrored by small businesses across the country.
They're feeling the crunch of a tight labour market and supply chain challenges -- semiconductor shortages, skyrocketing shipping costs, backed up ports and flooded regions of B.C. -- but don't have enough clout or cash to spend their way out of trouble.
The timing couldn't be worse. With the winter holiday nearly in full swing, late shipments and bare shelves could be disastrous for the busiest sales season of the year.
The outcome could be even more grim for companies that were counting on this period to help them rebound from COVID-19 closures and even stave off bankruptcy.
"It's a matter of survival," Ansari said of the supply chain challenges, which pushed his 15-year-old company to take out its first bank loan.
"We have people who depend on our business to be able to put food on the table, so we need to make sure the business survives, but not having inventory would mean ... we would have to lay staff off."
Ansari has resisted raising prices, but knows many other companies have taken that route because demand for shipping is at a record high and packages are piling up at many ports, allowing shippers to raise their prices. In some cases, the cost has more than tripled.
The Drewry World Container Index, for example, showed the rate to move a 40-foot container from Rotterdam to New York reached US$6,214 at the start of December and has surged by 208 per cent since last year. The Shanghai-Rotterdam route was even more expensive at US$13,500, up 283 per cent from last year.
Prices are also climbing because Statistics Canada said the annual pace of inflation hit 4.7 per cent last month, the largest year-over-year gain in the consumer price index since February 2003.
Food prices saw a four per cent bump last month alone.
"Meat has gone up by like $2 a pound and my co-packer said it used to go up by 25 cents," said Lola Adeyemi, the founder of It's Souper, a Toronto company making Afro-fusion soups.
She had to increase her pricing to cope with the inflation and a labour shortage at a company Adeyemi hired to manufacture her new sauce line that kicked in just as the products were scheduled for packaging.
Adeyemi had no choice but to rent a kitchen, stock up on supplies and turn to friends, who took time off work to help her cook and bottle batches of green pepper and peri-peri sauces.
"I still don't know if I'll be able to produce it through the producer or if I'll actually just have to keep producing this myself," she said.
David Yeaman has seen many small businesses face similar crunches or struggle to get products made or shipped from overseas.
"We've got some people that are definitely in trouble and looking to retool right now as we speak," said the president of Oro Medonte, Ont.'s Molded Precision Components, which has been trying to speedily reshore their manufacturing.
While companies often opted for foreign production before the pandemic because of lower costs, Yeaman said shipping prices and other expenses have surged so dramatically, businesses are no longer saving as much through overseas manufacturing.
Myriam Maguire, the Montreal designer behind Maguire Boutique, understands those risks well.
She had to create wait-lists for goods sold through her fashion business after European factories closed during COVID-19 outbreaks. The factories reopened, but now problems loom in Asia.
Her $300 combat boots handmade in Florence have been delayed four times because Maguire's outsole supplier struggled to get an ingredient from China.
"Even when they are produced in Italy, the main chemical comes from China, but right now China's keeping as much as possible for themselves, so they're having a really hard time," Maguire said.
She's coping by shipping products by air and using pre-sales and waiting lists to train customers to expect delays.
About 300 people are on the wait-list for combat boots, with no complaints lodged so far.
"During the pandemic, people were ordering stuff on Amazon that would arrive a month after or two months after, so people have gotten used to it," said Maguire.
"The fact that they're more patient really helps small businesses."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 5, 2021.
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
Less than a week after two public sculptures featuring a livestream between Dublin, Ireland, and New York City debuted, 'inappropriate behaviour' in real-time interactions between people in the two cities has prompted a temporary shutdown.
Canadian LifeLabs customers who filed an application for a class-action settlement began receiving their payments this week, though at a much lower amount than initially expected.
Saskatchewan RCMP have revealed that a historic sexual assault investigation has led to the discovery of alleged crimes against children dating back to 2005.
Nearly 1,000 wildfires have burned across Canada so far this year. Here's an overview of the situation in Canada.
King Charles III has unveiled the first portrait of the monarch completed since he assumed the throne, a vivid image that depicts him in the bright red uniform of the Welsh Guards against a background of similar hues.
The annual list of Canada's top restaurants in the country was just released and here are the places that made the 2024 cut.
An American accused of sexually assaulting a Pennsylvania college student in 2013 and later sending her a Facebook message that said, 'So I raped you,' has been detained in France after a three-year search.
Captain John Tavares scored 15 seconds into overtime and saved his teammates some embarrassment as Canada held on for a 6-5 win over Austria on Tuesday at the world hockey championship.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.