Tausi Insider

Romaine lettuce in Simi Valley, Calif., in 2018. Wholesale produce distributors say demand is exceeding supply of iceberg and romaine lettuce. Mark J. Terrill/The Associated Press The cost of lettuce is spiking amid a shortage that’s leading some restaurants to temporarily stop offering leafy greens on their menus. Wholesale produce distributors say demand is exceeding supply of iceberg and romaine lettuce, and pricing pressures are expected to continue throughout the month. Restaurants Canada COO Kelly Higginson said a major lettuce-growing area in California was hit by some kind of virus, after a year that’s already been rife with difficulties thanks to heat and drought. “That particular area has had crops decimated. So there’s a massive shortage,” said Higginson. From fast-food joints to fine dining establishments, “everybody’s just pulling lettuce off the menu,” she said. That’s because not only is lettuce in short supply, but the available product has in some cases quadrupled in...

If an employer is facing a “shortage” of workers, there is a simple solution: offer higher wages. Fred Lum/the Globe and Mail Don Wright is a fellow with the Public Policy Forum and a former deputy minister to the premier and head of the public service in British Columbia. He has held senior executive positions in business, government and academia. For almost 50 years Canada has done a thoroughly crappy job – to use the technical term in economics – of fostering a labour market that would provide for steady, year-over-year increases in real pay for working Canadians. I calculate that in 1976 it would have taken a worker earning the median employment income six years to save enough for a down payment on a typical single-family home. In 2020 it would have taken 17 years. If that worker lived in Greater Toronto or Vancouver, it would have taken 28 and 30 years, respectively. Given this history, one might think that governments would welcome the prospect of a change in labour market dyna...