Added pressure on already snarled supply chain expected in Manitoba following flooding in B.C.

WINNIPEG -

The devastation in southern British Columbia is reverberating across Canada including in Manitoba.

For Randeep Manghera the catastrophic flooding is hitting close to home in more ways than one. His sister lives in Abbotsford, B.C.—one of the hardest hit areas in the province.

“They told us there’s flooding in their basements and the road is broken, highway’s broken,” Manghera said.

Major routes have been severed, cutting off access between the Lower Mainland and the B.C. Interior and rail lines between the West Coast and the rest of Canada have also been impacted.

Because of the disruptions, Gill’s Supermarket, where Manghera shops in Winnipeg’s Tyndall Park neighbourhood, expects delays on some ethnic produce which the store mainly gets from distributors in the Vancouver area.

“We have whatever produce we have right now, we have it for a few more days and then after two days we’re going to see the cooler empty,” said Jagjit Gill, the owner of Gill’s Supermarket.

Gill said around 60 per cent of the produce he sells in his Indian grocery stores in Winnipeg comes from B.C. He’s now working to bring in some items from the east.

It’s just the latest challenge for a supply chain already snarled by the pandemic, according to Aaron Dolyniuk of the Manitoba Trucking Association.

“Obviously, this is going to have further impact on our supply chains here in Canada and internationally,” Dolyniuk said. “Product coming in as well as going out.”

Dolyniuk knows of one Manitoba-based company trying to get shipments of processed meat products to Vancouver but they can’t get through by road.

“They have dozens of trucks that are currently trapped in Alberta trying to make it over to the port with no route,” Dolyniuk said.

Barry Prentice, a professor of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business, expects some delays on consumer goods but he said many items have already been shipped to stores for the holiday shopping season.

“By and large I think we’re not too bad that way,” Prentice said. “The bigger impact on us is likely going to be exports and in particular grain because this is the peak shipping season for grain.”

Gill said he’s been told the delays could last for around three weeks. He hopes they’ll be only be felt in his store for about one week.

“For all the customers or the Winnipeg community, don’t panic,” Gill said. “Don’t panic like we did in the pandemic time.”

Prentice said the supply chain’s resilient and expects any disruptions related to the flooding to be short-lived.