A tower crane has been installed at the Portage Avenue site, as construction barrels forward on Wehwehneh Bahgahkinahgohn – the Southern Chiefs’ Organization’s (SCO) multi-million-dollar project.

Supply chain management professor Paul Larson spoke with CTV about the rise in costs for building supplies.

To watch and read the entire story, please follow the link to CTV Winnipeg. 

For example, the exporter may need to declare the parcel’s value, the authority would check the tax and apply it, and the consumer would pay the extra fee, Prentice predicted.

“(For) the amount of duty they collect on packages under $800 … I don’t think this is a paying proposition for (the U.S.),” he said. “All of this would slow things down.”

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Canada had a record year of maple syrup production in 2024, new data from Statistics Canada revealed on Thursday. However, it may not be enough to lower prices.

“Usually, higher production in agricultural production leads to lower prices, but this is a specialized, processed product,” said Barry Prentice, an agricultural economist at the University of Manitoba.

“Given the large export market, and food inflation, I would say we are lucky just to see no price increase.”

A litre of Grade A maple syrup can range in price from $15-17 at grocery stores like Real Canadian Superstore and Walmart, to $25-28 directly from local producers.

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Known for, among other things, his enthusiasm for the potential airships could have in opening up the movement of goods in the North, Prentice also organizes the annual Fields on Wheels conference that invites experts to focus on issue of agribusiness logistics.

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Prentice said Manitoba producers will be hurt, but not as bad as farmers in Saskatchewan and Alberta because of the province’s proximity to other ports.

“Prince Rupert and Thunder Bay are still open. And in the case of Manitoba, we ship more grain through Thunder Bay than the other two provinces. So again, a little less impact, but it depends where you’re shipping.”

To read more about this story, please visit CTV Winnipeg.

Professor Prentice was also on CBC’s Up To Speed: According to Grain Growers of Canada, more than 50 percent of grain exports travel through the Port of Vancouver. But movement stopped this morning as workers at Metro Vancouver grain terminals walked off the job and onto the picket lines. Barry Prentice is a professor of Supply Chain Management at the University of Manitoba. He tells host Faith Fundal what this strike means for Manitoba farmers in the midst of the harvest season.

It’s a “great idea,” Paul Larson, a University of Manitoba supply chain management professor, wrote in an email. “I’m not a fan of excessive regulations, but perhaps there should be rules regarding routes and hours of operations — and seat belts.”

To read the full the story, please visit the Winnipeg Free Press.

For the full interview, please visit CTV Winnipeg and follow this link to Impact of Baltimore bridge collapse

According to experts, the spike in the seasonal sweet treats is due in part to high demand and the skyrocketing price of cocoa.

“Since November, cocoa prices went from US$3,000 a metric tonne to US$10,000 a metric tonne and the previous record was set back in July of 1977,” said Sylvain Charlebois, the director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University. “People are going cuckoo for cocoa!”

He said the inflated cost is fueled by a “black pod” fungus infecting cacao trees, as well as flooding facing producers in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

“Those two countries actually represent about two-thirds of the world’s coca production,” Charlebois said.

Robert Parsons, a sessional instructor in supply chain management at the University of Manitoba said high seasonal demand doesn’t help.

To read the full story from CTV, please visit CTV Winnipeg ‘Cuckoo for cocoa’: Chocolate prices on the rise ahead of Easter

On the heels of Imperial Oil decommissioning a section of pipeline for preventative maintenance at least a handful of gas stations across Winnipeg are reporting to be out of fuel, or limiting consumption.

Robert Parsons, sessional instructor in the department of supply chain management at the University of Manitoba in the Asper School of Business, said this isn’t cause for panic.

“It’s not a crisis,” he said. “It’s a manageable inconvenience, I think that’s the key thing.”

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