It was 2012 and times were good in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Oil was flowing offshore, and expensive bottles of wine were flowing in restaurants around St. John’s.
Jeremy Bonia remembers the days when a barrel of oil sold for $120, and a bottle of wine could easily fetch more.
“I mean, we were doing well,” he said with a smirk while standing in front of his restaurant, Raymonds, on Water Street in St. John’s.
The booming economy paved the way for new possibilities on the city’s food scene — high end dining for people with money to spend, and corporations looking to impress potential clients.
There was as much business being done at the dinner table as the boardroom table, and people like Bonia used the influx of riches to build their dream restaurants.
Those places are empty now, as a pandemic and plummeting oil prices have wreaked havoc on the already fragile economy in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Bonia and co-owner Jeremy Charles were forced this spring to lay off about 100 staff members between Raymonds and their other restaurant, The Merchant Tavern, with no idea if or when they could bring everyone back.
Everything is changing
High-end restaurants depend on tourism to make money in the summer months, and are kept afloat throughout the offseason by major industry players, like oil and gas companies.
But when it comes to the symbiotic relationship between oil and restaurants, most of the damage was done before the world knew about COVID-19.
The riches of 2012 were followed by a crash at the end of 2014. The yearly average price for a barrel of oil plummeted from $98.97 to $53.03, and the big players on the Grand Banks started slashing.
“We started to see companies scale back either office sizes, or team sizes, and expense accounts as well,” Bonia said.
“Just the amount of meetings and physical people on the ground started to scale back quite a bit.”
Without a strong economy to prop up the restaurant industry throughout the offseason, Raymonds closed its doors for the winter this year. The decision was made before COVID-19 was on anybody’s radar.
In the historic Quidi Vidi Village, chef Todd Perrin knows all about the rise and fall of oil prices at Mallard Cottage.
Oil had been the catalyst to exploring the world of fine dining with traditional cuisine — places where concoctions of wild game and locally-sourced vegetables could fetch a pretty penny.
Todd Perrin, pictured in this file photo, cuts a cooked lobster at his restaurant, Mallard Cottage, in St. John’s. (Gary Locke/CBC)
“It made it possible to operate a restaurant and be able to pay the bills,” Perrin said. “At the beginning of my career, it was a tough market. When oil really hit, and St. John’s was full of people attached to the oil industry with expense accounts, it made a big, big difference.”
By the time the expense accounts shrunk, places like Raymonds and Mallard Cottage already had reputations bolstered by profiles in publications like The New York Times to help carry them through the leaner years.
Those international awards and glowing reviews meant tourists were flocking to get in during the summer seasons.
Now, with no tourists due to COVID-19 restrictions, Bonia said he knows they’ll have a hard time continuing the way they had for a decade.
While other restaurants are relying on locals eating out to keep them afloat, he said that’s not likely with a place like Raymonds — especially with more than 30,000 jobs lost in the province since March.
“Fine dining is a niche thing. It’s not something we expect people to come out and do once a week, once a month even,” he said.
“Raymonds will definitely feel it more than other restaurants.”
How oil will affect the next generation of chefs
But it’s not just local restaurants that are feeling the effects of the downturn in oil.
Roger Andrews, an advanced cooking instructor at the College of the North Atlantic, said he can look at his students on the first day of class, and pick out the ones who aspire to be the next celebrity chef.
He makes it his goal to give them the advice they need to hone their skills, but to also open up their minds to more realistic pathways.
With a downturn in the economy, students can expect fewer restaurants taking people in for internships, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of options.
“Where they’re actually going to go is the big thing,” Andrews said.
“Perhaps we’re not teaching them for the restaurant setting as much as we would for the old age home.”
Roger Andrews is a chef and instructor of the advanced cooking program at College of the North Atlantic in St. John’s. (Gary Locke/CBC)
Another perk of the offshore oil boom was an uptake in the college’s marine cooking program.
People that grew tired of working in the volatile world of restaurant kitchens were returning to upgrade their education and head offshore. Oil companies handed lucrative salaries to cooks, who were ditching meagre pay onshore to head out on the rigs and supply vessels in the North Atlantic.
“They have families, want something more stable, or they go chasing money,” Andrews said.
“You’ve got big oil offering up someone $100,000 a year — people are going to take that.”
Newfoundland and Labrador’s offshore has lost at least one oil platform for up to two years, and public figures from the premier to the president of Memorial University have called on the federal government to support the industry to prevent further losses.
Andrews expects the restaurant industry will thin out, too, with the combination of pains being inflicted on the province from all sides — Muskrat Falls in the north, offshore oil in the east, and a lack of tourists entering the province from the west.
“It’s a dog-eat-dog world, where you have to be very unique, and interesting and different,” he said.
“I can foresee with a bit of a change in the economy, the number of those restaurants will have to drop down a little bit, unfortunately.”
Raymonds is a fine dining restaurant in downtown St. John’s. With executive chef Jeremy Charles and sommelier Jeremy Bonia at the helm, the restaurant has earned high praise on the global stage. (Eddy Kennedy/CBC)
Jeremy Bonia hopes that won’t include Raymonds. To save his neck, he’s willing to alter the formula that made the restaurant a hit with critics around the world.
“We look forward to the day we can go back to what we were doing before,” he said.
“I’m sure we’ll open Raymonds, it just may be a different capacity, maybe as a different concept for a little bit.”
Bonia and Charles have had offers thrown at them before to leave behind their home province and start new ventures on the mainland, but they’ve resisted those — and Bonia said, they will resist more.
“We’re not here for the weather and we’re not here for the money. We’re here because we love living here,” he said.
This coverage is part of Changing Course, a series of stories from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador that’s taking a closer look at how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting local industries and businesses, and how they’re adapting during these uncertain times to stay afloat.
OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
