‘People are more desperate’: B.C. shoplifting numbers rise along with inflation

Every year, the monthly numbers in Maria Fedyk’s spreadsheet get a little more painful.

She loses a few hundred dollars each flip of the calendar to shoplifters at her cozy Lonsdale Quay store, Essential Kitchenware.

“Every year since COVID, it gets a little worse,” Fedyk said. “The (value of goods stolen) has easily doubled.”

Since January, the figure has been $200 to $400 per month in goods gone missing.

Fedyk has installed more expensive security cameras to monitor her 600-square-foot shop and its 1,000 or so items, ranging from egg cups to stovetop coffee makers, measuring spoons to culinary knives, cutting boards to aprons. She might get 100 customers daily, but 3,000 people pass through the Quay’s covered shopping area every day, including commuters arriving by SeaBus and tourists from downtown.