Manitoba freezes price for 1L cartons of milk

Manitoba won’t increase the maximum price for one litre of milk this year.

The province’s Farm Products Marketing Council, which regulates prices for one-litre cartons of milk, will freeze the price for 2026, preventing the planned four-cent increase in February, according to a Jan. 14 press release.

The price freeze doesn’t apply to two or four-litre milk containers because those don’t fall under provincial regulation.

“It’s a small but meaningful step to help people with the rising cost of living, and we’ll keep looking for more ways to put money back in people’s pockets,” Premier Wab Kinew said in a statement to The Carillon.

The new measure won’t impact dairy farmers because they will still see the increase while the grocery store prices remain the same, he said.

Kinew said his government is also exploring how to expand the price freeze to other sizes of milk.

The maximum price for a litre of milk in Manitoba will remain at $2.10 for homogenized milk, $2.03 for two percent, $1.97 for one percent and $1.93 for skim milk.

In 2022, the price increased by 25 cents due to inflation. However in 2025, the council decided to cut the price of milk by one cent after reviewing cost data and market conditions, according to the government press release.

Progressive Conservative agriculture critic Konrad Narth called the move a “political stunt” that has little impact on consumers.

“Wab was quick to act on an opportunity to take credit for something that had absolutely nothing to do with the provincial government or him,” he said.

As milk passes from producers to consumers, it follows a Canadian Dairy Commission formula that applies the production costs and the inflation rate to determine the price. That price is further regulated by the provincial marketing bodies.

“This is something that’s been done federally for decades now, and that number uses a complex formula that takes into consideration retail demand and consumer demand, but along with that, it coincides with production costs,” Narth said. “Then they establish a fair price for the producer and a fair price for the consumer.”

He said the federal commission wasn’t going to increase retail milk prices and set a small fluid milk price rise for producers, allowing Kinew to announce the freeze as though his government could influence the milk retail prices.

Jo-Anne Dalton, executive director for Steinbach Family Resource Centre, said milk prices have a “huge impact” on families when there are multiple young children. Families can only get milk from the charity every other week.

“Milk is definitely one of those things that we know people are coming in for because a four-litre jug of milk doesn’t last two weeks in a family household,” Dalton said.

While she sees the freeze as positive, the non-profit won’t be able to take advantage of it because it relies on four-litre milk jugs to give to families, she said. The charity cut the amount of milk it supplied to people by 50 percent in 2025 because of rising costs.

“This is a good start, but it doesn’t help us in terms of being able to reverse those changes,” Dalton said. “If we can at least hold them (one-litre milk prices) where they are, I think that will offer some immediate relief (for families).”