Trade your zucchini loaf for my jar of tomatoes? Why some Canadians are

When Samantha Fanning was expecting her second child, the room that would become the baby’s nursery needed a major glow-up.

But as a professional photographer and at the time a single mother, Fanning didn’t have room in her schedule — or the painting skills required — to transform the space.

“So I traded photography for someone to come in and paint that bedroom,” Fanning told Cost of Living. Her painter got some nice new family photos. 

After that, she was hooked on bartering, or the exchange of goods and services without cash.

A friend cut and coloured Fanning’s hair in return for a photo shoot.

“One time I did eyelash extensions,” she said. “That’s something I would never have had money to go and do if not for trading.”

Given she also didn’t have health benefits back then, it was “invaluable” when she was able to trade photography for massage therapy, said Fanning, who lives in Cochrane, Alta.

Although bartering’s roots reach back to ancient times, long before cash and cryptocurrencies, some Canadians are returning to the practice, especially as they grapple with an affordability crisis.

It’s happening informally, through local Facebook groups and other grassroots efforts and through the creation of tech platforms that facilitate trades.

The ‘informal economy’

Robert Nason, associate professor at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management, said the development isn’t surprising.

“In some ways, some parts of our economy have become overly financialized. We need to put a number on everything. And I think this movement is a bit of a reaction against that.”

While the value of goods and services exchanged this way is not known — nobody keeps track every time a couple of neighbours trade a zucchini loaf for a jar of tomatoes — bartering is considered part of the wider informal economy, said Nason. 

Economists can make educated estimates of what portion of a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) is represented by the informal economy, he said.

In lower-income countries where more people live a subsistence lifestyle — trading things they’ve grown or made, or selling them at local markets, for example — the informal economy represents a bigger piece of the pie. 

“I do research in South Africa, for instance, and the informal economy represents something like 30 per cent of GDP,” he said. 

Here in Canada, Statistics Canada pegs that number at around 2.8 per cent of GDP,…