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There’s been a lot of attention paid to how Canada’s oil boom has helped make gasoline cheaper. What many people may not realize is that the boom is also driving up the prices they pay for burgers and steaks.

Surging energy investment in Prairie Provinces, home to most of the nation’s farms and cattle ranches, has boosted domestic crude output to a record and sent pump prices to a three-year low. That’s led to jobs on drilling rigs or pipe crews paying two-thirds more than those in livestock, luring cowboys and beef-plant workers to the oil patch.

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The labour shortage is squeezing a cattle industry already diminished over the past decade by mad cow disease, drought and floods. The herd in Canada, the world’s eighth-largest beef exporter, is the smallest in 21 years. Beef supplies are so tight that Costco Wholesale Corp. is importing more meat from the U.S., where prices are the highest ever.

It’s impossible to find workers

“It’s impossible to find workers,” said Tim Stewart, 57, who has four unfilled jobs and is considering selling the 4,000- head ranch in Rockglen, Saskatchewan, that his family has owned since 1910. “If someone came along with a big fat checkbook, we’d probably walk away.”