It all started on Monday when the frontrunner for the leadership Pierre Poilievre posted a video with Katrina, a woman from Nanaimo who gave him a box of sweets. Subsequently, the Conservative Party leadership race turned into a sharp debate about the contents of Nanaimo bars, the famous "no-bake" sweets made in British Columbia.

Katrina was present at Poilievre's rally in town and explained that she had to set up a bake sale cart by the roadside due to the high cost of ingredients like flour, butter, and sugar, as Poilievre stated: "So the price of flour, sugar, butter, and other ingredients and eggs... that go into these Nanaimo bars is expensive," in the video, which has now garnered over 300,000 views. The accompanying comment said: "Making Nanaimo bars has become so expensive now... in Nanaimo."

In the same context, Tasha Khereddine - co-chair of the campaign for Poilievre's main rival Jean Charest - issued a statement on Twitter that read, "There is no flour in Nanaimo bars." Khereddine's tweet became the most famous example of a long wave of critics online accusing Poilievre of "misleading" or "lying" by implying that Nanaimo bars contain flour.

The response is not entirely accurate, according to the official Nanaimo city recipe for the sweets, a proper Nanaimo bar contains Graham wafer crumbs, made from graham flour, a type of coarse whole wheat flour, and there are also small amounts of corn flour in the custard powder required for the second layer of the sweet.

But unlike most of its peers in the one-time baked goods category (like cookies and cupcakes), raw flour is indeed mixed in the preparation process of Nanaimo bars.

In an email to the National Post, Katrina confirmed that she never puts flour in her Nanaimo bars, but those bars were the only flour-free item she sold. She also pointed out that when Jean Charest passed through Nanaimo, she similarly gave him a box of sweets and added that they were "made without flour."

For months, Canadian food prices have significantly exceeded the inflation rate, and this was most evident for baked goods. According to the latest figures released by Statistics Canada, bakery products are now 13.6 percent more expensive compared to last summer, due to world wheat prices nearly doubling over the past twelve months. Analysts have been quick to blame the war in Ukraine for the price increases.