Monday, December 23, 2024

Inflation in Canada is on target. Why are groceries (and other things) still so expensive?

There’s uncertainty about how much you will have to pay in your shopping cart, but for a lot of families, covering the associated fee of essentials on the checkout can also be an actual struggle. According to a brand new one Angus Reid Institute survey51% of Canadians say it’s a challenge to maintain up with their household’s food needs. And there is no such thing as a price discrimination as this is applicable to each low-income households and Canadian families with incomes over $200,000.

“While inflation may be easing, the cumulative effects of past inflation mean that many goods remain expensive,” says Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS. That’s why people of all ages and families are affected. People of all sizes from coast to coast are feeling the crisis, including Anna Lee Boschetto, a mother of two in Caledon, Ontario. “I consider myself very lucky that we never go hungry despite high food prices,” she says. “But it is not lost on me that there are a number of families in my neighborhood, throughout the GTA and beyond who are not so fortunate. It is alarming because there appears to be no tangible solution to this crisis.”

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The peculiarities of inflation

Inflation in Canada has fallen this fall and is now at 2.0% in October. Why can we all still feel the scarcity on the coffee shop, the market, the food market, and even when ordering? High inflation has led to higher operating costs for farmers and producers, supply chain disruptions and shifts in corporate profits, all of which have led to high food prices.

And while food price increases are finally beginning to moderate, they stood at 2.7% year-on-year in October (versus 2.4% in September), the most recent study says Consumer Price Index Reportleading to food inflation still being higher than overall inflation.

Why your grocery bills are still so high

According to the most recent edition of, the common family of 4 is predicted to spend $16,297.20 on groceries this 12 months – that is $701.79 greater than in 2023 Canada’s Food Price Reportpublished by Dalhousie University, the University of Guelph, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of British Columbia.

And that is on top of the whopping $1,065 increase the 12 months before. “Families are feeling the pressure,” Charlebois said. No, you do not think inflation hasn’t gone away. We’re still coping with it.

When will food prices go down in Canada?

When and the way much food prices will fall is a sophisticated query – to which there is no such thing as a easy answer. One of the explanations for that is that it isn’t nearly inflation.

“Global supply issues, ongoing global unrest and unpredictable weather have also impacted food prices,” says Mike von Massow, a food economist on the University of Guelph.

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