Quebecers keep tightening the belt on finances as inflation rates hit province harder than the rest of Canada.<\/p>\n
Statistics Canada\u2019s Consumer Price Index for January 2026 showed that the province suffered the highest inflation rate in Canada, with a rate of 3 per cent, compared to a 2.3 per cent increase across Canada compared to January 2026.<\/p>\n
The main culprit: the high price of coffee and restaurant meals.<\/p>\n
Montrealers told CityNews they are feeling the price rise and are forced to watch their expenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI check the price and before I didn\u2019t check the price \u2013 now yes,\u201d said another, adding the prices of all things have gone up. \u201cAt my work, just the breakfast is $3 more than before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day when I go out, I know I\u2019m going to spend on anything. So it\u2019s a question but I think it\u2019s obvious that we all struggle with that, and most of all here compared to other places I\u2019ve been in Canada,\u201d says one Montrealer, who adds that as a student she constantly struggled to pay for food or clothes.<\/p>\n
While coffee and tea led the increases with a 23 per cent jump in the past year, sugar and confectionaries, store-bought wine and fresh meat, excluding poultry, saw increases of more than 10 per cent.<\/p>\n
Economists attributed it to the federal government tax holiday between December 2024 and February 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you actually look at prices minus the GST holiday, you can see there was a bit of a spike, because when you eliminate a tax temporarily, prices can tend to go up without people noticing,\u201d explains Sylvain Charlebois, visiting scholar at McGill University.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd this is now that we\u2019re actually seeing higher prices in restaurants. So the GST holiday to me was a short-sighted policy only to score political points, but it actually made food more expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Statistics Canada\u2019s data, grocery and food prices aren\u2019t the only items responsible for Quebec\u2019s high inflation rate.<\/p>\n
Cell phone services, internet access and natural gas also suffered a double-digit increase. Rent in the province also rose by 9 per cent, forcing Quebecers to adjust their way of life.<\/p>\n
One Montrealer said, \u201cAs everything is rising, wages aren\u2019t rising, so I feel like everyone has had to adjust accordingly to get through day to day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charlebois said because of overall inflation people have less disposable income to spend at the grocery store where they buy what they need rather than what they want.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re not only talking about food insecurity, but we\u2019re also talking about nutritional insecurity,\u201d Charlebois said. \u201cSo people are just buying calories instead of desirable food products from a nutritional perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charlebois said while prices of items like chocolate and coffee which show signs of decrease despite their high cost, he warns that geopolitical events may once again increase energy prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of what\u2019s going on right now with Iran, we\u2019re certainly concerned about fuel costs,\u201d Charlebois said. \u201cThat could actually make prices higher over the next several months, so we\u2019re keeping a close eye on what\u2019s happening right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quebecers keep tightening the belt on finances as inflation rates hit province harder than the rest of Canada.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-509034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}