{"id":540652,"date":"2026-03-16T18:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/540652\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T18:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:44:11","slug":"cpi-up-1-8-says-statcan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/540652\/","title":{"rendered":"CPI up 1.8%, says StatCan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Randall Bartlett, deputy chief economist at Desjardins, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss the latest StantCan CPI data for the month of February. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Statistics Canada has released its February 2026 Consumer Price Index (CPI) with a 1.8 per cent rise in February, following a 2.3 per cent increase in January.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The slowdown was largely driven by change in prices this time last year, when costs rose in line with the end of the federal tax holiday.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/BUCEVLRXTFGWLKQFFGZFPKBWS4.JPG\"  width=\"800\" height=\"533\"\/>Shoppers in Toronto&#8217;s Eaton Centre Shoppers pass through Eaton Centre on Boxing Day in Toronto, on Friday, Dec. 26, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Sammy Kogan <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Canadians were most impacted by the rise in food from restaurants, with smaller impacts to purchases of alcoholic beverages and toys. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">On a year-over-year basis, prices for food purchased from stores rose 4.1 per cent in February following a 4.8 per cent increase in January. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The deceleration was led by prices for fresh or frozen beef, which rose 13.9 per cent in February following an 18.8 per cent increase in January. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/LS2R7M37HNEY7ELL37YLGF65BM.JPG\"  width=\"800\" height=\"533\"\/>Beef and Meat products Statistics Canada says food prices drove inflation lower in April, with the cost of groceries rising 1.4 per cent compared with a year ago. Beef and meat products are displayed for sale at a grocery store in Aylmer, Que., on Thursday, May 26, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Sean Kilpatrick <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Prices were driven down last month in a number of sectors including gasoline (-14.2 per cent) \u2013before <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ctvnews.ca\/business\/article\/surging-gas-prices-threaten-to-reverse-canadas-inflation-progress-economists-say\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.ctvnews.ca\/business\/article\/surging-gas-prices-threaten-to-reverse-canadas-inflation-progress-economists-say\/\">gas prices spiked<\/a> due to the ongoing war in Iran \u2013 natural gas (-17.1 per cent), homeowners\u2019 replacement costs and travel tours. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">In February, gasoline prices contributed largely to the slowdown in the CPI, declining 14.2 per cent after a 16.7 per cent decline in January.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/MMPY62UO5BC3JHEBGWAXUGSGLA.JPG\"  width=\"800\" height=\"533\"\/>Gas Prices in Montreal Gas prices are displayed at a gas station in Montreal on Thursday, March 5, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Christopher Katsarov <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">On a month-over-month basis, consumers in British Columbia paid 9.6 per cent more for gasoline in February, the largest increase among the provinces.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">This is primarily due to lower supply amid refinery maintenance and closures in the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Lower priced cellular plans from multiple wireless service providers, led to a 1.5 per cent increase in February compared to a 4.9 percent increase in January.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">On an annual basis for February, prices rose at a slower pace in all provinces compared to January. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Randall Bartlett, deputy chief economist at Desjardins, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss the latest StantCan CPI data for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45,46,43,47,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-540652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-headlines","tag-national","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540652","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=540652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}