{"id":246431,"date":"2026-01-19T16:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/246431\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T16:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T16:05:08","slug":"canadas-inflation-rate-accelerates-to-2-4-in-december-but-key-measures-ease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/246431\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s inflation rate accelerates to 2.4% in December, but key measures ease"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A customer shops in a No Frills grocery store in Toronto. Grocery prices rose at a pace of 5% annually in December, Statistics Canada data show.Chris Young\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Consumer prices in Canada rose at a faster-than-expected pace of 2.4 per cent in December, largely due to the base-year effect from last year\u2019s sales tax break<\/a>, but \u200dclosely-watched core \u200bmeasures of inflation cooled for the third consecutive month, data showed on Monday.<\/p>\n

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast inflation would hold at the 2.2-per-cent rate recorded in November<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On a monthly basis, the consumer price index declined by 0.2 per cent, Statistics Canada \u2060data showed. The monthly decline was less than market expectations of a 0.3-per-cent decrease.<\/p>\n

The Canadian central bank\u2019s preferred measures of core inflation, CPI-median and CPI-trim, continued to ease and were the lowest since December, 2024. CPI-median \u2013 or the value at \u200cthe middle of the set \u200dof price changes in a month \u2013 cooled to 2.5 per cent from 2.8 per cent \u200din November, while CPI-trim \u2013 which excludes the \u200cmost extreme price changes \u2013 decreased to 2.7 per cent from 2.9 per cent.<\/p>\n

The deceleration \u2060in core prices should keep the Bank of Canada at ease after the Bank \u200bheld its key policy rate steady<\/a> at 2.25 per cent in December, and said this was about the right level to keep inflation close to its 2-per-cent target. Money markets expect rates to stay on hold in 2026.<\/p>\n

The rise in headline inflation \u200bin December was driven by a temporary sales tax break on certain food and children\u2019s items authorized by the previous Liberal government headed by Justin Trudeau in the comparative December, 2024, period.<\/p>\n

Restaurant prices, one of the segments affected by the tax holiday, were the largest contributor to the acceleration in the annual inflation rate \u2060in December, 2025.<\/p>\n

Opinion: What cost-of-living crisis? The data tell a different story<\/a><\/p>\n

Moderating the acceleration in the annual rate was a year-over-year \u2060decline in prices for gasoline, which fell 13.8 per cent in December after a 7.8-per-cent decline in \u200cNovember.<\/p>\n

Grocery prices, while unchanged month-over-month, rose 5 per cent annually.<\/p>\n

Excluding volatile food and energy, inflation rose 2.5 per cent in the month.<\/p>\n

Services price inflation rate in December accelerated to 3.3 per cent from 2.8 per cent in November, while goods prices rose by 1.2 per cent after 1.5 per cent in the previous month.<\/p>\n

On an annual average \u200cbasis, prices increased 2.1 per cent last year, following a 2.4 per cent rise in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A customer shops in a No Frills grocery store in Toronto. Grocery prices…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[697,114,184,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-246431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-appwebview","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}