Commonwealth _Canada _ The inflation rate in Canada reversed its downward trend last month and increased, reaching a rate of 4.4% annually. According to fresh statistics issued by Statistics Canada on Tuesday, economists had anticipated that the cost of living had decreased from March’s rate of 4.3% to somewhere around 4.1.
Instead, it grew once again as the price of items like petrol, rent, and mortgages rose over the month. Since Canada’s inflation rate reached an almost 40-year high of 8.1% in June 2022, this is the first increase in the cost of living.
While total expenses have decreased from their previous record highs, food prices have been a major cause of worry for Canadian families recently and are still at eye-watering levels. In the year ending in April, the price of groceries rose by 9.1%. This is less than March’s 9.7% pace, but it is still more than twice as high as the inflation rate as a whole.
Although they are down from the highs reached a year ago, gasoline prices, which surged in early 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, are once more creeping higher on a monthly basis. The greatest increase in pump prices since October of last year occurred in the month of April alone, when they increased 6.3%. While there are many macroeconomic and geopolitical factors driving higher fuel costs, one contributing cause to their monthly increase was the government carbon tax’s hike on April 1 to $65 per tonne of emissions.
This increased the price of gasoline by around three cents per litre, bringing the total to about 14 cents per gallon. Government statistics show that in April, the average retail cost of a litre of gasoline was little over $1.60. This is up from $1.50 in March, but it’s still a lot less than the record-breaking $2.07 per litre in June 2022 or $1.74 per litre at this time last year.
