{"id":68787,"date":"2026-01-16T20:30:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T20:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2026\/01\/16\/rbc-warns-fresh-cpi-report-will-show-food-inflation-grew-more-than-5\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:30:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T20:30:08","slug":"rbc-warns-fresh-cpi-report-will-show-food-inflation-grew-more-than-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2026\/01\/16\/rbc-warns-fresh-cpi-report-will-show-food-inflation-grew-more-than-5\/","title":{"rendered":"RBC warns fresh CPI report will show food inflation grew more than 5%"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><\/div><p> \n<br \/><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Americans are hooked on Canadian food\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cEFl5xDGUTE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p> Year-over-year <\/p>\n<p>                        food prices<\/p>\n<p>                         probably rose more than five per cent in December, continuing a trend that hurt Canadians\u2019 pocketbooks at grocery stores and restaurants throughout 2025, say <\/p>\n<p>                        Royal Bank of Canada<\/p>\n<p>                         economists. <\/p>\n<p> RBC, in its preview of Statistics Canada\u2019s December <\/p>\n<p>                        consumer price index<\/p>\n<p>                         (CPI) report coming on Monday, said year-over-year <\/p>\n<p>                        food inflation<\/p>\n<p>                         will be boosted because there were lower after-tax restaurant prices in December 2024 due to a federal GST\/HST holiday. <\/p>\n<p> \u201cGrocery price inflation also remains elevated \u2014 4.7 per cent as of November,\u201d Nathan Janzen and Abbey Xu said in a note, adding that it outpaced overall <\/p>\n<p>                        inflation<\/p>\n<p>                         of 2.2 per cent. <\/p>\n<p> Food inflation has been a thorn in Canadians\u2019 sides since the pandemic started. <\/p>\n<p> Inflation for food purchased from stores peaked at 11.4 per cent in November 2022, according to Statistics Canada, and retook that high in January 2023 before slowly cooling. There was some relief in 2024 as inflation floated slightly above and below the <\/p>\n<p>                        Bank of Canada<\/p>\n<p>                        \u2018s target for inflation of two per cent. <\/p>\n<p> However, it started to grow again in 2025 and hit a near-term high in November, which <\/p>\n<p>                        <span>was evident across a wide swath of categories, from meat and dairy to fruits and vegetables to sweets and condiments.<\/span> <\/p>\n<p> Inflation rose 17.7 per cent for fresh and frozen beef in November from a year earlier, while lettuce jumped 26.8 per cent year over year and coffee grew 27.8 per cent. <\/p>\n<p> Many economists are forecasting overall inflation in December to match November\u2019s rate, according to Bloomberg, which tracks their calls. <\/p>\n<p> December\u2019s inflation numbers are the \u201cmain event\u201d in next week\u2019s Canadian economic calendar, National Bank of Canada economists Daren King and Jacelyn Paquet, said in a note. <\/p>\n<p> National Bank is an outlier amongst economists in that its CPI prediction calls for the overall rate to slow two-tenths of a percentage point to two per cent, mostly due to an eight per cent drop in gasoline prices. <\/p>\n<p> RBC is also calling for core inflation, which excludes food and energy, to cool slightly to 2.3 per cent from 2.4 per cent, which \u201cwould mark a second consecutive month of improvement.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> On the core front, economists generally expect the Bank of Canada\u2019s preferred measures of median- and trim-CPI to both slow slightly in November to 2.7 per cent from 2.8 per cent, according to Bloomberg. <\/p>\n<p> Looking ahead, \u201cheadline inflation compared to a year ago will continue to be distorted by tax changes,\u201d Janzen and Wu said, referring to the cancellation of the consumer <\/p>\n<p>                        carbon tax<\/p>\n<p>                         by Prime Minister <\/p>\n<p>                        Mark Carney<\/p>\n<p>                        \u2018s government. <\/p>\n<p> The federal GST\/HST tax holiday, which ended in mid-February 2025, will also have a similar effect of \u201cartificially\u201d raising price growth, \u201calthough an offsetting rise in pre-tax prices a year ago will limit the impact,\u201d they said. <\/p>\n<p> RBC is calling for the Bank of Canada to hold <\/p>\n<p>                        interest rates<\/p>\n<p>                         at the current level of 2.25 per cent in 2026. <\/p>\n<ul class=\"related_links\">\n<li>McDonald&#8217;s Canada announces year-long price lock on $5 meals<\/li>\n<li>Canada\u2019s Grocery Code won\u2019t cut prices, but here&#8217;s how it could still help consumers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> <em>\u2022 Email: gmvsuhanic@postmedia.com <\/em> <\/p>\n\n<br \/>RBC warns fresh CPI report will show food inflation grew more than 5%<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>2026-01-16 20:30:08<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Year-over-year food prices probably rose more than five per cent in December, continuing a trend that hurt Canadians\u2019 pocketbooks at grocery stores and restaurants throughout 2025, say Royal Bank of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/financialpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/no0116foodprices.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/68788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}