{"id":293786,"date":"2026-01-20T10:46:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T10:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/293786\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T10:46:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T10:46:16","slug":"editorial-judging-mark-carney-on-the-cost-of-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/293786\/","title":{"rendered":"EDITORIAL: Judging Mark Carney on the cost of food"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following his cabinet swearing-in ceremony in May, Prime Minister Mark Carney said one way for Canadians to judge the performance of his government would be \u201cby their experience at the grocery store.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the latest data from Statistics Canada on December\u2019s food inflation rate<\/a>, Carney gets a failing grade.<\/p>\n

While the annual inflation rate rose to 2.4% from 2.2% in November \u2014 higher than expected<\/a> \u2014 the cost of food purchased at grocery stores continued to increase at more than double the headline inflation rate at 5%.<\/p>\n

Staples such as coffee (30.8%) and fresh or frozen beef (16.8%) \u201cremained the largest contributors to the increase,\u201d according to the federal data-collection agency.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s just the latest in a stream of bad news on the cost of food.<\/p>\n

Little relief expected in 2026<\/p>\n

Last month, Statistics Canada reported that grocery prices rose 4.7% year over year in November after increasing 3.4% in October.<\/p>\n

Postmedia columnist Sylvain Charlebois<\/a>, senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, noted food inflation has exceeded the headline inflation rate every month since June 2024, save for the federally mandated GST holiday months from December 2024 to February 2025.<\/p>\n

He described that as a temporary fix which did nothing to address the root causes of food inflation.<\/p>\n

Citing an 8.5% increase in the cost of restaurant food in December, Charlebois said Canada\u2019s combined food inflation rate of 6.2% is highest in the G7, ahead of Japan (6.1%), U.K. (4.2%), U.S. (3.1%), Italy (2.6%), France (1.7%) and Germany (1.4%).<\/p>\n

Nor is food inflation expected to slow down this year.<\/p>\n

RECOMMENDED VIDEOPolicy-driven factors mostly to blame<\/p>\n

A report by Dalhousie in conjunction with other Canadian universities last month predicted food prices will rise 4-6% this year, costing the average family of four $1,000 more to purchase the same amount of food as in 2025.<\/p>\n

Of course, food inflation is affected by some factors the federal government can\u2019t control, but Charlebois said the biggest culprits are policy driven including excessive regulations, interprovincial trade barriers, poor logistics, rising compliance costs and carbon pricing embedded throughout the supply chain system.<\/p>\n

\u201cFood inflation is no longer a passing storm<\/a>,\u201d Charlebois said, adding the problems have been developing for almost two decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a warning signal (that) Canada so far is choosing to ignore.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following his cabinet swearing-in ceremony in May, Prime Minister Mark Carney said one way for Canadians to judge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,179,18,13353,10454,42824,19,20662,17,15847,4475],"class_list":{"0":"post-293786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-food-inflation","12":"tag-food-prices","13":"tag-headline-inflation","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-inflation-rate","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-mark-carney","18":"tag-statistics-canada"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115927029130833479","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}