Air quality advisories issued in 5 provinces, 1 territory
Air quality advisories are in effect across Western Canada as smoky conditions plague some areas, according to the latest forecasts. Here's where.
The country's headline inflation barometer registered a year-over-year increase of 3.1 per cent last month as the pace of price growth slowed in June compared with the decade-high pace one month prior.
June's reading for the consumer price index was down from the annual inflation rate of 3.6 per cent recorded in May, which was the largest yearly increase in a decade.
Annual price growth in June was cooled by the costs for goods, including women's clothing and food, and mortgage costs for homeowners fell 8.6 per cent year-over-year for the largest annual drop over seven decades of comparable data.
Vegetable prices fell 7.5 per cent year-over-year, while prices for beef fell 11.1 per cent compared with June 2020 when prices rose sharply as COVID-19 outbreaks forced plant closures and choked supply.
The year-over-year drop for beef was the largest since January of 1982.
Driving up the headline figure was the heat in Canada's real estate market as homeowner replacement costs, which tracks housing prices, increased by 12.9 per cent year-over-year for the fastest pace since 1987.
Benjamin Reitzes, BMO's director of Canadian rates and macro strategist, said the readings should take some of the air out of concerns about out-of-control inflation for now.
He added that the country needs to see the economy reopen more broadly before it sees if any of the inflationary pressures that could show up do show up.
“There could be pressures there that really have have yet to show up, and globally, there are still a lot of supply chain pressures,” Reitzes said.
“There's still the potential for price pressures to remain an issue. For one month, we get a reprieve. So the Bank of Canada can breathe slightly easier for a month, but we'll we'll see what next month brings.”
Statistics Canada said part of the reading for June has to do with comparing prices to the lows recorded in the same month last year.
Gasoline prices, for instance, saw a year-over-year rise of 32 per cent in June compared with 43.4 per cent in May because gasoline prices had partially recovered in June 2020 after plummeting at the start of the pandemic.
The agency said that excluding gasoline prices, the annual rate of inflation would have been 2.2 per cent.
CIBC senior economist Royce Mendes said the deceleration in June appears to confirm the Bank of Canada's view that much of the recent pickup in inflation is a temporary effect.
Statistics Canada said the average of the three measures for core inflation, which are considered better gauges of underlying price pressures and closely tracked by the Bank of Canada, was 2.23 per cent in June, in line with the reading for May.
“Though still turbulent, core inflation remains moderate and these price shifts are likely within the Bank of Canada's expectations and should not lead to any shifts in monetary policy,” said Conference Board of Canada economist Anna Feng.
Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem has said the central bank plans to keep a close eye on how prices play out over the coming months and would use the tools available to it to bring inflation under control if temporary issues look to become a permanent problem.
TD senior economist Sri Thanabalasingam said the bank will also have to keep an eye on inflation expectations, which could rise meaningfully if supply constraints persist and demand runs hotter than expected.
Statistics Canada last week updated the basket of goods used to calculate the consumer price index to better reflect pandemic-related spending patterns. The agency said the change didn't have a significant effect on the headline inflation reading for June.
RBC economist Claire Fan said the change may have a slight downward on future price growth readings, adding that inflation will likely stay high over the rest of the year as the economic recovery builds momentum.
Here's what happened in the provinces (previous month in brackets):
The agency also released rates for major cities, but cautioned that figures may have fluctuated widely because they are based on small statistical samples (previous month in brackets):
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 28, 2021
Air quality advisories are in effect across Western Canada as smoky conditions plague some areas, according to the latest forecasts. Here's where.
After receiving a DNA kit one Christmas from his son-in-law, Hugh McCormick soon discovered that he had six unknown siblings, with whom he shared the same birth parents.
Four years on, the controversy over whether airlines owed refunds to passengers after cancelling hundreds of thousands of flights during the pandemic continues to simmer, aggravated by a sluggish, opaque complaints process.
Many foods fall under the category of ultraprocessed foods, depending on their exact ingredients. This type of food has been studied a lot lately, and the results aren’t great.
Dozens of Ontarians are expressing frustration in the province’s health-care system after their family doctors either dropped them as patients or threatened to after they sought urgent care elsewhere.
A new study projecting declining rates of cancer cases and deaths in Canada demonstrates the success of prevention and early detection programs, but also highlights areas where more work is needed to save and prolong lives, researchers say.
The star prosecution witness in Donald Trump's hush money trial is set to take the stand Monday with testimony that could help shape the outcome of the first criminal case against an American president.
Millions of Indians across 96 constituencies began casting their ballots on Monday as the country's gigantic, six-week-long election edges past its halfway mark. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a third straight term with an eye on winning a supermajority in Parliament.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
English, history, entertainment, math and geography: high school trivia teams could be quizzed on any of it when they compete at the Reach for the Top Nationals in Ottawa in June.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.