'It could be catastrophic': Woman says natural supplement contained hidden painkiller drug
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
Canada's central bank has sent a warning that increases in the cost of living would continue into next year, but signalled it wasn't yet prepared to pull its key lever to rein in inflation.
The annual pace of inflation in October rose to 4.7 per cent, a pandemic-era high and the fastest year-over-year gain in the consumer price index in 18 years.
The Bank of Canada said high inflation rates will continue through the first half of next year, but should by the second half of 2022 fall back to its comfort zone of between one and three per cent.
By the end of next year, the bank is forecasting the annual inflation rate to fall to 2.1 per cent.
While the path for inflation and the economy are largely following the central bank's expectations, the statement released Wednesday said the bank "is closely watching inflation expectations and labour costs" to make sure they don't take off and cause a spiral of price growth.
The comments in the last scheduled rate announcement of the year left the key rate at its rock-bottom level of 0.25 per cent, unchanged from where it was in January at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The announcement also said that the bank doesn't expect to raise the trendsetting rate until some time between April and September next year, which is unchanged from its previous guidance.
"Overall, the (Bank of Canada) did indeed resist spitting in anyone's holiday 'nog," Derek Holt, head of capital markets economics at Scotiabank, wrote in a note. "They stayed on track with guidance to begin entertaining rate hikes as soon as next April."
When the bank does act, the moves are likely to be fast and furious, said BMO chief economist Douglas Porter. The bank has a history of quickly raising rates from emergency levels, he said, suggesting as many as four rate hikes by the end of 2022.
"When the Bank of Canada believes that interest rates need to go up, they don't tend to wait around, they tend to move relatively quickly," Porter said.
All of this assumes, of course, that the Bank of Canada's mandate will stay at the two-per-cent inflation target and not include any marching orders to boost employment, RBC senior economist Josh Nye said.
In the afternoon, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government would "renew the mandate of the Bank of Canada" when asked about the two-per-cent target, adding later in French that an announcement would arrive soon.
The bank said the economy appears to have "considerable momentum" heading to the end of the year after growing at an annualized rate of 5.4 per cent in the third quarter of the year, a hair below what the Bank of Canada forecasted in October.
The Bank of Canada's statement noted that the quarterly growth brought total economic activity to within about 1.5 per cent of where it was in the last quarter of 2019, before COVID-19 washed upon Canada's shores.
Similarly, the labour market had a stronger-than-expected showing in November, pushing the share of core-age workers with a job to an all-time high and bringing the unemployment rate up to 0.3 percentage points above its pre-pandemic level in February 2020.
Still, the bank notes headwinds from devastating floods in British Columbia and uncertainties from the Omicron variant could throw another wrench into snarled supply chains and scare off consumers from spending on services.
TD senior economist Sri Thanabalasingam said the bank may move sooner on rates if Omicron proves to be less of a health concern than initially feared, noting the economy can handle it "with inflation running hot, and the labour market on solid footing."
A rise in rates would impact interest charged for variable rate mortgages, which could tighten the finances of households that over the course of 2021 have added $121.5 billion in mortgage debt, including $38 billion between July and September.
"It's going to be, I think, particularly problematic for Canadians who have (taken on) fairly substantial mortgages, particularly when interest rates have been low for such a long period of time," said Tashia Batstone, president of FP Canada, a professional body of financial planners.
"What that means is you have to work harder to stick to your budget, you have to be watching the debt that you're taking on, and in particular watch that you may not be able to have the flexibility around mortgage loans."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 8, 2021.
A Manitoba woman thought she found a miracle natural supplement, but said a hidden ingredient wreaked havoc on her health.
Hospital chaplain J.S. Park opens up about death, grief and hearing thousands of last words, and shares his advice for the living.
The World Health Organization is likely to issue a wider warning about contaminated Johnson and Johnson-made children's cough syrup found in Nigeria last week, it said in an email.
Police have released video footage of a dramatic takedown of a group of teens wanted in connection with an attempted carjacking in Markham earlier this month.
Canada called for 'all parties' to de-escalate rising tensions in the Mideast following an apparent Israeli drone attack against Iran overnight.
A woman who recently moved to Canada from India was searching for a job when she got caught in an online job scam and lost $15,000.
More money will land in the pockets of some Canadian families on Friday for the latest Canada Child Benefit installment.
The World Health Organization and around 500 experts have agreed for the first time on what it means for a disease to spread through the air, in a bid to avoid the confusion early in the COVID-19 pandemic that some scientists have said cost lives.
American millionaire Jonathan Lehrer, one of two men charged in the killings of a Canadian couple in Dominica, has been denied bail.
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a grade four student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.
When Les Robertson was walking home from the gym in North Vancouver's Lower Lonsdale neighbourhood three weeks ago, he did a double take. Standing near a burrow it had dug in a vacant lot near East 1st Street and St. Georges Avenue was a yellow-bellied marmot.
A moulting seal who was relocated after drawing daily crowds of onlookers in Greater Victoria has made a surprise return, after what officials described as an 'astonishing' six-day journey.
Just steps from Parliament Hill is a barber shop that for the last 100 years has catered to everyone from prime ministers to tourists.
A high score on a Foo Fighters pinball machine has Edmonton player Dave Formenti on a high.
A compound used to treat sour gas that's been linked to fertility issues in cattle has been found throughout groundwater in the Prairies, according to a new study.