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Business
Is Government Inflation Reporting Accurate?

David Clinton
Who ya gonna believe: official CPI figures or your lyin’ eyes?
Great news! Weāve brought inflation back under control and stuff is now only costing you 2.4 percent more than it did last year!
Thatās more or less the message weāve been hearing from governments over the past couple of years. And in fact, the official Statistics Canada consumer price indexĀ (CPI) numbers do show us that the āall-itemsā index in 2024 was only 2.4 percent higher than in 2023. Fantastic.
So why doesnāt itĀ feelĀ fantastic?
Well statistics are funny that way. When youāve got lots of numbers, there are all kinds of ways to dress āem up before presenting them as an index (or chart). And there really is no one combination of adjustments and corrections thatās definitively ārightā. So Iām sure Statistics Canada isnāt trying to misrepresent things.
But Iām also curious to test whether the CPI is truly representative of Canadiansā real financial experiences. My first attempt to create my own alternative āconsumer price indexā, involved Statistics Canadaās āDetailed household final consumption expenditureā. That table contains actual dollar figures for nation-wide spending on a wide range of consumer items. To represent the costs Canadianās face when shopping for basics, I selected these nine categories:
- Food and non-alcoholic beverages
- Clothing and footwear
- Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels
- Major household appliances
- Pharmaceutical products and other medical products (except cannabis)
- Transport
- Communications
- University education
- Property insurance
I then took the fourth quarter (Q4) numbers for each of those categories for all the years between 2013 and 2024 and divided them by theĀ total population of the countryĀ for each year. That gave me an accurate picture of per capita spending on core cost-of-living items.
Overall, living and breathing through Q4 2013 would have cost the average Canadian $4,356.38 (or $17,425.52 for a full year). Spending for those same categories in Q4 2024, however, cost us $6,266.48 – a 43.85 percent increase.
By contrast, the official CPI over those years rose only 31.03 percent. Thatās quite the difference. Hereās how the year-over-year changes in CPI inflation vs actual spending inflation compare:
As you can see, with the exception of 2020 (when COVID left us with nothing to buy), the official inflation number was consistently and significantly lower than actual spending. And, in the case of 2021, it was more than double.
Since 2023, the items with the largest price growth were university education (57.46 percent), major household appliances (52.67 percent), and housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels (50.79).
Having said all that, you could justifiably argue that the true cost of living hasnāt really gone up that much, but that at least part of the increase in spending is due to a growing taste for luxury items and high volume consumption. I canāt put a precise number on that influence, but I suspect itās not trivial.
Since data onĀ spendingĀ doesnāt seem to be the best measure of inflation, perhaps I could build my own basket of costs and compareĀ thoseĀ numbers to the official CPI. To do that, I collected average monthly costs forĀ gasoline,Ā home rentals, a selection of 14Ā core grocery items, and taxes paid by the average Canadian homeowner.¹ I calculated the tax burden (federal, provincial, property, and consumption) using the average of the estimates of two AI models.
How did the inflation represented by my custom basket compare with the official CPI? Well between 2017 and 2024, the Statistics Canadaās CPI grew by 23.39 percent. Over that same time, the monthly cost of my basket grew from $4,514.74 to $5,665.18; a difference of 25.48 percent. Thatās not nearly as dramatic a difference as we saw when we measured spending, but itās not negligible either.
The very fact that the government makes all this data freely available to us is evidence that theyāre not out to hide the truth. But it canāt hurt to keep an active and independent eye on them, too.
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2025 Federal Election
Carneyās Hidden Climate Finance Agenda

From Energy Now
By Tammy Nemeth and Ron Wallace
It is high time that Canadians discuss and understand Mark Carneyās avowed plan to re-align capital with global Net Zero goals.
Mark Carney’s economic vision for Canada, one that spans energy, housing and defence, rests on an unspoken, largely undisclosed, linchpin: Climate Finance ā one that promises a Net Zero future for Canada but which masks a radical economic overhaul.
Regrettably, Carneyās potential approach to a Net Zero future remains largely unexamined in this election. As the former chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), Carney has proposed newĀ policies,Ā offices,Ā agencies,Ā andĀ bureausĀ required to achieve these goals.. Pieced together from his presentations, discussions, testimonies and book, Carneyās approach to climate finance appears to have four pillars: mandatory climate disclosures, mandatory transition plans, centralized data sharing via the United Nationsā Net Zero Data Public Utility (NZDPU) and compliance with voluntary carbon markets (VCMs). There are serious issues for Canadaās economy if these principles were to form the core values for policies under a potential Liberal government.
About the first pillar Carney has beenĀ unequivocal: āAchieving net zero requires a whole economy transition.ā Ā This would require a restructuring energy and financial systems to shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy with CarneyĀ insistingĀ repeatedly in his book that āevery financial [and business] decision takes climate change into account.ā Climate finance, unlike broaderĀ sustainable financeĀ with its Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) focus would channel capital into sectors aligned with a 2050 Net Zero trajectory.Ā Carney states: āCompanies, and those who invest in themā¦who are part of the solution, will be rewarded. Those lagging behindā¦will be punished.ā Ā In other words, capital would flow to compliant firms but be withheld from so-called āhigh emittersā.
How will investors, banks and insurers distinguish solution from problem? Mandatory climate disclosures,Ā aligned withĀ the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), would compel firms to report emissions and outline their Net Zero strategies.Ā Canadaās Sustainability Standards BoardĀ has adopted these methodologies,Ā despite concerns they would disadvantage Canadian businesses. Here, Carney repeatedly emphasizes disclosures as the cornerstone to track emissions data required to shift capital away from āhigh emittersā. Without this, he claims, large institutional investors lack the data on supply chains to make informed decisions to shift capital to businesses that are Net Zero compliant.
The second pillar, Mandatory Transition Plans would require companies to map a 2050 Net Zero trajectory for emission reduction targets. Failure to meet those targets would invite pressure from investors, banks, or activists, who may pursue litigation for non-compliance. The UKāsĀ Transition Plan Task Force, now part of ISSB, provides this standardized framework.Ā Carney, while at GFANZ, advocated using transition plans for a āmanaged phase-outā of high-emitting assets like coal, oil and gas, not just through divestment but by financing emissions reductions. āAs part of their transition planning, [GFANZ] members should establish and apply financing policies to phase out and align carbon-intensive sectors and activities, such as thermal coal, oil and gas and deforestation, not only through asset divestment but also through transition finance that reduces real world emissions. To assist with these efforts GFANZ will continue to develop and implement a framework for the Managed Phase-out of high-emitting assets.ā Clearly, the purpose of this is to ensure companies either decarbonize or face capital withdrawal.
The third pillar is the United Nationsā Net Zero Data Public Utility (NZDPU), a centralized platform for emissions and transition data.Ā Carney insistsĀ these data be freely accessible, enabling investors, banks and insurers to judge companiesā progress to Net Zero. As CarneyĀ noted in 2021: āPrivate finance is judgingā¦banks, pension funds and asset managers have to show where they are in the transition to Net Zero.ā Hence, compliant firms would receive investment; laggards would face divestment.
Finally, voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) allow companies toĀ offset emissionsĀ by purchasing credits from projects like reforestation. Carney, who launched theĀ Taskforce on Scaling VCMsĀ in 2020, has insisted on monitoring, verification and lifecycle tracking. Ā At aĀ 2024 Beijing conference, he suggested major jurisdictions could establish VCMs by COP 30 (planned for 2025 in Brazil) to create a global market. If Canada mandates VCMs, businesses especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) would face much higher compliance costs with credits available only to those that demonstrate progress with transition plans.
These potential mandatory disclosures and transition plans would burden Canadian businesses with material costs and legal risks that constitute an economic gamble which few may recognize but all should weigh. Do Canadians truly want a government that has an undisclosed climate finance agenda that would be subservient to an opaque globalized Net Zero agenda?
Tammy Nemeth is a U.K.-based strategic energy analyst. Ron Wallace is an executive fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and the Canada West Foundation.
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