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OTTAWA, Sept 14 (Reuters) – Canada’s annual inflation growth rate held at 3% in August, same as last month, as crude prices continued to stay firm affecting gasoline costs and food prices cooled only moderately, data showed on Monday.
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The next month’s consumer price index data could show further strengthening as benchmark Brent crude price crossed $100 per barrel this month and U.S. President Donald Trump’s new 50% tariffs and Canada’s retaliatory measures impact costs for the full month.
– Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast the annual inflation rate at 3% and monthly inflation to register no change.
– On a month-on-month basis, consumer prices fell 0.1%, Statistics Canada said.
– Gasoline prices eased slightly in August but still increased at an annual rate of 22.8%. This was down from 25.7% increase noted in July.
– Food prices, which have been accelerating faster than the headline inflation since July, eased slightly and registered an annual growth rate of 2.8%. This was the first time in 14 months that food prices fell below the 3% mark.
– Prices for dairy products led the deceleration in food prices with costs rising 0.7% annually in August compared with a 3.1% rise in July. Cheese and yogurt were the top contributors to the slowdown in dairy prices, StatsCan said.
– Prices for tours and travel rose 26.1%, another main contributor to the upside inflation after gasoline and food, due to base year effect. During the same period last year costs in this category had fallen due to a sharp decline in Canadian’s traveling to the United States.
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– CPI-median, the centermost component of the CPI basket, stood at 2%, while CPI-trim, which excludes the most extreme price changes, was at 1.9% in August, the same as reported in July. These core measures have largely hovered around 2% for the last several months, easing worries that crude prices were spilling onto other costs.
– Shelter costs, which include rents and mortgage interest costs, increased slightly to 1.5% in August from 1.3% in July.
– The Bank of Canada said last month that it will not hesitate to increase rates multiple times if inflation stays higher and impacts the closely-watched core measures.
– The central bank strives to keep inflation around the mid-point of its target range of 1% to 3%.
– The Canadian dollar extended losses after the inflation data and was trading down 0.29% to C$1.3909 to the U.S. dollar, or 71.90 U.S. cents. Yields firmed, with the two-year government bonds up 1.4 basis points to 2.703%.
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(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Dale Smith and Louise Heavens)
Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.
This story was originally published September 14, 2026 at 5:38 AM.