Rates and Statistics

Changes to publication of CPI data

As indicated in the Statistics Canada Daily on 20 October, Statistics Canada will begin publishing core inflation with the release of the Consumer Price Index for October tomorrow. Therefore, the Bank of Canada will no longer publish the effect of indirect tax changes on either the CPI or the subset of the CPI included in core.

As Statistics Canada will calculate the core inflation rate from the level of the core price index rounded to 1 decimal place (as it currently does for the total CPI), whereas the Bank of Canada used more decimal places, there will be small rounding differences (+/- 0.1 percentage point) between the core inflation rate calculated by Statistics Canada and previous calculations by the Bank. September 2006 is a case in point. Using Statistics Canada methodology, core inflation would be 2.2 per cent instead of 2.3 per cent as calculated by the Bank. The core inflation rate, and other inflation data available on the Bank of Canada website and other Bank publications, will be revised to reflect this change in methodology.