What the Consumer Price Index measures
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) tracks the change over time in the prices of a fixed basket of goods and services bought by Canadian consumers: food, shelter, household operations, clothing, transportation, health and personal care, recreation and education, and alcohol, tobacco and cannabis. Statistics Canada collects the prices every month and publishes the index for Canada, each province, Whitehorse, Yellowknife, Iqaluit and 16 cities.
The basket is weighted by how much households spend on each item, so a 10% rise in rent moves the index far more than a 10% rise in the price of salt. Statistics Canada updates those weights regularly from household spending data.
The base: 2002=100
The index is set to 100 for the 2002 average. In September 2026 it stood at 170.0, so the basket cost 70.0% more than in 2002. The base year only sets the scale: the ratio between any two periods is the same whatever the base, and the ratio is all the calculators use.
The calculation
To move an amount from one period to another: amount × CPI(end) ÷ CPI(start). With the annual averages for 2000 (95.4) and 2024 (160.9), $100 becomes 100 × 160.9 ÷ 95.4 = $168.66.
- Total change = CPI(end) ÷ CPI(start) − 1.
- Average per year (annualized) = (CPI(end) ÷ CPI(start))1/years − 1. It is the steady rate that produces the same total.
- Purchasing power: a dollar at the start buys CPI(start) ÷ CPI(end) of what it did, at the end.
- Real change (wages, returns) = (1 + nominal change) ÷ (1 + inflation) − 1, not a simple subtraction.
Annual averages and months
An annual average is the mean of the year’s 12 monthly index levels. The calculators use annual averages when you pick years and the monthly index when you pick months. Monthly figures move with seasonal prices such as gasoline and travel, so a January-to-July comparison can differ from the comparison of the two years. The CPI on this site is not seasonally adjusted; Statistics Canada publishes a seasonally adjusted version separately.
Rounding
Statistics Canada publishes index levels to one decimal. The 12-month and monthly changes on this site are calculated from those published levels and rounded to one decimal, the way Statistics Canada presents its percentage changes. Dollar results are calculated from the unrounded ratio and shown to the cent. Early index levels are small (the 1914 annual average is 6.0), so results for early years carry more rounding error than recent ones.
Comparing places
The provincial and city indexes measure price change within each place. They cannot be used to compare the cost of living between places: an index of 175 in Calgary and 160 in Vancouver means prices rose more in Calgary since the base period, not that Calgary is more expensive. The territorial indexes are published for Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Iqaluit.
Core inflation and the policy rate
The Bank of Canada aims to keep total CPI inflation at the 2% midpoint of a 1% to 3% target range over the medium term, under an agreement with the Government of Canada first adopted in 1991. It watches core measures that strip out volatile prices; its preferred ones are CPI-trim and CPI-median, which it publishes with CPI-common. It moves its policy interest rate (the target for the overnight rate) to steer inflation toward the target.
