OP-ED: How Canada became the food inflation capital of the G7

Sylvain Charlebois writes, "Food prices in Canada rose 6.2% year over year in December, with grocery store prices up 5.0% and restaurant prices jumping 8.5%."

Source: Adobe Stock

Author: Sylvain Charlebois

Food prices in Canada rose 6.2% year over year in December, with grocery store prices up 5.0% and restaurant prices jumping 8.5%. That alone would be troubling. What makes it more alarming is that inflation came in well above expectations, pushing Canada to its highest food inflation rate since August 2023.

According to the latest internationally comparable data, Canada now sits at the top of the G7 for food inflation. The numbers speak for themselves: Canada at 6.2%, Japan close behind at 6.1%, followed by the United Kingdom at 4.2% and the United States at just 3.1%. Italy, France, and Germany are all hovering below 3%.

This should stop policymakers in their tracks.

It makes little sense that food inflation in Canada is roughly double that of the United States, especially given that Washington has embraced tariffs and trade confrontation far more aggressively than Ottawa. If tariffs were the main driver, the U.S. should be leading this unfortunate ranking. It isn’t.

Part of December’s spike can be explained by the GST holiday, which applied for 17 days of the month. Temporary tax relief often feels good in the moment, but it comes with a cost: pricing volatility. When taxes are suspended and then reintroduced, price signals become distorted. Retailers and suppliers adjust — sometimes conservatively, sometimes opportunistically. Only now can we properly measure those effects, and the results are not encouraging.

At the grocery level, December’s inflation was driven primarily by meat, fish, vegetables, and pantry staples such as coffee. This occurred during the second month of the so-called “blackout period” — the time when retailers ask suppliers not to raise prices. That prices rose anyway tells us something important: cost pressures are real, persistent, and increasingly difficult to contain.

And the outlook is worse. January 2026 food inflation is very likely to come in even higher. That should deeply concern anyone who cares about household affordability, food security, or economic competitiveness.

Yes, some of Canada’s food inflation reflects global factors — climate volatility, energy costs, and supply disruptions. But most of it is now policy-induced. Regulatory drag, interprovincial trade barriers, poor logistics, rising compliance costs, carbon pricing embedded throughout the supply chain, and a sluggish macroeconomic environment all compound one another. These are not temporary shocks; they are structural weaknesses.

The first step in solving a problem is acknowledging that it exists.

This is not about blaming one grocer or one executive. If food inflation were driven by profiteering, we would see it clearly in financial statements — in sustained increases in gross margins. Bay Street analysts and accountants would have flagged it long ago. They haven’t, because the data don’t support that narrative.

That said, grocers are not entirely blameless. The fact that prices climbed during a blackout period raises legitimate questions about transparency, bargaining dynamics, and how costs are passed through the system. Retailers are not “as white as snow” here, and scrutiny is warranted. But scapegoating them distracts from the real issue.

Canada has a policy-driven food inflation problem, and until we are willing to say that out loud, nothing meaningful will change. Temporary tax holidays, populist rhetoric, and finger-pointing may win headlines, but they will not bring prices down.

Food inflation is no longer a passing storm. It is a warning signal — and Canada is choosing, so far, to ignore

– Sylvain Charlebois is director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, co-host of The Food Professor Podcast and visiting scholar at McGill University