Inflation in general is going down, but the gap between inflation and the food inflation rate is actually going up—by 3.8 per cent according to Sylvain Charlebois of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University.

The researcher says there are encouraging signs that food inflation is starting to ease, but food prices remain high, especially in certain categories.

Fruits and vegetables remain volatile, while bakery and dairy are the two areas giving consumers a lot of grief. He says the good news is that they expect bakery to stall sometime in the spring. “We don’t expect bakery to continue to be a problem” says Charlebois.

Dairy is expected to increase again in the spring.

Despite high prices, Canada has one of the lowest food inflation rates in the world says Charlebois, with Japan the only country in the G7 with a lower food inflation rate than Canada.