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Inflation climbs to 2.2%, Statistics Canada reports – CBC.ca
The annual pace of inflation heated up in November as gasoline prices posted their first year-over-year increase since October 2018, Statistics Canada said Wednesday.
The agency said the consumer price index rose 2.2 per cent compared with a year ago to end a three-month streak where the annual pace of inflation had held steady at 1.9 per cent.
The increase in the pace of inflation compared with October came as energy prices in November posted their first year-over-year increase since April. Energy prices climbed 1.5 per cent compared with a year ago compared with a decline of 2.9 per cent in October.
Gasoline prices were up 0.9 per cent year-over-year compared with a drop 6.7 per cent in October.
Royal Bank senior economist Josh Nye said oil prices were down in November last year.
“The fact that wasn’t repeated this November means energy price growth is back into positive territory,” he said, noting that inflation will likely remain above two per cent in the short term due to the lower gasoline prices a year ago.
Strongest pace in a decade
However, Nye said the underlying inflation trends appear to be firming with the average of the core measures of inflation at their strongest pace in a decade.
Excluding gasoline, which had been weighing on overall inflation in recent months, the consumer price index was up 2.3 per cent compared with a year ago, matching the increase in October.
And, the average of Canada’s three measures for core inflation, which are considered better gauges of underlying price pressures and are closely watched by the Bank of Canada, was 2.17 per cent compared with a revised figure of 2.10 per cent for October.
In the statement accompanying the Bank of Canada’s decision to keep its key interest rate on hold at 1.75 per cent earlier this month, the bank said it expected inflation to increase temporarily in the coming months due to year-over-year movements in gasoline prices.
However, the central bank said at the time that it “continues to expect inflation to track close to the two per cent target over the next two years.”
Higher costs for food, auto insurance, mortgage interest
CIBC senior economist Royce Mendes said the Bank of Canada won’t be too concerned with headline inflation rising above two per cent for a few months, given that it’s largely the result of base effects.
“However, if the core measures accelerate further, monetary policy-makers could start to take more notice of consumer prices, something they haven’t had to do given that inflation has been so consistently around the central bank’s target recently,” Mendes wrote in a report.
The overall increase in prices of 2.2 per cent compared with a year ago was driven by increased mortgage interest costs, passenger vehicles and auto insurance premiums. The increases were partly offset by lower prices for telephone services, Internet access and traveller accommodation.
Canadians also saw the price for meat rise 5.2 per cent compared with a year ago, the fifth month of increases at or above 4.0 per cent. The cost of fresh or frozen beef was up 6.2 per cent, while ham and bacon prices rose 9.1 per cent. Fresh or frozen pork was up 0.7 per cent.
Regionally, prices on a year-over-year basis rose more in November in every province except British Columbia.
Bilquis Abdul-Qaadir, the trailblazing basketball player who set up an academy for girls and coached multiple sports at an Islamic school in London, Ont., has been denied permanent residency in Canada and will have to go back to the United States.
“We’ve been here for two years, my son is Canadian, and we would love to be part of this country, but we finally got the message from immigration that we were denied permanent residency. It’s very unexpected,” said Abdul Qaadir from her London home. “I’m at a loss for words. I’ve single-handedly brought sports to an underserviced community. It’s heartbreaking.”
Abdul-Qaadir and her husband, A.W. Massey, moved to London from Tennessee three years ago.
She said she hasn’t been able to work in Canada since August, when her work permit expired and wasn’t renewed by a Canadian border official.
“We’re still trying to figure out what we’re going to do. We aren’t sure. We’re angry and we’re tired. We put our heart and soul into this application. We felt like we checked all the boxes.”
Abdul-Qaadir led a four-year battle against the International Basketball Federation, which banned religious head coverings on the court. She won, but sacrificed her basketball career to do so.
She had been the leading high school point scorer for both boys and girls in Massachusetts, and went on to play for the University of Memphis in Tennessee, where she was the first woman to play in a hijab in NCAA Division 1.
Alongside her motivational speaking gigs, she teaches at the London Islamic School and has opened a basketball academy in London, but all that is now up in the air.
After waiting an entire year, my Canadian permanent residency application was refused because the <a href=”https://twitter.com/CitImmCanada?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@CitImmCanada</a>’s officer felt that my job duties as Athletic Director at the Mosque/Private School in London ON, wasn’t adequate work.
—@Bilqis_AbdulQ
On Thursday, Abdul-Qaadir got a letter from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) that said she doesn’t “meet the requirements for immigration to Canada.”
She applied for permanent residency as an athletic director at the London Muslim Mosque, but her duties — including developing, managing and supervising the school’s physical education and athletic programs, as well as being the head coach for the basketball, volleyball and cross-country teams — are “inconsistent with the actions” of an athletic director.
“I am not satisfied that your stated duties is sufficient to indicate that your role involves plan, organize, direct, control and evaluate the operations of comprehensive fitness programs at this organization. I am also not satisfied that you performed a substantial number of the main duties for this [job classification],” IRCC wrote in her letter.
Abdul-Qaadir said she doesn’t know if she and her husband will fight the refusal.
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
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Mastercard Inc said on Monday it would allow partners on its network to enable their consumers to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency using a digital wallet, as well as reward them with digital currencies under loyalty programs.
The credit card giant said it would offer these services in partnership with Bakkt Holdings Inc, the digital assets platform founded by NYSE-owner Intercontinental Exchange.
Founded in 2018, Bakkt went public earlier this year through a $2.1 billion merger with a blank-check company. Shares of the company were up 77% at $16.19 on Monday.
Mastercard said its partners can also allow customers earn and spend rewards in cryptocurrency instead of loyalty points.
The company had said in February https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currency-mastercard-idUSKBN2AA2WF it would begin offering support for some cryptocurrencies on its network this year.
Last year, rival Visa Inc had partnered https://www.reuters.com/article/us-blockfi-crypto-currency-visa-idUSKBN28B603 with cryptocurrency startup BlockFi to offer a credit card that lets users earn bitcoin on purchases.
Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, touched a record high of $67,016 last week after the debut of the first U.S. bitcoin futures-based exchange traded fund. It has more than doubled in value this year.
(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Ramakrishnan M.)
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Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Huawei Technologies, returned to work at the tech giant’s headquarters in Shenzhen on Monday after almost three years fighting extradition to the U.S. in Canada, state-backed Chinese newspaper Global Times reported.
Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei, completed three weeks of quarantine last week after returning to the southern city of Shenzhen where a crowd of well-wishers chanting patriotic slogans awaited her at the airport.
“Over the last three years, although we have struggled, we have overcome obstacles and our team has fought with more and more courage,” she said in a speech at an internal company event that was circulated online.
The extradition drama had been a central source of discord between Beijing and Washington, with Chinese officials signalling that the case had to be dropped to help end a diplomatic stalemate.
Meng was detained in December 2018 in Vancouver after a New York court issued an arrest warrant, saying she tried to cover up attempts by Huawei-linked companies to sell equipment to Iran in breach of U.S. sanctions.
She was allowed to go home after reaching an agreement https://www.reuters.com/technology/huawei-cfo-meng-appear-court-expected-reach-agreement-with-us-source-2021-09-24 with U.S. prosecutors last month to end a bank fraud case against her.
(Reporting by David Kirton; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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