Canada’s inflation rate hit 2.3 per cent in the year up to March, the highest level since October 2014 as gas prices and just about everything else got more expensive.
Statistics Canada reported Friday that seven of the eight components the data agency tracks rose in March. The lone exception was clothing and footwear, which got 0.1 per cent cheaper in the previous 12 months.
Gasoline prices were 17.1 per cent higher in March than they were a year earlier. Stripping gasoline out of the numbers, the country’s overall inflation rate would have been 1.8 per cent.