Provincial monthly average retail prices for selected products, December 2021

The products listed in this table are commonly purchased by Canadian consumers. However, they do not represent an exhaustive list of products used in the calculation of the Consumer Price Index (CPI). A list of the representative products of goods and services in the CPI basket is available on the Statistics Canada website. Representative products are added and removed each month, as needed.

While average prices can be used to assess price levels in a given month, they should not be used to calculate price change through time. In order to measure pure price change, otherwise known as inflation, it is recommended to use the CPI and its sub-indexes (18-10-0004-01).

Average prices are derived in one of two ways: using a specific size/quantity measure or standardizing multiple sizes.

Specific size: In most cases, a specific size or quantity can be easily identified as the measure of best fit for a particular product. For some products, a specific size or quantity is the most commonly purchased by a considerable amount (for example, a dozen eggs). Other products have multiple high-sale sizes over a large range (for example, milk). In this case, we calculate separate average prices for each size (1 L, 2 L and 4 L) in order to provide a fuller picture. Other products, such as fresh produce and meats, are often sold by weight and provided as a price per kilogram. In these cases, 1 kg is applied as the specific size. For all of these products, only items of the specific size or quantity are included in the average price calculation. The specific size alone provides sufficient coverage to produce a robust measure.

Standardized size: For certain products which are available to consumers in a wide variety of package sizes, prices for products within a set range of package sizes are standardized before the average price calculation. For example, prices for blocks of cheese ranging in size from 400 g to 800 g are adjusted to represent a 500 g block of cheese and are presented as such in the average prices table.

For more information on the calculation of the average prices in the Monthly average retail prices for selected products, by province table, consult the Methodological Supplement for the Provincial Monthly Average Retail Prices Table, published as part of the Prices Analytical Series (Catalogue number62F0014M).

The next update of the "Monthly average retail prices for selected products, by province" table will be in March 2022.