AI Analysis: Consumer Price Index, monthly, not seasonally adjusted

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Consumer Price Index dataset (Table 18100004) spans 112 years of monthly price data from January 1914 to March 2026, covering 358 product groups across 187,778 records, and reveals a dramatic 27-fold increase in the All-items CPI from 6.0 to 165.9 (base 2002=100). Most CPI categories are highly correlated (r > 0.9), reflecting broad inflationary trends that lift prices across all sectors simultaneously, with the sharpest acceleration occurring post-2020. Notable outlier periods include the early 1980s oil-shock inflation and the 2021–2022 post-pandemic price surge, which stand out as the most statistically extreme episodes in the dataset's century-long history.

Key Findings

• The All-items CPI rose from 6.0 in January 1914 to 165.9 in February 2026 — a 27-fold increase over 112 years of monthly data.
• The dataset contains 187,778 records spanning 358 unique product and product group categories, making it one of the most comprehensive long-term inflation datasets available from Statistics Canada.
• CPI values range widely from a minimum of 3.1 to a maximum of 477.0, with a mean of 89.3 and a standard deviation of 47.2, reflecting both the century-long timeframe and the diversity of product categories tracked.
• Correlation analysis of 20 major CPI product groups across 840 monthly periods found the vast majority of category pairs with correlations above r = 0.9, indicating that broad inflationary trends drive most price categories in tandem.
• Outlier detection using a 3×IQR threshold identified month-over-month price changes outside approximately -1.68% to +2.24% as statistically anomalous, with the early 1980s and the 2021–2022 post-pandemic period flagged as the most extreme inflationary episodes.
• Shelter has shown persistently strong upward momentum in recent decades, while Energy displays the highest volatility, with sharp spikes during periods of economic stress visible across the 112-year trend.
• Using the 2002=100 base year, the top-ranked CPI categories by average historical value significantly outpace the bottom-ranked categories, revealing substantial variation in how different product groups have experienced long-term inflation across Canada.