AI Analysis: Industrial product price index, for selected products, by region, monthly

Executive Summary

Statistics Canada's Table 18100272 tracks the Industrial Product Price Index for four petroleum-based fuel products across five Canadian regions on a monthly basis from January 1971 to March 2026, encompassing 9,648 records across 663 monthly periods. All fuel categories show dramatic long-term price growth relative to the 2020 baseline (2020=100), with light fuel oils recording the most extreme rise — from an index of 4.1 in 1971 to 211.6 by early 2026. The distribution is right-skewed with a mean of 64.68 versus a median of 49.70, and outlier analysis identified roughly 1.5% of records as statistically anomalous, likely tied to major economic disruptions such as oil shocks, the 2008 financial crisis, and COVID-19.

Key Findings

• The dataset spans 55+ years (January 1971 to March 2026), covering 9,648 records across 20 unique product-region time series combinations (4 products × 5 regions).
• Light fuel oils experienced the most dramatic price growth, rising from an index of 4.1 in 1971 to 211.6 in early 2026 — a more than 50-fold increase relative to the 2020 baseline.
• Diesel fuel closely mirrored light fuel oils, climbing from 4.1 to 200.4 over the same period, while finished motor gasoline rose more modestly from 30.0 to 145.7.
• Price index values range from a low of 3.7 to a high of 300.3, with a mean of 64.68 and a median of 49.70, confirming a right-skewed distribution driven by high-value outliers in recent decades.
• The standard deviation of 43.05 reflects substantial price volatility across products and time, underscoring the sensitivity of industrial fuel prices to macroeconomic and geopolitical events.
• Outlier detection identified 149 anomalous data points via z-score analysis (|z| > 2.5) and 79 via the IQR method — approximately 1.5% of all records — with anomalies spread across multiple products and regions rather than concentrated in a single category.
• Regional variation exists across the five areas studied (Atlantic Region, Quebec, Ontario, Prairie Region, and British Columbia), with the heatmap analysis revealing that certain product categories show notably higher or lower price indices depending on geography.