Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, members. It's a pleasure to be here today. My name is Greg Peterson. I'm the assistant chief statistician responsible for Statistics Canada's economic statistics program. I'm joined today by Josée Bégin, the director general responsible for labour market education and socio-economic statistics.

Finance committee  I think we've seen increases in prices throughout the year.

Finance committee  We've been doing work throughout the pandemic to look at whether or not the different consumption patterns that Canadians have had through the pandemic have had an impact on prices. We started producing an alternate CPI measure based on changing consumer patterns earlier on in the pandemic, and we continue that exercise now.

Finance committee  I would turn that more specific question to Ms. Ertl.

Finance committee  Yes, and I think that's exactly why the methodology that we've adopted is appropriate. In the CPI, again, we're not measuring the cost Canadians face in purchasing a house; we measure the cost Canadians face in owning that house. For sure, I completely agree. I think the methodology we use is entirely appropriate in light of that.

Finance committee  That is something we're keeping an eye on. At this point, we haven't seen wage rates increase as fast as inflation. In essence, this is affecting the paycheques of Canadians. This is something that we keep an eye on through the labour force survey and through the survey of employment, payrolls and hours.

Finance committee  I don't think we have that data at the moment.

Finance committee  That's a good question. Perhaps I'll turn to either Ms. Ertl or Ms. Mitchell on whether we've seen any early indicators.

Finance committee  I think that's a fair observation. When we produce the consumer price index, we're after the measurement of the same basket of goods over a period of time. When you look at telecommunication service, you look at a package that has so much data, so much voice, so much time and so many characteristics [Technical difficulty—Editor] time.

Finance committee  That's correct.

Finance committee  I am, absolutely. We're not going to remove the database.

Finance committee  We are not going to remove the database.

Finance committee  Maybe I can turn to Ms. Ertl to describe exactly what we're going to be doing with that average price table.

Finance committee  Again, it would be our advice that if users are taking a look at food inflation or the change in food prices, they focus on the consumer price index itself.

Finance committee  We provide the food table for users who want to look at the average price of a particular commodity. I would suggest that the average food price table is not the best tool to track food price changes over time.