Finance committee  We have done a fair bit of work tracking the household over the course of the pandemic. I can tell you that over that course we've seen household wealth increasing considerably. When we take a look at distributions across income quintiles, we've seen [Technical difficulty—Editor] of gaps between the highest quartile and the lowest quartile.

Finance committee  I'm sorry. My area of responsibility is economic statistics, so I'm not intimately familiar with that study.

Finance committee  I don't think you can look at any single economic indicator and say that it is the panacea that describes absolutely everything. As I described in my opening remarks, the consumer price index aims to measure how much it costs consumers to own a home. For sure, you'd include mortgage interest costs.

Finance committee  Well, while Statistics Canada is not in the business of forecasting, I think it is worthwhile taking a look at what's happening along supply chains. Over the course of the pandemic, we've seen that every product and every service has its own story. If you want to look at new housing, for instance, I would take a look at the construction price index and how that is changing.

Finance committee  We'll provide that to the committee. Again, I would caution that over time, household consumption patterns change. There were some products that may have been sold in the past that are no longer being sold, so we wouldn't have a price for them. I just want to make—

Finance committee  All of our economic indicators show that the war in Ukraine is affecting the price of many commodities worldwide. We're tracking this not just in our consumer price index; we're tracking this through movement in a number of our different price indices, such as our industrial product price index and our raw material price index.

Finance committee  Well, as I mentioned earlier, I think we [Technical difficulty—Editor] for sure that's had an impact on what we're seeing at the pump. Insofar as gasoline is an input into a whole range of other things, we are starting to see that as well. Those are my initial thoughts.

Finance committee  We aren't necessarily in a position to make forecasts. However, when we did our estimates of shelter costs, we included not only shelter costs, but also house price Technical difficulty—Editor] of mortgages. So interest rates will also have an impact on the CPI. I'll ask Ms. Ertl and Ms.

Finance committee  We think the data for Quebec is reliable. However, I will ask Ms. Ertl to answer this technical question.

Finance committee  Thank you for your question. When we measure something using the CPI, our goal is to measure the same products over time. I'll give you the example of cereal boxes. If you change the weight of a box of cereals, we're going to adjust the price, given the change in weight. The same is true of telecommunications services.

Finance committee  That's right. Basically, we're looking for a price for the same services for the coming period.

Finance committee  When we measure the basket, we use scanner tapes coming from the supermarkets and the grocery stores. We get from these scanner tapes the product that's being sold, including the volume of the box or the weight of the box. We will adjust that purchase to a standard weight, so that we're comparing apples to apples over time.

Finance committee  We are taking a look at the data we use in order to calculate the mortgage interest cost by including both new houses and resale houses. The whole issue of how we measure housing is a discussion that a number of national statistical offices are having. We aren't proposing to move to a rental-equivalence model similar to what the United States, the U.K. and other countries do.

Finance committee  We already capture increases in rent. When we take a look at shelter costs, we break out both owned accommodation and rental accommodation. You are correct; we are seeing high increases in rental accommodation costs. The latest number is going to a 4.2% year-over-year increase. Rented accommodation accounts for about 6.6% of our current basket, so, yes, we are keeping track of changes in rental housing costs, and we'll continue to do so.

Finance committee  I think it does. It's important to make the distinction between indexes of housing prices and what we do in the consumer price index. If I take a look at the good work that CREA does in its housing price index and the great work that Teranet does in developing its housing price index, they're measuring the price of purchasing a house.