A key Yellowknife cost-of-living indicator rose at the highest rate on record over the past year, the NWT Bureau of Statistics says.
The consumer price index shows inflation in the territorial capital reached seven percent for the 2022 calendar year, more than triple the inflation rate a year earlier.
“This is the highest calendar-year inflation rate ever recorded for Yellowknife,” the bureau stated in a news release.
The bureau publishes records of inflation in Yellowknife dating back to 1984. In most of those years, the annual inflation rate was between one and three percent. An inflation rate of 6.5 percent in 1991 was the closest the territory had previously come to 2022’s marker.
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The story is similar across Canada as a whole. The national inflation rate was 6.8 percent in 2022, double the rate in 2021 and the highest recorded since 1982.
Yellowknife had the highest 2022 inflation rate among the three territorial capitals, the NWT Bureau of Statistics stated – fractionally ahead of Whitehorse and significantly higher than Iqaluit, which posted an annual rate of 3.9 percent.
Various provinces had still higher inflation rates. Prince Edward Island had the highest rate recorded in Canada at 8.8 percent. Alberta, by comparison, posted a rate of 6.4 percent.
Inflation measurements rely on shifts in prices of goods that can be trickier to assess in smaller communities. This week’s news release contained no data for smaller NWT communities.
In Yellowknife, the cost of food and shelter increased by around eight percent in the past year. Transportation costs were just over 10-percent higher than in 2021. The cost of fuel oil and other fuels rose by a staggering 49.7 percent, a figure that does not account for possible changes coming when Canada alters its carbon tax rules in April.
