Canada’s inflation rate drops to 3.4 percent

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) slowed to 3.4 per cent in the year up to May, Statistics Canada said yesterday. That’s down from a year-over-year inflationary increase of 4.4 percent in April. The agency said that gasoline prices were the biggest reason for the slower rate of inflation. If gasoline prices were removed from the basket of goods that the CPI uses for its calculations, inflation would have been running at 4.4 percent. Gasoline prices have dropped more than 18 percent on a year-over-year basis.