Biggest inflation rate hike in decades could have been worse

June saw Canada’s inflation rate spike to 8.1 percent, according to StatCan, its most rapid annual increase since 1983. With gasoline, the leading contributor, backed out of the equation, the rate would be 6.5 percent. In a Bloomberg survey, economists had projected an even more dire 8.4 percent increase. “It’s really saying something when an 8.1 per cent inflation rate is greeted with a modicum of relief in financial markets because it wasn’t quite as awful as expected,” Bank of Montreal economist Doug Porter told CBC News.