Statistics Canada compiles and published average monthly retail prices for selected products. I have selected monthly average prices four products from January 2017 to the latest month available. Data is presented in three formats: a spreadsheet of the original data, a graph of the prices over the period (FIG 1) illustrating the price trend over the period, and the 12-month price change (FIG 2) illustrating the speed of price change over the immediate 12 months .

I selected 4 products for this posting:

1. peanut butter 1 km
2. cabbage
3. vegetable oil 3 litres
4. toothpaste.

A one kilogram jar of peanut butter rose from approximately $4.50 in early 2020 just before the COVID recession, to just over $6 during 2023, a one-third increase. The increase reflects, in part, the rise of the average price of raw peanuts which rose form US$0.210 per pound in 2020 to US$0.262 in 2022, or a one-quarter increase.

The retail price of cabbage has been reasonably stable starting at close to $2 per kilogram in 2017, peaking in mid-2019 at just over $3 per kilogram then settling back to the $2 to $3 range.