Can you guess how food and gas prices changed under Harper and Trudeau?
March 26, 2025
What do the numbers show us about grocery and gas bills in the years Justin Trudeau was prime minister? How do these compare to the period Stephen Harper was in office?
Draw lines in the charts below to show how you think things have changed.
Then, hit the submit button to see how your guesses stack up against the actual data.
Of course, these numbers only tell part of the story, so check out the analysis at the end. But let's start here to test your perception against what these data points show.
The charts below are based on the consumer price index (CPI), which shows trends in food prices over time. The index starts at 100 when Trudeau took office. That means if you draw a line up to 110, you think overall food prices have increased by 10 per cent. Some common products, like tofu, are not included because they haven’t been tracked long enough to appear in the charts.
Groceries
Meats
Dairy
Fresh fruits and vegetables
Other staples
Gas prices
Food and gas prices are famously volatile. When you go to the grocery store or the pump, you’re at the mercy of global supply chain disruptions — like droughts, pandemics or wars — that can push prices up at the drop of a hat. Federal governments only have so much control over these events.
The kicker? When inflation pushes food prices up, they rarely come back down. The pace of price growth might speed up or slow down, but the costs themselves usually stay elevated — which explains the overall upward trend shown in these charts.
The price of groceries rose at around the same pace under Harper and Trudeau. Food prices ticked up during the early Harper years, and 2008’s global financial crisis led to even more price instability; under Trudeau, inflation began its steep upward climb in early 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threw the global wheat market into disarray.
That domino effect is only more apparent when you look at individual items like meat or dairy. The cost of meat rose in 2014 because a Midwest drought pushed grain prices up, making it more expensive to feed cattle; and Canada’s dairy commission approved three price hikes between 2022 and 2023 after inflation began its upward trajectory.
Gas and energy data paints a slightly different picture. The Harper years were backdropped by a few slides in retail gas prices, namely during the financial crisis and again in late 2014, when oil was briefly in overproduction.
Under Trudeau, a pandemic-induced price drop was quickly undone by the Russia-Ukraine war, which sent crude oil prices soaring to record highs. That partly explains why prices increased just 18 per cent under Harper compared to 52 per cent under Trudeau — nevertheless, the overall trend points upward.
Do these numbers match your reality? Have you been struggling to pay your grocery or gas bills? Is this an issue you’ll be voting on in this election? We’d like to hear from you. Send an email to ask@cbc.ca.
Try some more charts
How we got the numbers
The data for the food section comes from Statistics Canada’s consumer price index (CPI), more specifically the Consumer price index, monthly, percentage change, not seasonally adjusted, Canada, provinces, Whitehorse and Yellowknife — Food table. The CPI shows the price changes for a fixed basket of goods. To bring the index to 100 when Justin Trudeau became prime minister, the values were divided by the index value in November 2015 and then multiplied by 100.
The geography is "Canada" for all food charts. For the groceries section, the category is "food purchased from stores.” In the other staples section, the "bakery and cereal products" excludes baby food.
The data for the gas prices comes from Statistics Canada table Monthly average retail prices for gasoline and fuel oil, by geography. The geography is "Canada" and the type of fuel is "regular unleaded gasoline at self-service filling station."
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