What is in the Canada CPI report
Statistics Canada prices a fixed basket of goods and services every month. The basket has eight major components, among them food, shelter, transportation, clothing, health and recreation.
Shelter is the largest of them, at about 28.5% of the basket used since the May 2026 index. It includes rent and mortgage interest cost, so the interest rates the Bank of Canada sets also show up in the index through what households pay on their mortgages.
The headline is the change on the year in the all-items index. The release also gives the change on the month, a seasonally adjusted figure and CPI without gasoline, the part that moves most with the oil price.
Why Canada CPI moves the Canadian dollar
The Bank of Canada targets 2% inflation, the midpoint of a 1 to 3% range. A CPI figure above the forecast makes a higher Canadian rate, or a slower path of cuts, more likely, and the loonie usually firms. A figure below it does the opposite.
The Bank says it looks through short swings in the headline and focuses on core measures that show the underlying trend. Its preferred measures, CPI-trim and CPI-median among them, come out in the same release, and they can move the loonie more than the headline does.
Gasoline is the link with oil. A jump in crude can push headline CPI up while the core measures stay put, and the market knows the Bank treats those two cases differently.
How to read Canada CPI against the forecast
The market has priced the forecast before 8:30. What moves the currency is the distance between the figures and that forecast, on the headline and on the core measures together.
Check whether a surprise comes from gasoline or from shelter and services. One driven by fuel tends to fade; one in the core measures tends to last, because that is the trend the Bank responds to.
CPI-trim and CPI-median are built from the spread of price changes, so they can move differently from each other. When they point in different directions, the message for the Bank is mixed and the move in the loonie is often smaller.
What the Canadian dollar did on the last release days
Measured on our own prices: the Canadian dollar against the basket of the eight majors, from the London opening before the release to the one after it, so the release sits inside the window. Anything else that came out between those two openings is in it too, so a day with more news says less about this release alone.
| Release | Amsterdam | Measured | CAD vs basket |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Sept 2026 | 14:30 | 14 Sept to 15 Sept | -0.05% |
For scale: on an ordinary day the Canadian dollar moves 0.16% against the basket from one London opening to the next, either way, on average over the 250 trading days since 14 Oct 2025.
The forecast, the figure itself and what it changed in our view of the currency are in the app, next to the research.