 | Monday, February 21, 2022 | | Here’s what you need to know to get the day started: | | | Canadians pay the price as rising costs spread to everything | | | Everything seems to be getting more expensive. Food, gas and housing prices are on the rise while paycheques are slow to keep pace. The CBC News series Priced Out, which starts today, will explain why you're paying more at the register and how Canadians are coping with the high cost of everything.
Rising pump prices are now grimly routine. We've grown to expect the effect of shipping delays on food and things with imported components. High housing costs are now just an appalling Canadian fact of life, CBC's Don Pittis writes in an analysis.
But until about three months ago, Canadians figuring out their weekly budgets would have noticed most price increases occurring only in those very distinct categories — food, fuel, accommodation — that tend to be erratic.
Not anymore.
Inflation has become generalized. "The story is no longer about energy, about food, about housing," said Tu Nguyen, a Toronto-based economist with the consultancy RSM Canada. "It's about pretty much everything in the economy."
It used to be that Canadians trying to keep within a budget could seek out cheaper goods. They could avoid driving when gas was expensive, for example, or alter their diets to cut back on imported food. But when inflation is general, that becomes harder. According to some economists, it is a sign that inflation may have set in for the longer term and that it will begin to hurt Canadians more.
Those at the low end of the wage scale — including women, recent immigrants and those in precarious work — are more deeply affected by generalized inflation. People with stagnant incomes and weak bargaining power end up paying higher prices, even for the less expensive goods and services they depend on.
New evidence that "everything inflation" has surged arrived in the same Statistics Canada report that showed prices overall were climbing at 5.1 per cent a year, the highest rate since 1991.
A few months ago, when core inflation seemed safely stuck at two per cent, it may have been reasonable for central bankers here and in the United States to be patient and let the economy take its course. But now that the once-stable measure of generalized inflation has begun to shift sharply higher, it seems almost certain that the banks will try to rein it in with higher interest rates.
Kaylie Tiessen, an economist and policy analyst at Unifor, Canada's biggest private-sector union, said that despite rising core inflation, there may be a danger in raising interest rates before workers' wages have caught up. "We definitely cannot put ourselves in a position where workers are always losing out," she said. "We should not put ourselves in that position, as an economy, at all." | | | | | End of the line | | |  | (Mark Scheifelbein/The Associated Press) | | | | Justin Kripps, Ryan Sommer, Cam Stones and Benjamin Coakwell of Canada celebrate winning the bronze medal in the four-man bobsleigh at the 2022 Olympic Winter Games on Sunday in the Yanqing district of Beijing. CBC Sports' Jesse Campigotto looks back on a complicated and occasionally wonderful Olympics for Canada here. | | | | | | | | | In brief | | | Canada's political parties stood firm in their positions during two days of weekend debates on the use of the Emergencies Act, ahead of a key vote Monday on whether to ratify the extraordinary powers. The at-times tense and personal debate in the House of Commons pitted the Liberal government against the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois, a combination Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux referred to as an "unholy alliance." The New Democrats have said they will support the government's use of the act but have urged the Liberals to tread carefully, while reserving the right to pull support at any time. Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, who has announced he is seeking the leadership of his party, accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of engineering the crisis for political gain. "They have attempted to amplify and take advantage of every pain, every fear, every tragedy that has struck throughout this pandemic in order to divide one person against another and replace the people's freedom with the government's power," he said Saturday. Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said Sunday that the "vigorous" debates over the Emergencies Act are a sign of a healthy democracy, casting the discussion in a positive light a day after a major police action cleared protesters away from Parliament Hill on Saturday. Follow all the news from the Hill today here.
A Walmart customer says the company left him in the lurch after someone got into his online account and went on a shopping spree. After being warned there was a problem, the company delivered one of the orders — an Apple TV — to the fraudster anyway, then told customer Bill Tomlinson of Pelham, Ont., he was on his own to recoup the loss. "They basically washed their hands of it," said Tomlinson, who told the company about the fraudulent order the same day it was made. "They said, 'There's nothing more we can do for you.'" Independent financial fraud expert Vanessa Iafolla says she gets several calls a week from people looking for advice on how to recoup their losses after being defrauded online. "Any company that is going to offer online retail services and make it available for clients or customers to set up accounts is responsible for protecting the security of that account," Iafolla said. "I think Walmart really is dropping the ball on this." After CBC's Go Public contacted Walmart, the company refunded the cost of the Apple TV as a goodwill gesture. Read more of the Go Public report here.
In what appeared to be a last-ditch diplomatic gambit, the White House said U.S. President Joe Biden has agreed "in principle" to a meeting with Russia's President Vladimir Putin as long as he holds off on launching an assault on Ukraine. The hoped-for meeting was brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are set to meet on Thursday in Europe as long as a further invasion doesn't occur. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Putin and Biden could meet if they consider it necessary, but emphasized that "it's premature to talk about specific plans for a summit." In Kyiv, life outwardly continued as usual for some on a mild winter Sunday, with brunches and church services, ahead of what Biden said late last week was an already decided-upon Russian attack. Russia has recently held nuclear drills, conventional exercises in Belarus and naval drills in the Black Sea. Read more about the military tensions here.
Two women were shot dead in their car in Vancouver's upscale West Point Grey neighbourhood on Sunday, police have confirmed, in what officers described as "targeted murders." Vancouver police say the two victims were found by a local resident who was out for a walk Sunday. The victims were identified by police as Shu-Min Wu, 50, and Ying Ying Sun, 39. A police spokesperson said they received a report of trouble Sunday near the intersection of Discovery Street and West 8th Avenue. "Vancouver's Emergency Response Team was briefly deployed to the neighbourhood Sunday morning to search a house near the crime scene, as investigators feared there could be additional victims inside," spokesperson Sgt. Steve Addison said in a statement Sunday night. Earlier photos of the scene show investigators examining a white BMW with a tarp over the driver-side window around midday Sunday, with a white police tent set up nearby. "This is a very serious incident and it will be a complex and prolonged investigation that will take some time," Addison said at a news conference Sunday afternoon. Follow the latest news from B.C. here.
The Porter, a new CBC and BET series, looks at Black railway porters of the 1920s. It's a rare on-screen adaptation of Black Canadian history, which industry insiders believe could help showcase the importance and validity of that history. Read more about the show here. For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
Now for some good news to start your Monday: Every day, Gitxsan Hereditary Chief Sim'oo'git Geel (Catherine Blackstock) completes a word-guessing game and shares her score with friends and family. But it's not Wordle, the popular online word-guessing game recently bought by the New York Times. In, fact it's Not Wordle - Gitksan. "Maadim was the word yesterday, which is the 'snow that's falling,'" Geel said, looking at her smartphone screen. The game features words in Gitxsanimx, the language of the Gitxsan Nation in northwestern B.C. Geel and other Gitxsan leaders helped develop the game with Aidan Pine, a Victoria, B.C.-based linguist who used open source software developed to allow programmers to create their own variations of Wordle. Chief Geel says the daily challenge is building her vocabulary in a language she's not fluent in. "I want to get it ... that's how everybody gets hooked on it, right?" she said. "I'm on a little bit of a run." Read the full story here. | | |  | Overreach at centre of Emergencies Act lawsuit
| As police clashed with protesters near Parliament this weekend, a different fight was playing out inside the House of Commons: a debate over the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act.
The federal Liberals invoked the act last Monday, granting temporary powers to the government to handle ongoing blockades and protests against pandemic restrictions, including clearing protesters and freezing associated bank accounts. The Liberals say it was a necessary move to end illegal protests; some opponents, meanwhile, argue it was an overreach that sets a dangerous precedent for cracking down on future protests.
The House of Commons is set for a vote that could strike down the emergency powers tonight. But the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is one of multiple groups taking the federal government to court over the act’s use. Today, executive director and general counsel Noa Mendelsohn Aviv on what the CCLA fears the normalization of emergency powers could mean for Canadian democracy.
Listen to today's episode | | | Today in history: Feb. 21 | | | 1824: Patrick Bergen, 18, of Saint John, N.B., is hanged for stealing 25 cents.
1891: An explosion in a coal mine at Springhill, N.S., kills 125 miners. Coal gas was suspected as the cause of the blast. The accident was the first of several that occurred over the years in Springhill. The mines were shut forever after a rock surge on Oct. 23, 1958, in which 74 miners died.
1947: American inventor Edwin Land demonstrates his Polaroid Land camera, which produces a black-and-white picture in 60 seconds. A colour process hit the market in 1963.
1965: Malcolm X, leader of the black Nationalist Movement in the U.S., is assassinated as he was about to address a New York City rally, 11 months after his split from Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. He was 39.
2000: Truckers stage Canada-wide protests over high fuel prices. | | | (With files from CBC News, The Canadian Press, The Associated Press and Reuters) | | | | |  | CBC NEWS APP | The most convenient way to get your news
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