Food prices continue to soar, which push the cost of Christmas dinner even higher.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Christmas comes but once a year, which is probably for the best given how much more expensive holiday dinner with the family will be this weekend.
A hypothetical basket of food items that go into a traditional Christmas dinner costs nearly 12 per cent more than a year ago, based on inflation data for November released by Statistics Canada this week. That tops the 10.3-per-cent rise in overall food prices and far exceeds the all-items consumer price index, which eased slightly to 6.8 per cent, from 6.9 per cent the month before.
The Christmas dinner basket is the average inflation rate of items such as poultry, potatoes, bread and rolls, butter, jams and preserves (for the cranberry crowd) and fresh and canned vegetables, with some potato chips and ice cream thrown in for snacks and dessert.
Statistics Canada doesn’t specifically break out turkey prices in its monthly release of consumer prices – the broad poultry category was used for this basket – but average retail prices tracked by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada show just how pricey the big bird is getting.
The average retail price per kilogram for a fresh whole turkey in Canada last month was $6.60, up 21 per cent from the same time a year earlier. A whole frozen turkey, meanwhile, sold for $7.52 a kilogram, a jump of nearly 70 per cent from a year ago.