Juno News - The cost of goods will continue to get more expensive in 2022

00:00:00.000 I think there's no denying that going into 2022, perhaps the biggest non-COVID story in Canada

00:00:12.100 is going to be inflation, cost of living. As more and more regular Canadians,

00:00:18.440 middle-class Canadians, lower-income Canadians just scraping by, they're finding things tougher,

00:00:24.780 dealing with the rising cost of goods. And by the way, a lot of these people are certainly

00:00:29.620 not seeing increases to their salaries, to their hourly wages, to make up for all of this erosion

00:00:36.440 of the cash that they have in their bank accounts. You know, Canadians are chatting about this with

00:00:41.460 family, with friends, sharing the anecdotes about their regular shopping, saying, hey, I noticed this

00:00:46.840 product, this container of yogurt, whatever it is, used to be this price, now it's a dollar more,

00:00:52.400 a dollar fifty more. I buy one or two of them once a week. Oh, and then there's other products,

00:00:57.580 there's ten of them, there's fifteen of them that I regularly buy. They've gone up a dollar each.

00:01:02.320 Okay, it's just a dollar, but you see how you start adding it up, and you get to why we see reports and

00:01:07.840 economists saying the average family moving forward is going to have to pay an extra $500 a year in

00:01:13.320 groceries, $700 a year in groceries. It all depends on what products you're buying, but you see how that

00:01:18.500 inches up. Some people, they're better positioned to absorb an extra $500 or $1,000 a year in grocery costs,

00:01:25.400 but there's a lot of people right now who they cannot actually absorb those costs as easily,

00:01:31.140 and that's really going to hurt. That's going to cause a big crunch for them. Now, a lot of

00:01:35.880 economists, they're talking about whether or not inflation is transitory. That's the phrase that

00:01:40.180 they use, but they keep having that conversation, and well, it hasn't gone away while they've been

00:01:44.780 having that discussion, so it's clearly not a fleeting phenomenon. It's sticking around to some degree

00:01:50.660 for some sectors, for some products, for, well, for a little while. We shall see how long, but however long

00:01:56.460 it takes while it's happening, it's happening very real to the people that it's happening to. They're really

00:02:02.760 feeling it, and I think policymakers, they should not be doing anything that makes the situation worse, yet we know

00:02:09.620 the federal government is already planning to increase the carbon tax. They want to bring in a second carbon tax

00:02:14.320 called the clean fuel standard. Various other taxes that are just scheduled to annually increase,

00:02:19.620 they're going to increase. Rate hikes, they're going to go up. All that stuff's going to go up as well,

00:02:24.080 which is only going to make things worse for you. Are some people getting a raise? Yes, they are. I hope

00:02:28.360 everybody gets a raise. Are some people getting a bonus? Yes, they are, but not everyone is, so a lot of

00:02:33.600 people are just seeing that the dollar, it's not going as far as it used to, and well, that phenomenon is

00:02:39.680 just worsening in terms of the situation that we're seeing right here in Canada. Politicians also are

00:02:45.160 responsible for putting out some pandemic money that various reports tell us, well, it wasn't

00:02:49.860 particularly needed. We all supported giving money to people who saw their businesses shut down or

00:02:55.500 were told they couldn't go to work through no fault of their own, and they deserve the supports they

00:02:59.840 received, but a lot of it, well, they weren't looking after the till as well as they could have, and the

00:03:04.260 problem with that, flooding the market with all of that money, is it causes distortionary effects

00:03:09.440 in the economy? So what does all this mean moving forward? Well, I think it continues to mean tough

00:03:14.400 times for those who, well, they're already having a tough time making ends meet, making things work.

00:03:20.700 Inflation is still going to be a huge issue in 2022.

Juno News - January 02, 2022