Tausi Insider

Sobey's Queensway store in Toronto on Apr. 3, 2020. Canada’s Food Price Report says the cost of groceries will increase by 5 to 7 per cent in 2023. J.P. MOCZULSKI/Tausi Insider Food costs in Canada will continue to rise over the next year, with the average family of four expected to pay an additional $1,000 for groceries in 2023, according to an annual report on prices. Canada’s Food Price Report says the cost of groceries will increase by 5 per cent to 7 per cent in 2023, compounding the financial burden of a year of record-high food inflation that saw prices climb 10.3 per cent between November, 2021, and September, 2022. By way of comparison, in its October Monetary Policy Report, the Bank of Canada said it expects the consumer price index to fall to about 3 per cent by late 2023. The average family of four, who paid more than $15,200 for food in 2022, will pay more than $16,200 next year for the same groceries, the report said. The main drivers of that increase are the contin...

A study by a computer science professor at the University of Guelph found 'absolutely jarring' privacy violations by some Ontario laptop repair shops that accessed customers’ personal information. Jenny Kane/The Associated Press Privacy violations at computer repair shops are “absolutely jarring,” says a professor involved in a new study, which found half of all stores tested in three Ontario cities unnecessarily accessed customers’ personal information. Women bore the brunt of the violations. In some cases, the study found, repair shops also copied personal information such as passwords and revealing pictures onto external devices. “We wanted to see, in what we believe is the first examination of this kind, whether this big and prevalent issue of privacy violations is happening in Canada. And what we found was absolutely jarring,” said Hassan Khan, a computer science professor at the University of Guelph and one of the co-authors of the study, along with master’s students ...

People shop at Fiesta Farms independent grocery in Toronto on Jan. 20. Christopher Katsarov/Tausi Insider In many homes, dry pasta is a ubiquitous pantry item. Busy families with picky eaters can prepare steaming bowls of cost-friendly spaghetti or penne in minutes, a salve to hectic schedules and stretched budgets. Of late, those costs aren’t nearly as friendly. Pasta prices have been climbing rapidly during this spell of high inflation, far exceeding the increases for most other grocery items. As of October, the price of pasta products had jumped 27.4 per cent over the past year, according to Statistics Canada, compared with general food inflation of 10 per cent. Dry and fresh pasta was up 45 per cent. The average retail price for a 500-gram package of pasta was $3.40 in October, an increase of $1.19 (54 per cent) from two years earlier. Food inflation takes a big bite out of Christmas dinner budgets It’s not just a Canadian trend. In Britain, the price of pasta products and cousco...