The report expects an average family of four total annual grocery bill to be approximately $16,288, which is $1,065 more than it was in 2022.

The authors of the report state that “the most substantial increases” will be for vegetables, dairy, and meat.

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, project lead and Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University said in last year’s 2022 report, that “It’s important for consumers to understand that food prices have been going up for some time, and there’s no turning back,”.

In the 2023 report, Charlebois said “To say that it’s been a challenging year for Canadians at the grocery store would be an understatement,”.

Adding that “Consumers will continue to get smarter about grocery shopping as they navigate through this so-called food inflation storm.”

“We haven’t seen food prices increase this high in Canada for over 40 years and based on our findings, the increases we have predicted are still quite high but not as high as the increases for 2022,” says Dr. Simon Somogyi, University of Guelph campus lead. 

“That may be cold comfort for Canadians, as food prices are already high, but if inflation can come down, it’s possible that we could see price increases for 2023 at or below 5%.”

In 2022, all across Canada, food price increases reached just about or above 10%, with Quebec having the highest increase at 11%.

In the 2022 report, the group expected food prices to have increased by 5 to 7%, however, in 2022, food prices actually increased by 10.3%.