A 20-year spike in inflation could put the bite on the Trudeau Liberals

Heath Krevesky is a self-confessed political junkie — and a bit of a nerd.

That's his way of explaining why he's been tracking his weekly grocery bill for years now. And why he's worried that inflation is taking a bigger and bigger bite out of his food budget.

"In 2019, it cost me $9,826 to feed myself. In 2020, that cost of feeding myself went to $11,994, an increase of 22 per cent," he said.

"I can't wait to find out how this year wraps itself out. It appears as though it's going to be close to $14,000 for a single individual to feed themselves."

Food prices. Gasoline. A meal out. The cost of many everyday items is going up after inflation hit 4.7 per cent last month — the highest rate in nearly twenty years.

For Krevesky, higher prices means scaling back the menu and adjusting his tastes.

The resident of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island said he buys less meat these days, and when he does, he leans to beef ribs rather than steak.

"It's sort of like your poor man's choice of beef, if you will," he said during an interview for a special segment on inflation airing on this weekend's edition of CBC's The House.

"Everybody would like to be able to afford a prime rib, you know, on a semi-regular basis, I cannot afford that ... Ideally, I like to eat a little bit of beef or chicken, fish, throughout the week, so I get a balanced diet, but it's becoming increasingly more [expensive]."

It's hard to point to a single factor behind rising prices.

Droughts in Canada and other countries reduced crop yields. The pandemic reduced production in manufacturing plants as consumers emerged from lockdowns with money they're both willing and able to spend.

"What we're seeing around the world is supply chain bottlenecks," Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said this week when asked by a reporter if the Liberals' plan to spend another $100 billion on post-pandemic programs is to blame for the jump in inflation.

"We are seeing higher energy prices. Energy is a global commodity. When those prices are higher in one country, they are higher around the world. We're seeing a basic challenge that shutting down the world's economy turned out to be a much simpler process than turning the global economy back on."

But for a government that remains relentlessly focused on what it likes to call "the middle class and those working hard to join it," inflation isn't some abstract economic concept. It's making life less affordable for those very same people.