The papers are reporting this morning that StatsCanada has understated the country's inflation rate by about .1% over a five-year period from 2001. While that does not appear to be an overly significant amount having much impact on our lives, for FTers it is rather significant. That small percentage point resulted from understating the actual rise in the cost of hotel rooms in Canada through that period. In fact, StatsCanada had been reporting hotel rooms actually dropped over the past five years...something I am sure all of us would have found surprising since our own evidence would suggest we are paying more for hotel rooms on our travels now than five years ago.

A glitch in StatsCan's software was discovered in June, and the reality is that instead of having dropped 16% over the past five years, hotel room rates in Canada actually rose 32%!

Also revealed, Canada's productivity growth rate was actually 2.2% last year, not the reported 1.1%!

Something's rotten up in Tunney's Pasture. The NATIONAL POST reported last month that many thousands of Canadians were receiving dunning letters threatening them if they did not complete their Census forms. I received one of these letters, despite the fact I mailed mine on the very day it was to be done. So I can only imagine how many others of these letter recipients were puzzled by the receipt of one of the rudest and accusatory letters to ever have come from a government agency...Canada Revenue included!