As football fans on both sides of the border stock up on snacks ahead of the Super Bowl, those in Canada face steeper price increases on products like potato chips.
But while food giant PepsiCo Inc. made headlines this week by offering relief to U.S. consumers with price cuts on some of its major snack brands, no such break is coming to Canadians.
The consumer price index category of potato chips and other snacks in Canada climbed nearly 8 per cent in December, the last month for which data is available, roughly 3.5 times faster than the U.S. category of snacks.
Analysis: This is why you’re feeling much poorer than the economic numbers suggest
The increase is partly the result of what economists call base effects. For part of the comparable month of December, 2024, the former Trudeau government provided a temporary tax exemption on certain products, including potato chips and confectionery items. The GST holiday ended in February, 2025, so the return of GST contributed to higher prices in December, 2025.
But beyond base effects, the evidence is clear that Canadians have been hit harder by snack inflation. Compared to December, 2020, snack prices in the U.S. have climbed 20 per cent. In Canada, they’re up 31.2 per cent.
Potato chips in particular have focused the ire of consumers fed up with food inflation and the related phenomenon of shrinkflation – in addition to rising prices, companies filled chip bags with more air and fewer chips.
In response, consumers cut back on snack purchases or opted for no-name brands, which this week prompted PepsiCo, the maker of Lay’s, Doritos and Cheetos, to announce it’s cutting prices in the U.S. by as much as 15 per cent.
Canadians, on the other hand, are out of luck. “The pricing announcement refers to a U.S. initiative, and it does not apply to products sold in Canada,” PepsiCo Canada said in a statement.
Decoder is a weekly feature that unpacks an important economic chart.