Consumer Price Index for Utilities - Isolated Posts and Government Housing Directive (IPGHD) - Amendment

March 26, 2008

To: Functional Heads of Human Resources, Finance and Administration

AMENDMENT

The purpose of this notice is to provide departments and agencies with an amended Consumer Price Index (CPI) for Utilities.

The previous CPI for Utilities as provided by Statistics Canada was using 2002 as the base year. Unfortunately, the conversion methodology they provided did not actually re-base the index to 1991 as required under the IPGHD. Consequently, the previous index of 177.05 is not to be used for the calculation of utilities charges as per section 6.14 of the directive.

In order to provide you with the correct CPI for Utilities, we have consulted with Statistics Canada using the CPI (year over year) for Utilities with 1992 as the base year and then applied the same conversion factor as in previous years to re-base the January 2008 CPI to 1991 in accordance with the IPGHD.

To do this, we applied the following formula:

The correct index of 216.61 should be used in the calculation of utilities charges as per Section 6.14 of the Isolated Posts and Government Housing Directive.

I apologize for any inconvenience this error may have caused.

Please ensure that it is provided immediately to those responsible for calculating the charges.

If you have any questions, please contact Jo-Anne Tremblay at (613) 952-3202.

Claudia Zovatto
Senior Director
Excluded Groups and Administrative Policies
Labour Relations and Compensation Operations