The Financial Post reports in its Wednesday edition that the slowing pace of decline in gasoline prices was the biggest contributor to Canada's inflation rate rising to 1.9 per cent in August, Statistics Canada said Tuesday, while lower prices for travel tours and fresh fruit balanced acceleration in the all-items consumer price index. The Post's Jane Switzer writes excluding food and energy, CPI rose by 2.4 per cent in August, down from 2.5 per cent in May, June and July. "First, ignore headline CPI," economist Derek Holt at Bank of Nova Scotia said in a note. He added the elimination of the consumer carbon tax earlier this year distorted the measure and will depress year-over-year headline CPI numbers until next spring, "when it should bounce higher once the data starts comparing to a year-ago starting point after April's carbon tax change." Mr. Holt said August's core inflation numbers "cemented" a rate cut by the Bank of Canada today, but that was not always the case. Until the beginning of September, markets spent the year "trapped in a cycle of pushing out cut expectations and getting disappointed in serial fashion," he wrote. Scotiabank has now altered its long-held call that the central bank would pause rates.