Food prices have risen significantly faster than other prices over the past decade, both in Canada and elsewhere. Monday’s inflation numbers showed that prices of food purchased in stores rose by 4.3 per cent over the past year, compared with 3.1 per cent for nonfood items. A confluence of pressures is creating a perfect storm for further rapid price hikes.
VANCOUVER — A national plan to absorb Canada’s unsold condos is unfolding in two very different shapes — one already called a bailout by some analysts but drawing little of the outrage, the other announced last week by Mark Carney and instantly setting the public on fire. Two cities, more than 4,400 unsold condos held on the books of wealthy private companies, both outcomes hard to predict — but Vancouver’s is already being cast by critics as a handout to well-connected Liberal insiders.
This is, first, a national story.
This sounds like weasel words … Carney admits he did poor job rolling out $1.45 billion B.C. program panned as ‘condo bailout’
It’s been a year since Prime Minister Mark Carney said the cost of living was a key priority for his Liberal government — and every month since food prices have gone through the roof.
The Liberals will put the blame on Ukraine, or Donald Trump or tariffs or climate change or just about anything, but what they won’t do is accept responsibility for a crisis that they most certainly have control over.
Last Thursday, Prime Minister Mark Carney stood alongside B.C. Premier David Eby in Vancouver, and made a major announcement: the federal and B.C. provincial governments would step in to absorb thousands of vacant condominium units and repurpose them as affordable housing for Canadians. It was, his government declared in the press release, “one of the fastest and most efficient ways to increase housing supply.”
Canadians often wonder why food costs so much. Many economists are quick to blame U.S. President Donald Trump, climate change, global supply chains, exchange rates, or other external forces. These are convenient explanations and, in some cases, legitimate ones. But while these factors matter, many of the reasons behind Canada’s persistent food affordability problem are far less visible. Some are buried deep within regulatory and administrative processes that rarely attract public attention.
Davelle Morrison listed her client’s 650-square-foot condo in downtown Toronto’s Corktown neighbourhood for $558,000 at the beginning of March 2026 — then reduced the price by $38,000 in a hopeful effort to get more bites. When the bites didn’t materialize, Morrison relisted the property for $399,000 on May 4 with an offer night slated for a week later.
Not that long ago, such a price point and sales strategy would have guaranteed a frenzy of activity.
Vancouver’s shoe box builders just got bailed by Carney.
I wonder if his ChiCom pals can convince him to do the same for Toronto?
B.C. is facing a glut of empty condos. Thousands of Metro Vancouver units are sitting empty and some developers are facing insolvency.
Now, some housing experts are questioning a plan by the federal and provincial governments to buy some of those vacant units and turn them into affordable housing.
They say it amounts to a multi-billion dollar bail out for developers who refuse to lower prices to reflect a sluggish real estate market.
This smells very bad.
For years, Canadians have been told that food inflation is driven by weather, labour shortages, transportation costs, global conflicts, exchange rates, and climate events. All of those factors matter. But there is another contributor to rising food prices that rarely receives public attention: the way some grocery promotions are funded.
Ottawa is once again examining whether a lack of competition across Canada’s food supply chain is contributing to persistently high food prices. The Competition Bureau has launched a comprehensive review stretching from farm inputs to grocery store shelves, with a report expected in 2027. The review is long overdue, but Canadians should temper their expectations. Competition matters, but it is only one piece of a much larger affordability puzzle.
Homeownership rates for recent immigrants in Canada grew recently, but it also decreased for Canadian-born individuals, according to a Statistics Canada study released Tuesday.
Homeownership in Ontario among recent immigrants in their fifth year in Canada rose by from 35.7 per cent in 2018 to 40.2 per cent in 2021, recording an increase of over 12 per cent. While Canadian-born individuals saw a five per cent decrease in homeownership rates for the same period from 50.7 per cent to 47.8 per cent.
I guess the Elbow people who voted for economic security wrecking mass immigration all have homes set aside for their children and grandchildren.
Canadians often blame grocery stores, food manufacturers or governments for food waste. Yet much of the waste occurs in our own kitchens, often for one simple reason: We misunderstand food date labels.
New survey data from the Agri-Food Analytics Lab in partnership with Caddle, based on responses from 3,000 Canadians, reveal that the vast majority of households continue to throw away food once it passes its use-by date. While only 11% of Canadians said they always discard food after the date has passed, another 20% do so often and 37% do so sometimes. In other words, nearly seven in 10 Canadians allow date labels to influence their decision to dispose of food.
A federal housing watchdog is warning that Canada is building affordable housing so slowly it could take more than 1,000 years to eliminate homelessness and restore affordability for the country’s poorest residents.
In her annual report to Parliament, Federal Housing Advocate Marie-Josée Houle said Canada faces a shortfall of 4.4 million affordable homes and needs a dramatic increase in public, non-profit and co-operative housing construction to address the crisis.
Nobody has the right to own a home.
I can’t shake this comment from an Ottawa mandarin, made during an unguarded moment at a Bay Street event where it spilled into a casual conversation about affordable homes for families.
As Canadians do, I grinned, walked away with a drink in hand and stewed. What can families expect for the billions of taxpayer dollars being spent on housing by all levels of government?
The federal government’s new National Food Security Strategy, valued at roughly $3.2 billion over ten years, is one of the most significant food policy announcements in recent memory. It signals that Ottawa finally recognizes what Canadians have been experiencing for years: food affordability matters, supply chains matter, and domestic food production matters.
I’ve never been called “trailer trash”, but I did live in a trailer in Northeast Georgia in my early teens. Trailers don’t have the best reputation, but I liked it better than the home I grew up in. It was well-insulated, with a shotgun floor plan, so my room was far from my mother’s and her boyfriend’s, giving me more privacy than when we’d shared a wall (Iggy Pop, who lived with his parents in a trailer in Ypsilanti, Michigan, felt differently, and tells how he used to draw pictures of fantastical, u-shaped trailers where a boy would have space to hide). There was a hill I could skate down, woods to walk through, and because we were parked over gravel rather than dirt, we didn’t have as many problems with bugs. I had lived in a typical postwar suburb where neighbors were suspicious of each other and maintained a degree of distance. The trailer park, by contrast, was cozy; people knew each other and waved hello. I remember having long talks with a man there who owned four beautifully restored Ford Mustangs from the Sixties.
