As the province prepares to close the Luugat single-room occupancy (SRO) building on Vancouver’s Granville Street by the end of June, it appears BC Housing doesn’t want the public to see inside the former hotel that taxpayers paid millions of dollars to convert to supportive housing during COVID.
“I’m happy to get out of there,” Luugat resident Stewart Holcombe said with a chuckle Friday.
How was this allowed to happen?
Brampton, a fast-growing city west of Toronto, is at the heart of Canada’s mortgage troubles as a growing number of homeowners miss loan payments and lenders force the sale of their homes.
The municipality has the highest mortgage delinquency rate among larger Canadian cities, according to data from Equifax Canada. And its rate of delinquencies – defined as at least 90 days of missed payments – has been rising at a faster pace than in the rest of the country.
Canada is not supposed to have a food problem.
It is a country defined by its capacity to produce—vast agricultural land, reliable water, and generations of farmers who have sustained both. For most Canadians, food has been stable, available, and dependable.
That has not been an assumption. It has been a lived reality. That reality is now under strain.
Canadians are no longer bracing for runaway food inflation, but that doesn’t mean they’ve recovered from it. The latest data from the latest Canadian Food Sentiment Index, produced by Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, suggests something more nuanced: the shock of inflation may be fading, but its effects are now deeply embedded in how Canadians live, spend, and eat.
To understand where we are today, we need to look back.
The number of known homeless encampments across Toronto this spring has plunged dramatically from last year, new city data shows — with their official count in March more than 70 per cent lower than at the same time last year.
This dramatic downswing is seen by city hall as a sign of progress, as demand has eased on the shelter system and more people were housed in 2025 than 2024. But several community workers warn that they’re seeing more people sleeping rough without a tent to stay under the radar, sheltering instead in places like transit stations or beneath doorways.
Bad news if you recently decided to eat more greens because meat is so expensive.
It’s the produce section of your local grocery store that may trigger a double-take these days. Fresh veggies cost 7.8 per cent more year over year in March, according to Statistics Canada’s most recent inflation numbers. After prices increased 0.5 per cent in February, March’s increase is the largest since August 2023.
Food inflation in Canada may have eased to 4.0% in March, but don’t be misled by the headline. The number that matters most — food purchased from stores— actually rose to 4.4%, up 0.3 percentage points. That increase tells us something important: cost pressures are not fading. In fact, they are shifting — and intensifying in key categories.
Look at what’s driving the change. Meat and vegetables are both rising, and for very different reasons. But together, they paint a clear picture of a food system still under strain.
OTTAWA — Despite saying they earn a decent salary, more than half of working Canadians say they’re having trouble making ends meet.
That’s according to a new survey commissioned by H&R Block that paints a bleak picture of Canada’s ongoing affordability crisis, with those in Atlantic Canada reportedly the most concerned.
U of T economist, Josef Steinberg responds: "I get that this elbows-up crap plays well politically within Canada, but as Kevin A. Bryan, Chief Economist, CDL Toronto states, it's "economic malpractice." Our physical proximity to the US isn't a weakness—it's one of our most… https://t.co/aocwHjxdxs
— MikesMoneyTalks.ca (@moneytalkstweet) April 21, 2026
Canada’s fuel excise tax is now frozen until September.
It sounds promising, especially when you see the signs at gas stations, but what does it mean for Canadians right now?
Earlier this month, during a panel discussion on the Canadian economy at the Liberal Party convention in Montreal, former Google CFO Patrick Pichette suggested that the government should restrict the ability of young Canadians to work in the United States, because Canadian taxes had funded their education. A clip of these remarks went viral, and for good reason: as Shopify founder Tobi Lütke said in response, “making Canada a cage” is not the right strategy to build a strong economy.
Once again, it took the media to remind us that food fraud is not a relic of the past—it is very much a present-day risk embedded in our food system. After the maple syrup scandal, CBC News has uncovered yet another troubling issue: inaccurate scales at the meat counter. This is not anecdotal noise. It is a structural concern. When consumers pay for more than they actually receive, the consequence is not just irritation—it is a silent erosion of trust in one of the most expensive categories in the grocery store.
Canada doesn’t just have a food inflation problem, it has a market structure problem – and it’s getting worse.
Over the last two years, we’ve been fixated on prices: why groceries cost more, why inflation remains stubborn, and why relief hasn’t materialized for many households. But we are missing the bigger issue. Canada’s economy is becoming increasingly K-shaped, and that is quietly undermining both affordability and innovation in our food system.
The gap between Canada’s richest and poorest grew last year as financial markets gained, interest payouts declined and the job market softened, said Statistics Canada on Monday.
The agency says the income gap — measuring the difference in the share of disposable income between households in the top 40 per cent and those in the bottom 40 per cent — reached 46.7 percentage points in 2025.
For years, Canada’s housing crisis and its productivity slump have been treated as parallel emergencies. One was a matter of affordability and social equity, the other a question of economic competitiveness.
However a growing body of research, and a pair of Canadian experts who have spent years studying both, say that framing has always been wrong. They insist the country is paying a steep price for keeping the two conversations apart.
Researchers from Harvard’s Growth Lab contend Canada’s restrictive urban zoning is short-circuiting the normal mechanism by which productivity gains in major cities become national prosperity.
More than 84,300 houses across Ontario — around the number you’d find in a mid-sized city like Markham — were owned as investments by businesses or for-profit government entities such as public-sector pension funds in 2023, according to data from the Canadian Housing Statistics Program.
This data, released in recent months, offers a glimpse at where, and how acutely, businesses of all types have invested in Canadian single-family housing stock.
