Being a huge country, the cost of living in Canada varies from city to city. The national average cost of living for a single person is $2,730 per month while it averages around $5,158 for a family of four. Household expenses can total as much as half of one’s net salary. Housing, though, is cheap compared with other developed nations provided you stay away from hotspots like Toronto and Vancouver.

The average house price is around nine times the average annual wage. By the end of the first quarter of 2021, though, the Canadian housing market was overheating, with calls for stricter regulations getting stronger. A Bloomberg report said Canada’s bank regulator is proposing tighter mortgage qualification rules to make it more difficult for home buyers to secure financing, a move aimed at cooling the nation’s booming real-estate market.

Surging housing prices in Canada are raising concern among policymakers and economists. Cheap mortgages and new remote-working conditions have led to a rise in demand for more spacious homes, leading to a price war among bidders.

The Bloomberg report published in the second week of April 2021 cited Canadian Real Estate Association calculations that prices were up 17 per cent nationally over the previous 12 months. Twelve major markets in the country posted price gains of more than 30 per cent.

Food is affordable as is the case with dining out and most forms of recreation. Cars are not too dear, but car insurance can be expensive. Mercer’s Cost of Living survey shows Vancouver (94^th most expensive among the 209 cities that the survey ranks) has the highest cost of living in Canada, followed by Toronto (98^th), Montreal (139^th), Calgary (153^th) and Ottawa (161^th). Canadian cities, it found, have lower living costs than many other locations in the developed world. Dubai, for instance, ranks at #23 while London is at #19 and Tel Aviv at #12.

Canada’s least expensive city is Edmonton in Alberta where the rent of a two-bedroom apartment is $1,250 per month. The average Canadian family was expected to pay up an extra $695 for food in 2021 as the coronavirus pandemic, wildfires and changing consumer habits drove up grocery bills.

Rising prices of bread, meat and vegetables were expected to lead an overall food price increase of three to five per cent, according to Food Price Report 2021. For an average family of four, that means a $13,907 grocery bill. Much of the produce Canadians consume comes from California, a state that was ravaged in 2020 by one of the worst wildfire seasons on record.