A new Ledger poll illustrated that Canada has increased the affordability of housing & groceries. According to the study, over 83% of the 1,522 newcomers surveyed felt that the affordability issues were making settling in Canada a bit more challenging. 

Simultaneously, a recent study by Statistics Canada found that more than one-third of newcomers who recently arrived in the nation were renting situations where they needed to spend more than one-third of their pre-tax income on rent. 

Moreover, on February 6th, the federal government declared that Canada had increased the affordability of housing & groceries. The government instituted similar affordability policies last year. 

Housing Measures 

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland declared an extra CAD 99 million to the CHB. CHB is a program that helps make rent more affordable by directly delivering money to low-income renters in Canada. 

After this contribution, the total amount towards the CHB reached CAD 325 million in the fiscal year 2023-2024. Well, this will be received directly by low-income renters through territorial & provincial support plans. In addition, the CHB is funded with a cumulative 4.8 billion CAD over eight years. 

The addition of more funding for the CHB is the latest in a number of policies that the government has instituted in the hopes of making housing more affordable in Canada. Among these are: 

  • The $4 billion Housing Accelerator Fund incentivizes municipal governments to remove zoning restrictions & increase production of housing units, aiming to build an additional 100,000 new homes in the next three years. 
  • The Canadian Mortgage Charter highlights specific mortgage relief policies & plans that the government expects banks to enforce & provide to home-buyers who are facing financial difficulty with the mortgage of their principal residence.
  • The Tax-Free Home Savings Account allows first-time home buyers to contribute up to CAD 40,000 on a tax-free downpayment for their first home. 

2023’s fall economic strategy also outlined strategies to increase the supply of affordable housing in Canada. 

Measures For Groceries & Other Essentials 

In the same declaration, Minister of Innovation, Science, & Industry Francois-Phillipe Champagne declared new research into different corporate practices that might be impacting Canadian customers’ shopping for essentials like groceries. 

The Minister said that the government would be tripling funding to Canada’s Contributions Programs for Non-Profit Consumers & Voluntary Organizations – supporting the production of high-quality research on consumer affairs. 

More specifically, the organizations will be looking into two kinds of business practices engaged in by businesses: 

  • Shrinkflation: The practice of reducing the size/ quantity of a product while keeping the price remains the same or higher
  • Skimpflation: The practice of using less expensive & often inferior ingredients to produce or manufacture what appears to be the same product at the same or even higher price

These measures come at a time when Canada, like most nations across the Western world, faces a growing cost in the average cost of living.