IndoCanada Club, 381 Front Street West, Suite 305, Toronto, ON (2026)

10/11/2026

Your grocery bill is 29% higher than five years ago

Statistics Canada says grocery prices in August were 29.0% higher than in August 2021. A cart of food that cost $100 five years ago costs about $129 today.

There is some good news. Prices are still going up, but they are going up more slowly.

The main numbers:

- Grocery prices rose 2.8% in the year to August. In July the rise was 3.1%.
- All prices together rose 3.0% over the same year.
- For the first time since July 2024, groceries went up more slowly than everything else.
- Gas prices rose 22.8% in the year to August.

What to watch:

- Food prices follow fuel costs, because trucks and ships bring food to the store.
- Statistics Canada updates these prices every month.

These are the August 2026 figures, the newest price numbers available.

Source: Statistics Canada
IndoCanada Professionals & Business Club
www.indocanada.org

10/10/2026

Canada is growing at its slowest rate in over 100 years.

The Bank of Canada says our population grew by just 0.5% in 2025. For most of the past 50 years it grew about 1.2% a year. In the early 2020s it grew by as much as 3% a year.

What changed:

- In 2024 the government started taking in fewer immigrants.
- Canadians are getting older. Half of all Canadians are now older than 40. In 1971 that number was 26.

What the Bank of Canada says this means:

1. Fewer new workers will arrive to fill open jobs.
2. People will buy less, so the economy will not grow as fast.
3. An older country may need to spend more on health care, such as hospitals and long-term care.

Source: Bank of Canada
IndoCanada Professionals & Business Club
www.indocanada.org

10/09/2026

Canada's ban on foreign home buyers ends on January 1, 2027.

That is 84 days from today. Canada's Finance Minister, Francois-Philippe Ch*****ne, told reporters on October 7 that the government is still looking at its options. He has not said whether the ban will stay.

Here is what the rule says right now:

- Canadian citizens and permanent residents are not covered. They can buy a home any time. They always could.
- A foreign buyer who breaks the ban can be fined up to $10,000. A court can also order the home to be sold.
- Work permit holders can buy one home if their permit has 183 days or more left on the day they buy.
- International students can buy one home under $500,000 if they have filed five years of Canadian tax returns and spent at least 244 days in Canada in each of those five years.
- The ban does not cover large apartment buildings, or land bought to build on.

Three things to watch:

1. Ottawa's decision. If the government does nothing, the ban simply ends on January 1, 2027.
2. The next federal budget. It is expected before the ban runs out.
3. Your own status. If you are a citizen or a permanent resident, this rule has never applied to you.

Source: Global News
IndoCanada Professionals & Business Club
www.indocanada.org

10/08/2026

Rents in Canada are still going down.

Landlords are asking $2,034 a month on average. That is 4.2% less than one year ago. Rents have now fallen for 24 months in a row. That is two full years.

Here is the picture by type of home, for September 2026:

- Apartments in rental buildings: $2,036 a month, down 2.7%
- Condo apartments: $2,052 a month, down 7.8%
- Houses and townhouses: $2,016 a month, down 7.4%

What this means:

- A new lease now costs about $89 a month less than one year ago. Over a full year that is about $1,070.
- Rents are $168 below the highest point. That was May 2024, when the average was $2,202.
- Condos and houses are falling much faster than apartments in rental buildings. That gap is the thing to watch in the months ahead.

Source: Rentals.ca and Urbanation
IndoCanada Professionals & Business Club
www.indocanada.org

10/07/2026

Home prices are falling in Canada's two biggest housing markets.

Here are the September 2026 numbers.

Toronto area: the average home sold for $1,006,409. That is 5.1% lower than a year ago, or about $53,600 less.

Metro Vancouver: a typical home now costs $1,075,900. That is 5.5% lower than a year ago.

Fewer homes are selling. Toronto-area sales fell 9% in a year. Metro Vancouver sales fell 8.4%.

What to watch:

1. Fewer homes are going up for sale. In the Toronto area, 14.4% fewer homes were put up for sale than a year ago. Less choice for buyers often slows price falls later on.

2. Toronto's price index, which compares homes of the same type and size, is down 4.7%. That is a smaller fall than the average price. So part of the drop is about which homes sold, not only about prices.

3. Both markets have been sliding for months. The next set of board numbers lands in early November.

Source: TRREB and Greater Vancouver Realtors
IndoCanada Professionals & Business Club
www.indocanada.org

10/06/2026

India and Canada opened the fifth round of Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement talks in Ottawa on 5 October, running to 9 October, with both governments saying they want the agreement concluded before the end of 2026.

Where the trade actually stands, on Global Affairs Canada's own numbers:

- C$30.4B - two-way goods and services trade with India in 2025
- C$15.2B - Canada's services exports to India in 2025, half the two-way total and driven mainly by education-related travel
- C$70B - the two-way trade figure Ottawa has set as its target for 2030

Three things worth watching:

1. The calendar is tight. Four rounds are done and the fifth is the last scheduled one before the stated year-end deadline, so the gap between C$30.4B today and a C$70B target depends on what gets agreed in the next few weeks.

2. Services, not goods, are carrying this relationship. Canada's services exports to India are half of all two-way trade, and education-related travel is the largest single piece of that - which ties the trade file directly to study permits and student mobility.

3. A Team Canada Trade Mission follows to Mumbai and Bengaluru from 12 to 17 October. Canadian businesses with India ties are the intended audience, and the mission lands a week after this negotiating round closes.

One note on the figures: these are Canadian dollars, from Global Affairs Canada releases. Several outlets have reprinted the same numbers as US dollars.

Source: Global Affairs Canada
IndoCanada Professionals & Business Club
www.indocanada.org

10/05/2026

India and Canada open the fifth round of Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) talks in Ottawa today, running October 5-9, with both governments aiming to conclude negotiations by the end of 2026.

The backdrop is a trade relationship that shrank last year, but not evenly:

- Two-way goods trade: US$7.95 billion in FY2025-26, down 8.23% from US$8.7 billion
- India's goods exports to Canada: US$4.67 billion, up 10.63%
- India's goods imports from Canada: US$3.28 billion, down 26.14%

Three things worth noting:

1. The headline decline is one-sided. India's sales into Canada grew; the fall came almost entirely from the Canadian side, where exports to India dropped more than a quarter. The overall number understates how differently the two directions moved.

2. Four rounds are already complete, and the pace has picked up - the fourth round closed on September 18 and the fifth opens barely two weeks later. Both sides have set a C$70 billion two-way trade target for 2030.

3. Tariff schedules and services commitments are what will matter to businesses on both sides. Those are settled in the rounds, not at signature, so the next few months are where the detail gets fixed.

Worth watching: Canada's trade minister is due in New Delhi later this month with a business delegation, and any published terms of reference or sectoral annexes from this round.

Source: India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry
IndoCanada Professionals & Business Club
www.indocanada.org

10/04/2026

Canada had one inflation rate in August 2026. Where you live moved it by more than double.

Statistics Canada's consumer price index rose 3.0% in the 12 months to August 2026. Across the ten provinces, the same measure ran from 2.4% to 5.1%:

- Nova Scotia 5.1% - the highest province
- New Brunswick 4.6%
- Prince Edward Island 4.4%, tied with Manitoba
- Canada 3.0%
- British Columbia 3.0%
- Ontario 2.4% - the lowest province

Gasoline is carrying much of the increase. Pump prices were 22.8% higher than a year earlier. With gasoline stripped out, the national rate was 2.4%. Two core measures that trim away the most volatile price moves sat lower still, at 1.9% and 2.0%.

What that means in practice:

1. A national inflation figure is not a household figure. On the same measure, a household in Nova Scotia and one in Ontario were facing increases 2.7 percentage points apart.
2. The gap sits in Atlantic Canada. All four Atlantic provinces ran at 4.3% or higher, against 2.4% in Ontario - the widest regional split in the release.
3. This is the most recent reading available, not a current-month one. The September index is not published until 19 October 2026, so August remains the live number until then.

Source: Statistics Canada
IndoCanada Professionals & Business Club
www.indocanada.org

10/03/2026

The Bank of Canada has put a number on how far the country's economy has tilted
toward housing - and said plainly that interest rates will not tilt it back.

Speaking in Victoria on 1 October, Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers set out
the shift:

- In 2000, residential investment was 4.3% of GDP, while business investment in
machinery, equipment and innovation was 8.3%.
- "Today that relationship is reversed," she said. The Bank did not publish
current percentages for the comparison.
- About half of all bank lending is now tied to residential real estate, which
ties the health of the banks to the health of the housing market.

On why cheaper borrowing has not solved affordability: "Monetary policy can
influence demand across the economy - including demand for housing. But it is a
blunt tool." One rate is set for the whole economy, and rates cannot build homes,
rezone land or speed up permits. Lower rates lift prices; higher rates box
buyers out.

Three things worth watching:

1. The Bank is pointing away from itself. Rogers named what she says affordability
actually requires: "more supply, better planning and infrastructure, regulation
that protects resilience, and incentives that don't add demand to a market
already short on supply." That puts the next moves with municipalities and the
provinces, not with the rate announcement.

2. Demand-side help can work against itself. The speech's logic is that incentives
adding demand to a supply-short market feed back into prices - a useful lens for
reading any new buyer-support measure.

3. Housing and credit are now the same question. With roughly half of bank lending
tied to residential real estate, house price moves travel into lending across
the economy, well beyond people buying or selling a home.

Source: Bank of Canada
IndoCanada Professionals & Business Club
www.indocanada.org

10/02/2026

Canada has named its first-ever project of national interest: the West Coast oil
pipeline, now called Pacific Link.

The federal government's projections for the completed project:

- 1 million barrels a day of additional export capacity to Asian markets
- 140,000 jobs across the country
- More than $20 billion a year added to GDP
- $100 billion in government revenue by 2060

The stated purpose is to reduce Canada's dependence on the United States as a buyer
by opening routes to Asia. Ownership is to be shared equally between Canada and
Alberta, and Indigenous communities are offered a minimum 10% ownership stake. More
than 130 Indigenous communities near or along potential routes in Alberta and
British Columbia were consulted during the assessment.

Three things to watch:

1. The conditions attached to the designation are not settled. The Major Projects
Office is working to finalise them by September 1, 2027, and those conditions
will determine much of what the project actually looks like.
2. Every figure above is a federal projection for a pipeline that is not yet built,
measured out as far as 2060. None of it is realised activity, and projections of
this kind move as scope, costs and routing change.
3. The job and supply-chain effects concentrate in Alberta and British Columbia,
where a large share of our community lives and works. Construction trades,
engineering, logistics and the professional services around them are the
categories most directly touched.

Source: Prime Minister's Office
IndoCanada Professionals & Business Club
www.indocanada.org

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