Toronto, Vancouver named “Impossibly Unaffordable”

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Two Canadian cities — Toronto and Vancouver — have earned the title of “impossibly unaffordable” in a new report.

“There has been a considerable loss of housing affordability in Canada since the mid-2000s, especially in the Vancouver and Toronto markets,” according to the Demographia International Housing Affordability report, which is released annually.

“During the pandemic, the increase in remote work (working at home) fuelled a demand increase as many households were induced to move from more central areas to suburban, exurban and even more remote areas. The result was a demand shock that drove house prices up substantially, as households moved to obtain more space, within houses and in yards or gardens.”

Vancouver was the least affordable market in Canada, and the third least affordable out of all of the 94 markets observed in the report. The West Coast city’s affordability issue has “troublingly” spread to smaller areas like Chilliwack, the Fraser Valley, Kelowna, and markets on Vancouver Island, per the report.

Toronto was named as the second least affordable market in Canada. However, it fared slightly better than Vancouver when it came to the other markets, ranking 84 out of 94 in international affordability.

“As in Vancouver, severely unaffordable housing has spread to smaller, less unaffordable markets in Ontario, such as Kitchener-cambridge-waterloo, Brantford, London, and Guelph, as residents of metro Toronto seek lower costs of living outside the Toronto market,” the report says.

The findings of the report have “grave implications on the prospects for upward mobility,” said Joel Kotkin, the director at the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University, a co-publisher of the report along with Canada’s Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

“As with any problem, the first step towards a resolution should be to understand the basic facts,” he said. “This is what the Demographia study offers.”

The report looked at housing affordability in 94 metropolitan areas in Australia, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. The data analyzed was taken from September 2023. The ratings are based on five categories (affordable, moderately unaffordable, seriously unaffordable, severely unaffordable, and impossibly unaffordable) with a points system to classify each area.

The report determined affordability by calculating the median price-to-income ratio (“median multiple”) in each market.

“There is a genuine need to substantially restore housing affordability in many markets throughout the covered nations,” said Frontier Centre for Public Policy president Peter Holle, in a statement. “In Canada, policymakers are scrambling to ‘magic wand’ more housing but continue to mostly ignore the main reason for our dysfunctional costly housing markets — suburban land use restrictions.”

Toronto and Vancouver both received the worst possible rating for affordability, making them stand out as the most expensive Canadian cities in which to buy a home. However, other Canadian markets — like Calgary, Montreal and Ottawa-gatineau — stood out as well. They were considered “severely unaffordable.”

“This is a long time coming,” senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives David Macdonald told CTV News.

“We haven’t been building enough housing, we certainly haven’t had enough government investment in affordable housing for decades, and the chickens are coming home to roost.”

The most affordable Canadian city in the report was Edmonton, which was given a rating of “moderately unaffordable.” The city in Alberta was “at least twothirds more affordable” than Vancouver.

Overall, Canada ranked third in home ownership compared to the other regions observed in the report. The highest home ownership rate was in Singapore, at 89 per cent, followed by Ireland, at 70 per cent. In Canada, the rate was 67 per cent.

First published in the National Post here, June 17, 2024.

Courtney Greenberg is a Toronto-based freelance journalist writing for the National Post.

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Canada Caves: Carney ditches digital services tax after criticism from Trump

Published on June 30, 2025

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From The Center Square

By Brett Rowland

Canada caved to President Donald Trump demands by pulling its digital services tax hours before it was to go into effect on Monday.

Trump said Friday that he was ending all trade talks with Canada over the digital services tax, which he called a direct attack on the U.S. and American tech firms. The DST required foreign and domestic businesses to pay taxes on some revenue earned from engaging with online users in Canada.

“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” the president said. “We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.”

By Sunday, Canada relented in an effort to resume trade talks with the U.S., it’s largest trading partner.

“To support those negotiations, the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, announced today that Canada would rescind the Digital Services Tax (DST) in anticipation of a mutually beneficial comprehensive trade arrangement with the United States,” according to a statement from Canada’s Department of Finance.

Canada’s Department of Finance said that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Trump agreed to resume negotiations, aiming to reach a deal by July 21.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Monday that the digital services tax would hurt the U.S.

“Thank you Canada for removing your Digital Services Tax which was intended to stifle American innovation and would have been a deal breaker for any trade deal with America,” he wrote on X.

Earlier this month, the two nations seemed close to striking a deal.

Trump said he and Carney had different concepts for trade between the two neighboring countries during a meeting at the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, in the Canadian Rockies.

Asked what was holding up a trade deal between the two nations at that time, Trump said they had different concepts for what that would look like.

“It’s not so much holding up, I think we have different concepts, I have a tariff concept, Mark has a different concept, which is something that some people like, but we’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it today.”

Shortly after taking office in January, Trump hit Canada and Mexico with 25% tariffs for allowing fentanyl and migrants to cross their borders into the U.S. Trump later applied those 25% tariffs only to goods that fall outside the free-trade agreement between the three nations, called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Trump put a 10% tariff on non-USMCA compliant potash and energy products. A 50% tariff on aluminum and steel imports from all countries into the U.S. has been in effect since June 4. Trump also put a 25% tariff on all cars and trucks not built in the U.S.

Economists, businesses and some publicly traded companies have warned that tariffs could raise prices on a wide range of consumer products.

Trump has said he wants to use tariffs to restore manufacturing jobs lost to lower-wage countries in decades past, shift the tax burden away from U.S. families, and pay down the national debt.

A tariff is a tax on imported goods paid by the person or company that imports them. The importer can absorb the cost of the tariffs or try to pass the cost on to consumers through higher prices.

Trump’s tariffs give U.S.-produced goods a price advantage over imported goods, generating revenue for the federal government.

Brett Rowland

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Canadian Oil Sands Production Expected to Reach All-time Highs this Year Despite Lower Oil Prices

Published on June 30, 2025

Todayville

From Energy Now

S&P Global Commodity Insights has raised its 10-year production outlook for the Canadian oil sands. The latest forecast expects oil sands production to reach a record annual average production of 3.5 million b/d in 2025 (5% higher than 2024) and exceed 3.9 million b/d by 2030—half a million barrels per day higher than 2024. The 2030 projection is 100,000 barrels per day (or nearly 3%) higher than the previous outlook.

The new forecast, produced by the S&P Global Commodity Insights Oil Sands Dialogue, is the fourth consecutive upward revision to the annual outlook. Despite a lower oil price environment, the analysis attributes the increased projection to favorable economics, as producers continue to focus on maximizing existing assets through investments in optimization and efficiency.

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While large up-front, out-of-pocket expenditures over multiple years are required to bring online new oil sands projects, once completed, projects enjoy relatively low breakeven prices.

S&P Global Commodity Insights estimates that the 2025 half-cycle break-even for oil sands production ranged from US$18/b to US$45/b, on a WTI basis, with the overall average break-even being approximately US$27/b.*

“The increased trajectory for Canadian oil sands production growth amidst a period of oil price volatility reflects producers’ continued emphasis on optimization—and the favorable economics that underpin such operations,” said Kevin Birn, Chief Canadian Oil Analyst, S&P Global Commodity Insights. “More than 3.8 million barrels per day of existing installed capacity was brought online from 2001 and 2017. This large resource base provides ample room for producers to find debottlenecking opportunities, decrease downtime and increase throughput.”

The potential for additional upside exists given the nature of optimization projects, which often result from learning by doing or emerge organically, the analysis says.

“Many companies are likely to proceed with optimizations even in more challenging price environments because they often contribute to efficiency gains,” said Celina Hwang, Director, Crude Oil Markets, S&P Global Commodity Insights. “This dynamic adds to the resiliency of oil sands production and its ability to grow through periods of price volatility.”

The outlook continues to expect oil sands production to enter a plateau later this decade. However, this is also expected to occur at a higher level of production than previously estimated. The new forecast expects oil sands production to be 3.7 million b/d in 2035—100,000 b/d higher than the previous outlook.

Export capacity—already a concern in recent years—is a source of downside risk now that even more production growth is expected. Without further incremental pipeline capacity, export constraints have the potential to re-emerge as early as next year, the analysis says.

“While a lower price path in 2025 and the potential for pipeline export constraints are downside risks to this outlook, the oil sands have proven able to withstand extreme price volatility in the past,” said Hwang. “The low break-even costs for existing projects and producers’ ability to manage challenging situations in the past support the resilience of this outlook.”

* Half-cycle breakeven cost includes operating cost, the cost to purchase diluent (if needed), as well as an adjustment to enable a comparison to WTI—specifically, the cost of transport to Cushing, OK and quality differential between heavy and light oil.

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SOURCE S&P Global Commodity Insights