In a media exchange at one of his announcements last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney was addressing the issues of affordability when he paused to say, “You know, I just really want to hammer this point home: we’re working to make the lives of our citizens better.” It was not one of the prime minister’s finer moments as he stumbled over this statement. Actually, Carney laughed and then caught himself.
Canadians will not see this clip in their government-subsidized news; however, it is being widely shared in social media. Melaine in Saskatchewan, a popular political commentator on the federal scene, was incensed by Carney’s apparent lack of empathy: “The average Canadian doesn’t burst out laughing when someone says life is getting better. They look at their grocery bill. They look at their rent or mortgage. They look at the kids who can’t afford to leave home, the businesses closing their doors, the food bank line getting longer, and wonder what country their Prime Minister is talking about.”
It has been a little over 16 months since Carney was making campaign promises that the Liberals would ease cost-of-living pressures and that Canadians would ultimately judge his government’s performance on their grocery bills. Memo to the prime minister: current data on Canadians’ state of financial well-being reveal those cost-of-living pressures are not a laughing matter.
Statistics Canada reported in June of this year that grocery prices rose 3.9 per cent year over year and that now marks the 17th consecutive month that food inflation exceeded the overall inflation rate (in June inflation was 2.8 per cent). In a recent Juno News article, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab, wrote, “Food inflation has exceeded overall inflation every single month since Mark Carney became Prime Minister in March 2025. That is not a statistical anomaly. It is a pattern.”
A national study released this week by Narrative Research finds that Canadians see the rising cost of food and groceries as the single biggest item in their household budgets. Three in four Canadians (76 per cent) identify food costs as having had the greatest impact on their household finances, well ahead of the second-most financially impactful expense, gasoline (47 per cent). One in three Canadians (33 per cent) state that their mortgage or rent payments are a source of financial pressure.
On a CTV News report on these findings, Margaret Chapman, the chief operating officer of Narrative Research, made the statement, “The magnitude of the impact of the cost of living on those daily pressures of groceries and gas is really quite startling. People are feeling this ongoing weariness with cost-of-living increases.” The CTV News reporter added that Capman observed Canadians do not anticipate any level of financial relief as the increases will continue, and the higher prices are here to stay.
An internal government report, Survey On Consumer Perceptions Of Food: Wave VII, found a large majority of Canadians have changed their eating habits and can no longer afford to follow healthy eating diets as found in Canada’s Food Guide. As first reported in Blacklock’s Reporter, the government survey found 71 per cent of Canadians have changed their food purchasing habits over the past year due to the rising cost of food. One in two Canadians (48.5 per cent) said they “bought less meat, dairy or fresh produce due to increased prices,” and almost as many (44 per cent) have reduced their food purchases overall. Less than one in three Canadians (30 per cent) are getting their recommended minimum five daily servings of fruits and vegetables. One in five Canadians are skipping meals.
If it were not for independent journalism sources such as Blacklock’s Reporter and Juno News, much of this economic data would not be highlighted for Canadians. For example, this week, Blacklock’s Reporter published contents of an April 2026 Financial Consumer Agency of Canada memo that has some alarming data:
- Over half of Canadians (53 per cent) say they struggle to keep up with financial commitments
- One in four Canadians (26 per cent) say they spend more than they earn
- Half of Canadians (50 per cent) used savings to cope with economic conditions in the past year
- One in three Canadians (33 per cent) borrowed to cover regular expenses
- Two in five Canadians (40 per cent) were deeper in debt year over year
The memo concludes, “Many Canadians are under financial strain.”
In the same article, Blacklock’s Reporter also pulled up the testimony of Grant Bazian, president of MNP LLP of Calgary, who was before the Commons finance committee in April, where he stated, “Many Canadians have no margin for error. Even a small shock – a job shock, an illness, a rate increase – can trigger a crisis.” Bazian assessed, “Canadians are adapting to chronic strain rather than recovering from it.”
This week Equifax Canada published their recent survey results which paint a disturbing picture of increased financial pressure on households. Two in five Canadians (40 per cent) are spending more than they did last year, and half of households with children (51 per cent) are spending more than last year. A sizeable number (29 per cent) have resorted to using credit cards and savings for everyday expenses and one in four (25 per cent) are only able to make minimum monthly credit card payments. Equifax Canada also found that Canadians under 55 feel higher financial pressure compared to those aged 55 and older.
Increasingly, families and individuals are stretched and household budgets are not balancing. In the first three months of 2026, the insolvency rate in Canada was at the highest volume since the 2008 recession, with 37,121 Canadians filing for insolvency, according to the Canadian Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Professionals. That number should strike like a thunderbolt: 17 Canadians file for insolvency every hour. Further data sources from Canadian banks reveal that the country is experiencing delinquent mortgage accounts at a volume that has not been seen since 2015. It has reached the point that Canadians in mortgage arrears are growing faster than total new mortgages. This week the Canadian Bankers Association reported data that shows, currently, mortgages at least 90 days past due have more than doubled since 2022, and the situation across Canada has hit recession levels.
There will be those who say it is not that bad in Canada; if half of Canadians say they struggle to keep up with financial commitments, well that means half are not struggling. Mortgages may be in arrears for some, but Canadians who are homeowners are doing well. In considering that glass-half-full argument, Statistics Canada reported last month that the net worth of Canadian households (calculated as the value of all assets minus all liabilities) rose 1.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2026 and has reached just over $18.6 trillion. In that same period, Canadians’ financial assets (cash, bank accounts, bonds and stocks) went up 1.3 per cent. At a glance, we’re richer than we think.
Still the Canadian Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions recently issued a report that identifies “real estate secured lending and mortgage risk” as the top threat facing the country’s financial system. Aside from the rising number of mortgages in arrears, Canadian households now carry the largest debt burden in the G-7 nations; in fact, Canadians are the second most indebted people in the world with a household debt ratio of 103 per cent of the country’s GDP. For every dollar of disposable income, Canadians owe $1.77 in credit market debt.
In June, the C.D. Howe Institute made public statements regarding the fact that the country’s economy reflects a K-shape economy where wealthier Canadians are doing well and getting richer, while lower income Canadians are doing worse and becoming poorer. The financial institute published a Statistics Canada chart to demonstrate that those with greater means are pulling away as lower earners draw down savings and borrow to keep spending. “Since 2021, the top fifth has lifted its average net saving to over $75,000 a year, while the lowest has sunk deeper into dissaving, spending nearly $39,000 more than its disposable income. The middle and second fifths have also slipped further into the red.”
C.D. Howe also published a telling graph that showed younger Canadians feel under greater financial pressure – with debt stress now hitting record highs – than older Canadians. This conclusion mirrors the Bank of Canada commentary in January 2026, in which the bank noted younger Canadians are “feeling stretched thin due to factors like elevated youth unemployment and servicing existing debt loads like credit card payments, car loans, or student debt.” The bank termed it “a generational divide in financial stress” in which prime working-age Canadians (aged 25–54) are reporting record-high financial stress and older Canadians (aged 55 and older) not so.
That generational divide might explain why the Liberals’ voter support is holding, especially among their Boomer base. It also may be why those older Liberal supporters are so quick to excuse Carney’s uncontrollable laughter when addressing Canadians’ affordability issues.
Chris George is an advocate, government relations advisor, and writer/copy editor. As president of a public relations firm established in 1994, Chris provides discreet counsel, tactical advice and management skills to CEOs/Presidents, Boards of Directors and senior executive teams in executing public and government relations campaigns and managing issues. Prior to this PR/GR career, Chris spent seven years on Parliament Hill on staffs of Cabinet Ministers and MPs. He has served in senior campaign positions for electoral and advocacy campaigns at every level of government. Today, Chris resides in Almonte, Ontario where he and his wife manage www.cgacommunications.com. Contact Chris at chrisg.george@gmail.com.
