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From @ChatGPT Not as a blanket statement. On housing, Doug Ford’s claim is misleading; on food, it depends on the basket, but I would not say the U.S. is generally more expensive than Canada. For homes, the latest national numbers actually point the other way once currencies are normalized. In July 2026, the average Canadian home sold for C$674,819. At roughly C$1.385 per US$ today, that is about US$487,000. The U.S. median sale price in July was about US$407,730. Those measures are not perfectly apples-to-apples—Canada reports a national average there while Redfin reports a U.S. median—but they certainly do not support a simple claim that American homes cost more. Canada also has exceptionally expensive markets such as Toronto and Vancouver, so affordability can be worse there despite lower prices in many smaller Canadian cities. For food, the recent inflation rates are almost identical rather than showing the U.S. clearly worse. Canadian grocery prices were up 3.1% year-over-year in July 2026. U.S. food-at-home prices were up 2.7% year-over-year in June. That actually shows Canadian grocery inflation running slightly faster in the most recent comparable releases. And Canada has long tended to be particularly expensive for items such as dairy, poultry and eggs. Statistics Canada, for example, reports June averages of C$5.50 for 2L milk, C$4.88/dozen eggs, C$5.94 for 454g butter and C$14.63/kg chicken breast. The distinction Ford may be exploiting is price increases versus actual price levels. You can truthfully say a particular American item increased faster during some period without establishing that Americans currently pay more overall. OECD methodology specifically warns that comparing international cost levels requires purchasing-power/common-basket comparisons, not simply looking at each country’s CPI growth. So if Ford literally said “food prices and home prices are higher in the United States than Canada,” I would rate that as, at best, highly cherry-picked. The housing portion is particularly hard to defend nationally. If you send me the clip or exact Ford quote, I can fact-check exactly what he said, including whatever numbers he appears to be relying on.

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