Ottawa's number, in the middle of the pack
Ottawa's average one-bedroom apartment now rents for $1,900 a month, according to a new cost-of-living breakdown from Ottawa Life Magazine. That figure lands Ottawa inside a national range where a single person renting a one-bedroom apartment is spending roughly $2,800 to $4,100 a month once everything else, groceries, transit, utilities, is stacked on top of rent. For a family of four, the same breakdown puts total monthly costs, including rent, groceries, childcare and transit, at $4,700 to $7,500.
Groceries are doing a lot of the damage
Food is a big part of why those totals climb so fast. Overall food prices are forecast to rise 4% to 6% in 2026, and are already 27% higher than they were five years ago. Dalhousie's Dr. Sylvain Charlebois told Global News the average family of four should expect to spend about $1,000 more next year just to buy the exact same amount of food they bought this year. Meat is expected to see the steepest single jump, projected at 5% to 7%.
Why everything costs more to move, too
It isn't only what's on the shelf. Gas prices are up about 26% year-over-year, according to the Ottawa Life breakdown, and that pushes up the price of anything that has to be trucked, shipped or delivered, which in practice means almost everything in a grocery store or on a store shelf. For Ottawa households already budgeting around a $1,900 rent, a 26% jump in fuel costs is the kind of increase that shows up in a dozen different bills without ever appearing as its own line item.
How Canadians are responding
The spending data backs up what a lot of Ottawa residents are already doing at the till. A TD survey from January 2026 found two in three Canadians planned to cut spending this year, and a CIBC poll from mid-2026 found 65% of Canadians now prefer to save rather than overspend. Both surveys point to the same shift: fewer discretionary purchases and more attention to where the grocery and gas money is going.
What led here
This isn't the first sign this month that Canadians are paying more for less. ottown's earlier report found that Apple's new foldable iPhone Duo costs Canadians nearly 10% more than Americans pay for the same device, another example of the currency and cost pressures showing up across categories, not just at the grocery store or the rental listing.
The Ottawa takeaway
Ottawa's $1,900 average one-bedroom rent doesn't sit at the extreme end of the $2,800 to $4,100 single-person range reported nationally, but it's still the single biggest fixed cost most renters in the city carry. Layer on food prices rising 4% to 6% this year and gas up 26%, and it's easy to see why local households are behaving like the TD and CIBC survey respondents: cutting back where they can and treating saving as the default rather than the exception.
Sources: Ottawa Life Magazine, Dalhousie University (Agri-Food Analytics Lab), Global News
