Can you guess how housing costs changed under Harper and Trudeau?
March 26, 2025
What do the numbers show us about the cost of housing in Canada in the years Justin Trudeau was prime minister? How do these compare to the period Stephen Harper was in office?
Draw lines in the charts below to show how you think things have changed.
Then, hit the submit button to see how your guesses stack up against the actual data.
Of course, these numbers only tell part of the story, so check out the analysis at the end. But let's start here to test your perception against what these data points show.
The rental data we use from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is published annually.
Rentals prices
Housing prices
Interest rates
Canada’s notoriously wild housing market spent much of the last 10 years becoming more unhinged. Affordability was at a crisis level before 2015 and has only gotten worse since.
There are plenty of reasons, but the main ones were extremely low interest rates and unusually high population growth. After the financial crisis of 2008, borrowing costs dropped to emergency low levels and stayed there until inflation took off in 2022.
That acted as rocket fuel for a housing market that was already internationally renowned as a bubble waiting to burst.
Then, in the wake of the pandemic, the federal government dramatically increased the number of new immigrants allowed into Canada.
Canada saw a surge in population just as the cost of a home was reaching all-new heights — and at the same time that the construction industry was clobbered by rising costs and ongoing issues around zoning, permitting and development fees.
Together, these forces have combined to create a nationwide crisis with no real, viable plan to bring housing prices down any time soon.
Do these numbers match your reality? Have you been struggling to rent or buy a home? Is this an issue you’ll be voting on in this election? We’d like to hear from you. Send an email to ask@cbc.ca.
Try some more charts
How we got the numbers
The data for rental prices comes from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Rental Market Survey. The survey is conducted over the first two weeks of October and targets only private structures with at least three rental units. The average rent is a weighted average of all units combined, whether vacant or occupied.
The data for housing prices comes from the Canadian Real Estate Association, which gathers data on home sales from its members. The charts use the national aggregated benchmarks (not seasonally adjusted). The composite benchmark has been renamed "All homes."
The data for interest rates comes from the Bank of Canada. The charts use the interest rates posted for selected products by the major chartered banks. We selected conventional mortgages only. The values have been averaged by month.
Share this page