What $100 of groceries buys in each province

The same 18 everyday groceries cost $111.77 in Ontario and $124.35 in British Columbia, according to Statistics Canada's average retail prices for August 2026. So $100 buys almost 90% of the basket in Ontario, but only about 80% of it in B.C. and Newfoundland and Labrador. The Canadian average is $114.67.

The basket is the kind of shop a lot of households do every week: a 4-litre jug of milk, a dozen eggs, a loaf of white bread, butter, a block of cheese, a kilo each of bananas, apples, ground beef and chicken breasts, a 10-lb bag of potatoes, carrots and onions, pasta and pasta sauce, a 2-kg bag of rice, peanut butter, a can of tuna and a bag of ground coffee.

Where the basket costs most

(Statistics Canada doesn't publish a 4-litre milk price for Newfoundland and Labrador, so its basket uses two 2-litre cartons instead.) Say a family in B.C. spends $250 a week on groceries. The same shop would cost about 10% less in Ontario, around $25 a week, or roughly $1,300 a year.

The items with the biggest gaps

Some groceries cost almost the same everywhere. Butter, block cheese and peanut butter are within about 7% of each other from one province to the next. Others swing wildly:

Quebec has the lowest price on 9 of the 18 items, including eggs, butter, cheese, potatoes and carrots, yet Ontario's basket still comes out cheaper overall. Quebec pays the most in the country for white rice ($11.01) and pasta sauce ($4.24), which wipes out the savings.

What changed since last August

Across Canada, the basket cost $112.04 in August 2025 and $114.67 in August 2026, up 2.3% in a year. Not everything rose:

Ground beef costs $1.69 more a kilo than a year ago, the biggest jump in dollars. If you cook with mince every week, switching some of those meals to chicken, which got cheaper, is where the biggest saving is right now.

And in the North

Statistics Canada tracks fewer items in Whitehorse and Yellowknife, so the full basket can't be priced there. Comparing only the items it does track, prices in Whitehorse run about 7% above the national average and in Yellowknife about 9% above. Cooking oil is the biggest gap: a 3-litre jug of vegetable oil is $14.80 in Whitehorse and $13.83 in Yellowknife, against $9.82 nationally. Milk is cheaper in Whitehorse: $6.32 for 4 litres against $6.99 nationally.

Making the $100 go further

Where you shop and when matter as much as where you live. Two apps cut the bill without coupon clipping: Too Good To Go sells unsold bakery and grocery food at half price or less, and Flashfood lists marked-down meat and produce at participating stores. Canooq's ways to never pay full price has more. To see where groceries fit in your budget, track a month of shopping in the budget planner.