OTTAWA — With food prices at a five-year high, the average Canadian family can expect to pay nearly $1,000 more for food next year.

That’s according to this year’s , an annual snapshot of food trends, produced by the Agri-Foods Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax.

While meat saw, and will continue to see, stark increases in cost, Dr. Sylvian Charlebois, the report’s lead author, told the he was pleasantly surprised at how fruits and vegetable prices maintained their composure — falling 0.9% in 2025 instead of increasing the three-to-five per cent forecast.

“We were spared, thinking that the ‘buy Canadian’ or anti-American movement was going to hurt Canadians, but it didn’t,” he said.

“It’s just a matter of the dollar not really being a story — it was pretty stable. It did

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