Cost of Living, Food & Family Essentials

Published 2026-07-30 · part of the research library.

Groceries, child care, water bills, and hydro bills are all part of the cost of living in Toronto — and all of them have been rising. Food bank visits hit a record high in 2025. Child care is getting cheaper under a federal-provincial program, but there still aren’t enough spaces. Water and hydro rates keep climbing. Some of these costs are set by the city, some by the province, and some by forces mostly outside any government’s control.

Where things stand

1. Toronto’s food banks recorded 4,124,313 visits in 2025 — the most ever, and 340% more than before the pandemic. Across Canada in 2024, about one in four people lived in a household that could not reliably afford enough food.
2. In January 2025, Ontario capped fees at centres in the federal $10-a-day child care program at $22 a day, and the average fell to about $19. But as of June 2025, Ontario had created only about 41,000 of the 86,000 new child-care spaces it promised by the end of 2026 — under half, with 18 months left at that point.
3. Toronto raised water rates 3.75% in 2025, and again in 2026. The average Toronto household’s water bill is estimated at $1,118 for 2026.
4. Toronto Hydro is wholly owned by the City, but the City does not set what it charges — the Ontario Energy Board does. Under the OEB-approved 2025–2029 settlement, a typical residential customer’s total bill rises by between roughly $1 and $3.40 more per month depending on the year, compounding to roughly $13.45 more per month (about $161 more a year) by 2029 than in 2024. Toronto Hydro also pays the City roughly $60 million a year in shareholder dividends (2025 figure; cut to a roughly $40 million/year pace starting in early 2026).
5. The city has a costed plan for a morning meal in every Toronto school by the 2026–27 school year — about $13.5 million a year in new operating costs to finish the rollout, on top of what is already funded, with City staff estimating the full program will cost $20 to $60 million a year in total once every school has one.
6. Ontario’s own basic-income pilot ran 2017–19. Most people who had jobs kept working, and about 80% reported better health and less stress. The pilot was cancelled early, but the results were studied and published.
7. Only the province sets social assistance rates — a single adult on Ontario Works gets $733 a month, a rate that has been frozen for years.

What the city controls vs. what needs the province

The city can act on directly: building child care into buildings it already owns — libraries, community centres, schools — and aiming new spaces at the neighbourhoods that have the least; setting how Toronto’s own water rates are structured; funding and expanding the school morning-meal program described above; whether it weighs in on Toronto Hydro’s rate applications on affordability grounds, and what it does with the shareholder dividend it collects out of ratepayers’ bills.

Needs the province: delivering the child-care spaces Ontario signed up for under the federal agreement; setting social assistance (Ontario Works/ODSP) rates; the Ontario Energy Board, not the City, sets what City-owned Toronto Hydro can charge for electricity distribution. The federal government funds the $10-a-day child care deal and child benefits, and decides whether that money keeps flowing.

One honest gap: food security has thinner policy-research depth in this library than the child-care and utilities material above — the figures here lean on two strong primary sources (Daily Bread Food Bank, and the national PROOF food-insecurity research group) but this page doesn’t yet go as deep on policy options as it does on the other topics.

Go deeper

• Child care access & affordability — the $10-a-day rollout, fee caps, space counts.
• Utility rates: water & hydro
• Basic income & livelihood programs — the Ontario Basic Income Pilot and related evidence.
• Food security & the income link — food bank visits, food insecurity rates, the school-meal program.
• Urban agriculture & food systems
• Basic income & universal services

How this connects to the election

Several of the levers described above sit with Toronto’s city council and mayor; the province and federal government control others directly, as noted above. A resident who wants to ask a candidate for city council or mayor what they would do about any of these levers can use the neutral, non-partisan candidate question bank for this category — every question there works identically for any candidate, any party. This page does not endorse, score, or rank any candidate or party, and does not direct a reader to any organization or campaign.

Sources & receipts

1. Daily Bread Food Bank 2025 visit count; PROOF national food-insecurity research; see the food security backgrounder above (fact 1).
2. Federal child-care program fee caps and Ontario’s space-creation progress — Employment and Social Development Canada; see the child care backgrounder above (fact 2).
3. City of Toronto Approves 2026 Interim Rates and Fees for Toronto Water and Solid Waste Management Services (fact 3).
4. Ontario Energy Board case EB-2023-0195 settlement figures and Toronto Hydro dividend reporting; see the utility rates backgrounder above (fact 4).
5. City of Toronto Report for Action, June 2025, on the school morning-meal program; see the food security backgrounder above (fact 5).
6. People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report (fact 6).
7. Written Submission on Ontario's New Five-Year Poverty Reduction Strategy (fact 7).