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Statistics Canada's look at the week.

Last week, we discussed in further detail four of the eight main categories of food purchased from stores and how these expenditures changed from 2021 to 2023, as tracked by the Survey of Household Spending. In this article, let’s have a look at the remaining four categories.

Canadian farmers grow two types of cherries—sour and sweet. Sour cherry trees blossom in late spring and can therefore be grown in most provinces. Sweet cherry trees, however, are prone to frost and are grown commercially in four provinces, with most orchards found in the interior of British Columbia. In 2024, sweet cherry production fell to its lowest level on record, while sour cherry production was down from one year earlier.

While wildfires are a national concern, their effects are not experienced equally. For many Canadians, recent wildfire seasons have been felt through hazy skies, the smell of smoke, or an orange-tinged horizon, while for others their only exposure to wildfires may be through media reports. For those Canadians in the direct path of a wildfire, however, the consequences may be much more pronounced, including forced evacuations, loss of a home, missed work hours, and broader economic disruptions across the region. A recent paper, titled “Estimates of gross domestic product in wildfire-affected areas during the 2023 and 2024 wildfire seasons,” explores the economic implications of wildfires at the provincial, territorial and regional levels.

For Canadians living outside of Quebec, the first Monday of August generally means an extra day of summer fun, or in some parts of the country, getting paid time and a half for working on a public holiday. What holiday you celebrate depends very much on where you live, but technically, the first Monday in August is known as the Civic Holiday. To see how your city shapes up financially this Civic Holiday, let’s explore our Municipal Financial Data Dashboard.

Canada has nearly 8.8 million square kilometres of land area, along with an estimated 1.3 million square kilometres of freshwater area and 247 000 kilometres of coastline. In other words, there’s a lot to see when deciding where to go on vacation! Let’s take a trip through some more numbers.

In 2024, tourism activities generated $104.4 billion in revenues (inflation-adjusted), distributed over a wide range of services provided in communities of all sizes across Canada. This was up 3.5% from 2023, in which recovery from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continued.

Statistics Canada's look at the week.

Every two years, the Survey of Household Spending releases detailed data on the average household expenditures on a wide range of items and categories of products. The latest data are from 2023, when the average expenditure per household on food from stores was $8,659, up 7.4% from 2021.

The streets of Toronto will be pulsating with the rhythmic sounds of Caribbean music in the days ahead. To kick off the Toronto Caribbean Carnival, let’s take a look through a musical and trade lens at the 774,510 Canadians who reported being of Caribbean ethnicity in the 2021 Census of Population, with a focus on the six largest Caribbean communities in Canada today.