Toronto ranks as Canada’s most expensive city for 2nd year in a row: survey

Toronto is the most expensive city in Canada, a new survey says.

Mercer’s Cost of Living Survey suggests that Toronto ranked as the most expensive city in the country for the second year in a row.

Out of 227 cities across five continents, Toronto ranked as the 90th most expensive on the survey, dropping one spot from last year.

According to Mercer, the survey includes more than 400 cities throughout the world, with this year’s ranking including 227 cities in five continents.

Mercer said the survey measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in each place, such as housing, transportation, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment.

Rounding out the top five most expensive cities in Canada were Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and Calgary, placing in the 116th, 135th, 137th and 145th spots, respectively.

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“Through the Cost of Living Survey, we see that despite domestic inflationary pressures that are affecting overall quality of living, Canada continues to be an attractive destination for remote workers,” Nicole Stewart, Principal, Career at Mercer Canada said in a statement.

Stewart said “extensive remote work flexibility” is causing many employees to re-shift their priorities and “think differently about where they want to work and live.”

She said this shift will continue to force organizations to “develop effective compensation strategies for their globally distributed workforces.”

According to the survey, Canadian cities did rank at the cheaper end of the ranking for North America, with three U.S. cities landing in the top 20.

New York City ranked in the sixth spot. Los Angeles and San Francisco also made the top 20 landing in the 11th and 14th spots respectively.

Meanwhile, each of the five most expensive Canadian cities dropped in ranking order from last year, the survey said.

The most expensive city according to the survey is Hong Kong, followed by Singapore and Zurich. Rounding out the top five are Geneva and Basel.