For a long time, it was comfortable to think of Canada's housing affordability problem as someone else's problem. Something that happened in Toronto, or Vancouver, in markets so expensive they had practically become their own category. That framing is officially over.

CMHC's new Housing Affordability Composite Index, released February 25, 2026, makes the case plainly: Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax have joined the list of cities where affordability has reached historic stress levels. The crisis did not just deepen. It moved.

How We Got Here

CMHC traces three distinct waves of affordability erosion since 2001, with the most recent and most damaging running from 2020 to 2023. What made this wave different was geography. Remote work unleashed a wave of labour mobility, pushing buyers into markets that had never seen that kind of demand. Ottawa, a city long associated with stable government-driven demand and predictable appreciation, found itself absorbing a surge it had no supply infrastructure to handle.

The result: homeownership affordability in Canada hit its weakest point since the 1990s in Q2 2022. And while conditions have improved modestly since then, CMHC is careful to note that "improved" means coming down from a genuinely punishing peak, not returning to anything resembling normal.

What Makes the New Index Different

Previous affordability measures focused heavily on ownership costs and purchase prices, which told only part of the story. CMHC's HACI brings in rental data, income trends, local supply and demand dynamics, and discretionary income. That last piece matters more than people realize. A household that can technically afford rent or a mortgage but has nothing left over is not financially stable; it is one emergency away from a serious problem.

This broader picture also surfaces something the old metrics missed: renters, who generally carry less financial resilience than owners, have faced affordability pressure that is more recent, driven heavily by the inflation spike of 2022-2023 and elevated immigration levels, but also less likely to recover on its own without a sustained increase in lower-cost rental supply.

What This Means If You Work in These Markets

A few things worth internalizing:

• Clients in Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax are navigating markets that are now structurally different from those five years ago. They need brokers and agents who understand that, not generalists quoting national trends.
• The buyer who moved from Toronto to Ottawa looking for relief may be more financially stretched than they appear. The conversation about what they can genuinely sustain has to happen, and it has to happen before they make a decision, not after.
• Renters in these cities are increasingly motivated to buy, but the math is harder than ever. That tension between wanting to act and being able to act is exactly where a good broker earns their value.

The Opportunity Nobody Is Talking About

Here is what the doom-and-gloom framing misses: every new market entering a stress period is also full of clients who need guidance and are not getting enough of it. Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax are not lost causes. They are underserved markets where the advisor who shows up with data, empathy, and a clear plan for a client's actual situation will stand out immediately.

The professionals who win in stretched markets are not the ones who wait for conditions to improve. They are the ones who stay close to their clients, communicate proactively, and make themselves indispensable during the uncomfortable stretches.

CMHC's new index will be updated regularly. That means there will be a drumbeat of data coming, and every release is another opportunity to reach out, add context, and remind your clients that you are paying attention so they don't have to.

The question worth sitting with: How well do you actually know the affordability picture in your specific market, at the neighbourhood level, not just the national headline number? Because your clients are starting to figure it out, and they will remember who helped them navigate it.