Food Affordability in Ottawa 2024

Since 1998, Ottawa Public Health (OPH) has been monitoring food affordability by relating the cost of food and housing to various individual and household incomes.

More information is available on Ottawa Public Health's food insecurity webpage.

Accuracy:
Food affordability monitoring is done in accordance with the Monitoring Food Affordability Reference Document, 2018 and a standardized protocol developed by Public Health Ontario and Ontario Dietitians in Public Health.


The local cost of the Nutritious Food Basket and the cost of rent are compared with various individual and family incomes to determine how affordable food is in Ottawa. In 2024, 10 urban/suburban and 2 rural grocery stores were selected in the costing sample across Ottawa to conduct the Nutritious Food Basket survey. A mixture of in-person and online costing was used. The 61 food items comprised in the Nutritious Food Basket is based on Canada’s food guide. Canada’s food guide is not inclusive of all religious and cultural groups, and they do not include traditional Indigenous foods and food procurement practices. OPH acknowledges that this is a significant limitation of the data collection.


In 2024, there were 2 sources of housing used. Presented are 1) rental rates from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Ontario Rental Market Report, providing an average of current rental costs paid by tenants including purpose-built rental apartments and rental townhouses; and 2) rental rates from the 2024 Rentals.ca Annual Report, based on available units from both primary and secondary rental markets including basement apartments, condominiums, townhouses, semi-detached and single houses. The Rentals.ca data are based on the asking rates of available (vacant) units only and reflect ongoing trends in the rental market.

Update Frequency: Annual

Attributes:
Refer to the references found in Document 1 (2024 Income Scenarios using CMHC Housing Cost Data) and Document 2 (2024 Income Scenarios using Rentals.ca Housing Cost Data).

Contact: Karina Kwong
 



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Additional Info

Field Value
Last Updated August 21, 2026, 07:14 (UTC)
Created March 24, 2026, 20:40 (UTC)
Domain / Topic
Domain or topic of the dataset being cataloged.
Title
Title for the Dataset.
Food Affordability in Ottawa 2024
Description
A description of the dataset.

Since 1998, Ottawa Public Health (OPH) has been monitoring food affordability by relating the cost of food and housing to various individual and household incomes.

More information is available on Ottawa Public Health's food insecurity webpage.

Accuracy:
Food affordability monitoring is done in accordance with the Monitoring Food Affordability Reference Document, 2018 and a standardized protocol developed by Public Health Ontario and Ontario Dietitians in Public Health.


The local cost of the Nutritious Food Basket and the cost of rent are compared with various individual and family incomes to determine how affordable food is in Ottawa. In 2024, 10 urban/suburban and 2 rural grocery stores were selected in the costing sample across Ottawa to conduct the Nutritious Food Basket survey. A mixture of in-person and online costing was used. The 61 food items comprised in the Nutritious Food Basket is based on Canada’s food guide. Canada’s food guide is not inclusive of all religious and cultural groups, and they do not include traditional Indigenous foods and food procurement practices. OPH acknowledges that this is a significant limitation of the data collection.


In 2024, there were 2 sources of housing used. Presented are 1) rental rates from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Ontario Rental Market Report, providing an average of current rental costs paid by tenants including purpose-built rental apartments and rental townhouses; and 2) rental rates from the 2024 Rentals.ca Annual Report, based on available units from both primary and secondary rental markets including basement apartments, condominiums, townhouses, semi-detached and single houses. The Rentals.ca data are based on the asking rates of available (vacant) units only and reflect ongoing trends in the rental market.

Update Frequency: Annual

Attributes:
Refer to the references found in Document 1 (2024 Income Scenarios using CMHC Housing Cost Data) and Document 2 (2024 Income Scenarios using Rentals.ca Housing Cost Data).

Contact: Karina Kwong
 



Download note: If you are having problems downloading using Microsoft Edge as your web browser, try disabling the “Open Office files in the browser” option in Settings.

Tags / Keywords
Keywords/tags categorizing the dataset.
Format (CSV, XLS, TXT, PDF, etc)
File format of the dataset.
Dataset Size
Dataset size in megabytes.
48.32
Metadata Identifier
Metadata identifier – can be used as the unique identifier for catalogue entry
Published Date
Published date of the dataset.
2025-12-05
Time Period Data Span (start date)
Start date of the data in the dataset.
Time Period Data Span (end date)
End date of time data in the dataset.
GeoSpatial Area Data Span
A spatial region or named place the dataset covers.
Field Value
Access category
Type of access granted for the dataset (open, closed, service, etc).
public
License
License used to access the dataset.
Open Data | City of Ottawa
Limits on use
Limits on use of data.
Location
Location of the dataset.
https://od-dev2-ottawa.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/ottawa::food-affordability-in-ottawa-2024
Data Service
Data service for accessing a dataset.
Owner
Owner of the dataset.
[email protected]
Contact Point
Who to contact regarding access?
City of Ottawa
Contact Point Email
The email to contact regarding access?
[email protected]
Publisher
Publisher of the dataset.
City of Ottawa
Publisher Email
Email of the publisher.
Author
Author of the dataset.
[email protected]
Author Email
Email of the author.
Accessed At
Date the data and metadata was accessed.
2026-08-10
Field Value
Identifier
Unique identifier for the dataset.
b485bdfc88f441c29828ec8d860d7a5a
Language
Language(s) of the dataset
English
Link to dataset description
A URL to an external document describing the dataset.
https://od-dev2-ottawa.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/ottawa::food-affordability-in-ottawa-2024
Persistent Identifier
Data is identified by a persistent identifier.
Globally Unique Identifier
Data is identified by a persistent and globally unique identifier.
Contains data about individuals
Does the data hold data about individuals?
Contains data about identifiable individuals
Does the data hold identifiable data about individual?
Contains Indigenous Data
Does the data hold data about Indigenous communities?
Portal Type
Platform type of the source portal.
Field Value
Version
Version of the datatset
None
Source
Source of the dataset.
None
Version notes
Version notes about the dataset.
Is version of another dataset
Link to dataset that it is a version of.
Other versions
Link to datasets that are versions of it.
Provenance Text
Provenance Text of the data.
City of Ottawa
Provenance URL
Provenance URL of the data.
Temporal resolution
Describes how granular the date/time data in the dataset is.
GeoSpatial resolution in meters
Describes how granular (in meters) geospatial data is in the dataset.
GeoSpatial resolution (in regions)
Describes how granular (in regions) geospatial data is in the dataset.
Field Value
Indigenous Community Permission
Who holds the Indigenous Community Permission. Who to contact regarding access to a dataset that has data about Indigenous communities.
Community Permission
Community permission (who gave permission).
The Indigenous communities the dataset is about
Indigenous communities from which data is derived.
Field Value
Number of data rows
If tabular dataset, total number of rows.
Number of data columns
If tabular dataset, total number of unique columns.
Number of data cells
If tabular dataset, total number of cells with data.
Number of data relations
If RDF dataset, total number of triples.
Number of entities
If RDF dataset, total number of entities.
Number of data properties
If RDF dataset, total number of unique properties used by the triples.
Data quality
Describes the quality of the data in the dataset.
Metric for data quality
A metric used to measure the quality of the data, such as missing values or invalid formats.

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