Not gas prices.
Not inflation.
Not the global economy.
Across Canada, your favourite local businesses are closing.
↓ Scroll down to see what's happening
The data
And on track for as much as $78.11 a square foot by 2027.
Toronto is where it's easiest to see. Retail rents have risen far faster than inflation across Canada since 2019. BC, Ontario and Nova Scotia have climbed fastest, but everywhere is feeling the commercial rent crunch.
Net rent per sq ft, small-format Toronto retail. Rent up 142% over five years (2019 to 2024). 2027 is the upper projection.
The squeeze
The cafe on the corner. The hardware shop that's been there forty years. The restaurant where they know your order before you sit down.
These local businesses don't close because customers aren't showing up. Giant rent increases squeeze them past what they can absorb. Better Way Alliance's 2022 commercial rent report found that more than half the Ontario businesses surveyed had already moved or closed because of a rent increase, and more than half expect the same at their next lease. Insurance and utilities are climbing too. But nothing continues to climb as aggressively as rent.
When a local business closes, the money it kept circulating in the neighbourhood leaves with it. Every dollar spent at a local independent puts about three times as much back into the community as the same dollar at a chain. In BC, that's $450,000 kept local per $1M in sales, versus $170,000 for a chain. The Small Business Anti-Displacement Network tracks this across North America.
See all three, tracked over five years, in our Fixed Cost Crunch report →
How a neighborhood dies
An investor buys the block. Every storefront becomes an equation instead of a local business. And because there are corporate investors, the number has to grow.
The rent jumps to whatever the investor's loan needs, not what the shop can pay. And unlike a home, a commercial tenant usually covers the building's property taxes, insurance, and repairs on top.
As the rent climbs, local businesses get priced out. The local cafe gets exchanged for a bank or chain quick-service restaurant. Independent shops that brought locals and visitors move elsewhere, or close.
That rent becomes the going rate for the whole block, and the independent mix thins out one lease renewal at a time. Eventually every neighbourhood looks the same, and the money that once recirculated locally, in wages, suppliers, the shop next door, flows out to landlords and their investors instead.
The part people miss: even a landlord who wants to give a struggling tenant a break often can't. They borrowed against the value of future inflated rents (yes, this is real!), not the property value, so charging less risks defaulting on the loan.
Who gains
None of this is illegal. Raising the rent at renewal is the landlord's right, and the biggest ones are just working the market: RioCan, one of Canada's largest commercial landlords, has called it a "super cycle" to investors. In plain words, they will keep raising rent to lift investor returns, at the cost of good jobs and the neighbourhoods we live in. The wealth that used to circulate on your main street gets pulled out and pocketed by the investors driving up prices.
The fix
We don't have to invent anything new because other cities have already tested the fixes. Here's what we can do in Canada:
Provinces can adopt plain-language standard leases, a cap on increases at renewal, and quick + affordable dispute resolution that doesn't involve going to court. France caps commercial increases at 10% between terms. California now caps increases for small storefronts. Australia gives small tenants access to mediation. Toronto City Council backed the idea in 2024 with a 21-1 vote. It's good for landlords too: a reliable tenant beats a revolving cast of unstable businesses.
See the Bill of Rights →Canada's Federal government can make it possible for a business to buy the space it works in, so their dollars go to a stable mortgage instead of padding someone else's investment. That means modernizing the Canada Small Business Financing Program with a higher cap, and fairer borrowing terms. Bread By Us in Ottawa estimates that owning their space would cut monthly costs by about 25%, money that goes straight back into wages and the business.
Read the Secure Your Space proposal →Cities can build in transparency before a business signs a lease. Right now the records of who owns a building are paywalled or buried under 3 numbered companies. A shop owner can't easily find out who they're really negotiating with, what nearby lease rates are, or how fast rents are climbing, until it's too late. A public registry of commercial landlords and storefronts fixes that. New York has required owners to register their storefronts since 2019, bringing transparency to who owns what and which spaces sit empty.
Proven in New YorkThe surest way to stop the squeeze is to take the storefront off the speculative market for good. Community land trusts, co-ops, and non-profits buy the building and hold it for the neighbourhood, so the rent answers to the community instead of an investor's loan. Governments can back this with acquisition funds and a right of first refusal that gives communities a fair shot at buying before a speculator does. It builds a base of allies too: land trusts, credit unions, co-op networks, and local funders all working the same problem.
Already working in Toronto, New York, and Montreal, belowIt's already working
Formulas can be rewritten. Three places are already doing it.
The Kensington Market Community Land Trust has pulled three buildings off the speculative market. Tenants keep their space, rents hold steady.
More than 20 community land trusts hold shops and the housing above them. In 2026 one bought a commercial building before a speculator could.
Non-profits buy buildings to keep longtime tenants in place. One retiring landlord sold to a non-profit so no rent hike could push his 30-year tenant out.
None of this needed a new law. It needed neighbourhoods deciding to invest in themselves.
Coming soon
The Displacement Map will show, corridor by corridor, the local businesses pushed out by rent and what replaced them. It puts the full scale of the loss in one place, where it can't be ignored.
We'll email you when the map goes live and when there's a way to help. No spam, and you can leave anytime.
Already convinced? The tools, the data, and the full case live at commercialrent.ca.