Canadian consumer spending is growing this year, and the growth is narrow enough that an average national figure will mislead anyone who plans against it. Total consumer spending is tracking toward $1,485.2 billion in 2026, real growth of about 1.5% over 2025. That number covers a market where one group of households has resumed discretionary buying and another has moved its basket to discount formats and stayed there. Planning against the aggregate over-forecasts the discount half of that market and under-serves the other.
The Divided Household
Affluent households are spending at a normal pace. Middle and lower income households have moved toward discount operators, and those operators report stronger traffic even while the same shoppers describe themselves as cautious about total household spending. Income now predicts assortment better than region does, which is a reversal of how most national chains have historically planned their category mixes.
Those same middle and lower income brackets say they are preparing to tighten further in anticipation of price increases, and the tightening is concentrated in non-essential categories. A retailer with a discretionary assortment is therefore facing a customer who has already decided to cut, and the decision was made before the price on the shelf changed.
Trade policy is the second variable. About 61% of Canadian consumers say they are likely to seek out Canadian-made goods in response to tariffs, and between half and two-thirds report avoiding American products or services in at least some categories. The counterweight matters, because 77.3% say they have not actually changed what they buy. Stated preference and till receipts have separated, and a merchandising plan built on the survey number alone will carry inventory nobody buys.
Local Data in Site Selection
Retail location work depends on household counts at the block level. A chain deciding between two Edmonton sites reads building permits, school enrolment and residential turnover, because a street changing hands is a street buying appliances, paint and window coverings within eighteen months.
Reading edmonton mls listings against census tract income is ordinary practice in that analysis, and a landlord pricing retail space on a busy corner uses the same inputs from the other direction.
Category Detail in the June Data
The monthly numbers locate the split. Statistics Canada put June retail sales growth at 0.6% and total sales past $74 billion, led by general merchandise retailers and clothing stores. Sales volumes rose 1.5% in the same month, which matters more than the dollar figure because it strips out price movement. May had already produced a 1.0% increase, extending a run of monthly gains through the first half of 2026, so the June result confirmed a direction instead of announcing one.
Underneath the headline, the categories diverge sharply. Health and apparel gained. Food retail volumes contracted again, meaning grocery dollars rose while the quantity of food leaving stores fell. Electronics and appliances stayed weak. Gasoline produced substantial dollar growth with no matching demand growth, which is a price effect showing up as a sales increase. Gasoline dollars are a poor read on consumer strength in any month.
General merchandise leading the month fits the rest of the picture. That category holds the warehouse clubs and mass retailers where a trading-down household buys the same goods at a lower price point, so a strong month there indicates movement between formats inside a similar total spend. Clothing gaining at the same time indicates the discretionary side is still working for part of the market. Both are true at once, and a plan built around only one of them will miss the quarter.
The Online Share
E-commerce reached $5.7 billion in June, up 9.9% year over year, and accounted for 7.7% of total retail trade. The growth rate is high enough that a retailer without a working online channel is losing share every quarter to one that has it. The share figure is low enough that stores are still more than 92% of the total. Plans that treat online as the whole future tend to underinvest in the physical network that produces most of the revenue, and plans that dismiss it lose the fastest-growing tenth of the market.
Caution and Convenience
Retail analysts speaking to BNN Bloomberg describe the current shopping trends as a pairing of caution with convenience, and the two pull in different directions on the same shopping trip. A shopper who compares unit prices across three grocery chains will still pay a delivery fee to avoid a fourth trip. Price sensitivity and time sensitivity coexist in the same household budget.
For a retailer, that combination argues against choosing a single position. The chains gaining share are running a value message on the shelf and a convenience offer at the checkout, and treating those as one proposition. Loyalty programs that convert points into immediate discounts are performing better than programs that require accumulation, because the cautious half of the market wants the saving now.
Signals to Watch Next
The open question for 2026 is what happens when the survey response and the purchase finally align. If the two-thirds of Canadians who say they avoid American products begin to act on it at the scale they describe, the shelf changes in every category with a domestic substitute. If the 77.3% who have not changed anything hold that position, the pressure stays where it is now, on price rather than provenance, and the discount operators keep taking the volume.
The direction is not knowable in advance, so the workable position is to carry enough Canadian-sourced assortment to answer the first outcome without stranding capital if the second one holds, and to watch monthly volume rather than monthly dollars while the answer arrives.
