Pricele #53: Milk (1 litre) in Canada 🇨🇦
The puzzle for 22 August 2026 asked what a litre of milk costs in Canada. Here is the answer and the context behind it.
The answer
Milk (1 litre) · Canada
$2.22
3.11 CAD
About 6 minutes of the average local wage buys a litre of milk.
More expensive than 90% of the 32 countries in the game.
Source: Numbeo (crowd-sourced), retrieved 2026-08.
About milk
Milk is heavy, perishable and awkward to ship, so it is almost always produced close to where it is drunk. That makes its price a read on local farming costs rather than world markets, and in much of the EU on agricultural subsidies, which push retail prices below what production alone would imply.
Where Canada sits
Of the 32 countries priced for milk, Canada ranks #4 from the top at $2.22, 1.4× the median of $1.54.
Canadian dairy sits under a supply-management system that sets production quotas and import tariffs, holding milk prices notably above US levels. Most other groceries track the US closely, which makes the dairy gap stand out in the table. Tax does not explain it: basic groceries are zero-rated for GST, so the milk premium is a production-side policy rather than something added at the till. Canada is a useful control case for exactly that reason. It shares a border, a language and most of a retail market with the US, so where the two diverge, the cause is almost always a specific Canadian policy rather than a general cost-of-living difference.
| Nearby on the milk table | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand | $1.85 | 3.15 NZD | 5 min |
| South Korea | $2.02 | 2,905 KRW | 9 min |
| Canada | $2.22 | 3.11 CAD | 6 min |
| Switzerland | $2.25 | 1.82 CHF | 4 min |
| Norway | $2.45 | 23.25 NOK | 5 min |
What else costs what in Canada
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $5.54 | 7.7 CAD | 15 min |
| Coca-Cola (330ml can) | $1.79 | 2.49 CAD | 5 min |
| Cappuccino | $3.80 | 5.33 CAD | 10 min |
| Eggs (dozen) | $3.54 | 4.96 CAD | 10 min |
| Apples (1 kg) | $4.11 | 5.76 CAD | 11 min |
| Gasoline (1 litre) | $1.17 | 1.64 CAD | 3 min |
| Diesel (1 litre) | $1.67 | 2.32 CAD | 5 min |
| Electricity (100 kWh) | $12.20 | 16.9 CAD | 33 min |
| Natural gas (100 kWh) | $3.50 | 4.8 CAD | 10 min |
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $9.95 | 13.74 CAD | 27 min |
| Beer (330ml) | $1.59 | 2.19 CAD | 4 min |
| Spirits (750ml bottle) | $23.50 | 32.45 CAD | 64 min |
| Mobile data (1 GB) | $5.37 | — | 15 min |
| A day's healthy diet | $3.93 | 5.5 CAD | 11 min |
Go deeper
See the full table for milk in every country or everything priced in Canada.