Property Tax Increase 2026 by Province (and City) in Canada: Where Rates Climbed Most

Before any narrative, here is the year in one place. The table below covers the major cities where 2026 budgets are set, ordered from the steepest increase down to the cities that held or cut their rate, with the headline figure and, wherever a municipality published it, the rough dollar impact on an average home. The figures reflect 2026 municipal budgets approved by each council and the relevant provincial 2026–27 budgets as of publication; a few smaller details were still being finalized at the time of writing where noted.

One thing to hold in your head as you read it: there are really three different numbers hiding inside "your increase." There is the rate change your city announces, the all-in bill change that can also include regional, education, and utility charges, and the assessment change on your specific home. Most of the confusion homeowners feel comes from treating those three as one. If you want the full mechanics of how a bill is built and what each layer pays for, our companion explainer on why property taxes are climbing across Canada walks through it in detail. Here, the focus is simpler: what is your number, and where does it sit nationally?

*Regina's $38.70/month figure combines property tax, utility, and library-levy increases for the average household, and the increase takes effect in June 2026.

Here is the piece most coverage skips, and it is the key to understanding why your bill can rise even when your city behaves itself. Your municipality sets one part of your property tax. Your province sets another part, collects it through the very same bill, and gets very little of the blame when it goes up.

The clearest example in 2026 is Alberta. The education property tax — the portion of your bill that funds the K–12 school system rather than your city's services — is set by the province and simply collected by your municipality. For 2026–27, the Government of Alberta raised that education requisition from $3.1 billion to $3.6 billion, a jump of about 19.8%, with residential and farmland education rates set at $2.84 per $1,000 of equalized assessment. That single provincial decision is why Calgary's all-in increase reached 8.1% even though the city's own portion barely moved. We will come back to Calgary below, but the lesson is national: when your bill jumps, your city council may not be the one who moved it.

Provinces shape your bill in quieter ways too. In New Brunswick, the province legislated a one-year freeze on the assessed values used for 2026 tax bills, holding most taxable assessments at their 2025 level while it works on a longer tax-system reform. The Government of New Brunswick framed it as temporary relief, and it is the reason a city like Saint John could actually lower its rate this year. In Quebec, the opposite pressure is at work: cities periodically file a new assessment roll — a fresh valuation of every property — and Montreal's latest roll lifted average values by about 12.2%, which pushes bills upward regardless of what the tax rate does.

In British Columbia, the province levies a school tax inside your bill and runs a property tax deferral program whose interest terms are changing in 2026, something the Province of British Columbia flagged in its tax-change summaries. Ontario, by contrast, has held its provincially set education rate flat for years, which is one reason Ontario's 2026 increases are driven almost entirely by municipal budgets.

The West holds both ends of the 2026 spectrum, which makes it the best illustration of how little the word "increase" means on its own.

In British Columbia, Vancouver is the headline. The City of Vancouver built its 2026 operating budget on a 0% property tax increase for homeowners — a genuine rate freeze. The catch is in the fine print: combined utility fees for water, sewer, and solid waste are set to rise 4.2%, so the bill is not as frozen as the headline suggests. Nearby, Surrey approved a 2.6% general increase, adding roughly $75 to the average single-family bill, while Burnaby layered a 2.9% services increase together with a separate 1.9% growth infrastructure levy for a combined increase of about 4.8%. Three neighbouring cities, three very different answers.

Alberta is where the provincial layer does its heavy lifting. In Calgary, the typical single-family home with a median assessment around $706,000 saw an overall property tax increase of roughly 8.1%, or about $390 a year — but the City of Calgary attributes the lion's share of that, around $338, to the provincial education portion rather than to city spending.

We covered the full breakdown when Calgary finalized its 8.1% increase, and it remains the cleanest case study in the country of a modest municipal increase wrapped inside a large provincial one. Edmonton approved a 6.9% increase for the final year of its four-year budget cycle, which works out to roughly $53 more for every $100,000 of assessed home value.

The Prairies hold the year's outlier. Regina passed a 10.9% mill-rate increase — the largest in the city's history — in a narrow council vote, paired with a 7.82% utility rate increase. The City of Regina estimates the combined effect of taxes, utilities, and the library levy at about $38.70 a month for the average household, with the change taking effect in June 2026. "Mill rate," by the way, is simply the rate applied per $1,000 of assessed value, the lever a city pulls when it needs more revenue. Saskatoon raised taxes about 6.7%, a reminder that even within one province the spread is wide. And in Manitoba, Winnipeg landed at 3.5%, a modest-looking figure that still matters given the city operates on one of the lowest per-capita municipal revenue bases of any major Canadian city.

Ontario's 2026 story is restraint at the headline level with a twist for anyone living in a two-tier municipality.

Toronto set the lowest big-city number in the province. The City of Toronto adopted a combined residential property tax and City Building Fund increase of 2.2%, which adds about $91.53 a year — roughly $7.63 a month — to the average home's bill. Ottawa came in higher at 3.75%, or about $166 a year for the average urban and suburban homeowner, with the money pointed largely at police and housing.

The twist is in places like Mississauga, where your bill has two authors. The city's own tax-supported increase was a slim 1.61%, but once you add the Region of Peel's 3.60% increase, the total residential increase reaches 5.21% — about $377 a year on a $700,000 home. If you live in Mississauga or Brampton and feel like the "1.6%" you heard about does not match your bill, this is why: the region is the other half of the story.

Elsewhere in the province, Hamilton approved a 3.87% increase, about $209 more on a home assessed near $387,100 according to CBC's Hamilton coverage, and London landed at 3.6%, which the city pegs at roughly $160 more a year once water and wastewater charges are included.

Quebec's cities chose noticeably different paths in 2026, and the assessment roll is the thread running through all of them.

Montreal budgeted for an average residential increase of 3.8%, but that citywide average hides a real range — roughly 1.9% to 6.3% depending on your borough, as local borough-by-borough coverage laid out. The reason is the new assessment roll lifting average property values about 12.2%, which redistributes the tax burden toward neighbourhoods that appreciated fastest.

Quebec City, meanwhile, went the other way, setting a 1.9% residential increase that CBC reported as the city's lowest in roughly five years. Laval raised residential taxes 4.3%, and Gatineau, across the river from Ottawa, kept its increase to about 3% with a deliberately restrained budget. Same province, four different philosophies about how hard to lean on homeowners in a tight year.

The Atlantic provinces produced some of the gentlest headlines in the country in 2026, though as always, gentle headlines deserve a second look.

In New Brunswick, the province-wide assessment freeze changed the math. Saint John actually cut its residential rate from $1.55 to $1.535 per $100 of assessed value, a reduction the City of Saint John paired with higher spending on services. Fredericton held its inside-city rate steady, citing the same provincial freeze, while nudging up the "outside" rate that applies to recently annexed areas.

Nova Scotia is the regional exception: Halifax approved a 9.5% municipal increase, which the Halifax Regional Municipality translates to about $284 more a year on an average home, with transit expansion and construction costs cited as the drivers.

Further east, the held-rate theme continues with a familiar asterisk. Charlottetown left its property tax rate unchanged for 2026–27 but raised water and sewer charges by about $10 a year, and St. John's held its residential mill rate at 9.1 in what the City of St. John's called a steady budget, while still increasing water-related charges. In both cities, the headline "no increase" is true of the rate and not quite true of the bill.

This is the question that generates the most confused phone calls to city hall every spring, so it is worth a clear answer. Your tax bill is roughly your home's assessed value multiplied by the tax rate. When a city says "taxes are going up 3%," it is usually talking about the revenue it plans to collect, not a promise about your individual bill.

Here is the part that surprises people: if every home in your city were reassessed upward by the same percentage, the rate would simply adjust downward and most bills would stay roughly flat. What actually moves your bill is relative change. If your home's assessed value rose more than the municipal average, your share of the total levy grows, and you pay more even if the published rate falls. If your value rose less than average, you can pay less in a year your city raised the rate. Two neighbours on the same street can land on opposite sides of this line.

That is also why the cities with fresh assessment rolls — Montreal being the clearest 2026 example — can show such a wide internal range. The rate is one decision; your assessment is another; your bill is where the two meet. And property tax is only one of the ownership costs moving this year, which is why it helps to budget for the whole picture rather than any single line, from your mortgage to your rising home insurance premium.

If your number feels off, you are not powerless, and the first move costs nothing. Start by reading your assessment notice closely rather than your tax bill. Check the basics the assessor used: the square footage, lot size, number of bathrooms, age, and condition of your home. Errors in those inputs are more common than people expect, and a wrong number there flows straight into your assessed value.

Next, compare your assessment to recent sales of genuinely similar homes near you — same neighbourhood, same size, same era. If comparable homes are assessed meaningfully lower than yours, you have the beginning of a case. In Ontario, you can then file a free Request for Reconsideration with the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation, the agency that values every Ontario property, and there is a firm annual deadline to do it.

In British Columbia, the equivalent path runs through BC Assessment and its Property Assessment Review Panel, whose 2026 complaint deadline fell at the start of February — a reminder that these windows are short and worth diarizing early. Other provinces run their own review and appeal bodies on similar timelines.

For the full step-by-step process — what to gather, how reconsideration differs from a formal appeal, and what to expect at each stage — our guide to property tax assessment appeals in Canada walks through it. The encouraging part is that challenging an assessment is designed to be accessible: the first level is free, you do not need a lawyer, and a well-documented case built on comparable sales can genuinely move your number.

Beyond appeals, several provinces run relief programs that are widely available and just as widely overlooked, especially by the homeowners who would benefit most.

Seniors have the most options. British Columbia's property tax deferment program lets eligible older homeowners postpone paying their annual taxes, with the province placing a low-interest lien repaid when the home is sold; the Province of British Columbia is adjusting the interest terms in 2026, so it is worth confirming the current rate before relying on it.

In Quebec, Revenu Québec offers a grant for seniors to offset a municipal tax increase on a long-held home, which softens exactly the kind of jump this article describes. Many municipalities also run low-income tax relief or deferral options for residents who qualify, and several offer rebates tied to age, disability, or income.

Two honest caveats. These programs change their rules and rates often, sometimes year to year, so treat anything you read — here or anywhere — as a starting point and confirm the current terms with your municipality or province before you count on it. And while you are budgeting, remember that property tax is only one rising line in the cost of owning a home; if you are mapping out the year ahead, it is worth understanding the other ownership costs too, including what you can and can't write off on your taxes.