Good morning. Renting is no longer just a temporary arrangement for would-be homebuyers, for many people it is a lasting home in a community. Below, we’ve got a guide on the most livable cities for renters, plus news on war in Sudan and oil in the Amazon. But First:

• Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux is resigning his seat in another blow to Pierre Poilievre
• The Supreme Court of Canada agreed to hear the appeal of Saskatchewan’s school pronoun case
• Ontario will ban exclusivity deals between insurers and pharmacies
• Once thought “lost forever,” the Florentine Diamond was secretly tucked away in a Quebec vault for a century

Hi, I’m Salmaan Farooqui. I write for The Globe and Mail’s personal finance section with a focus on the rental market. For the last couple months, Globe and Mail data editor Mahima Singh and I have been working on a ranking system for the best cities for renters in Canada based on data that take affordability, rental availability, livability and stability into account.

Let me take a step back to explain why it was important for us to rank Canadian rental markets. It starts with a truth that people sometimes find annoying: that the rental market is actually quite good for tenants right now, especially when you consider the state it was in for the past few years.

It’s frustrating for some people to hear this because cities such as Toronto and Vancouver are still astronomically expensive, despite the fact that they currently have some of their lowest rental prices in four years.

In a story for the project, I interviewed someone who was excited that he found a one-bedroom apartment for just $2,400. That’s an eye-watering amount of money! But that apartment likely would have been a few hundred dollars more expensive just a couple of years ago.

We’re experiencing a rental market that could have the most favourable conditions for renters for many years to come. Rents are dropping across the country, immigration cuts have deeply slowed demand, and many cities are facing a dramatic surge in supply as multiple condo developments finished at the same time.

That means landlords are actually trying to woo renters, with deals like a month of rent free, or complimentary parking spaces and cable subscriptions.

This was on our minds when Globe and Mail data editor Mahima Singh compiled data and created this ranking system.

She used monthly listing data from Rentals.ca, and ranked 235 cities (each with a population exceeding 20,000) on four attributes: Affordability, Availability, Stability, and Livability.

We also built an interactive tool for you to use, to help you find the best cities to rent for your specific scenario. You can even tailor the ranking based on your income. This project emphasizes a city’s affordability – regions where wages are higher relative to rent rise to the top of the list.

Our ranking found that Edmonton is the best city in the country for renters. In fact, seven cities in the top 10 were in Alberta or Saskatchewan, pointing to the mix of affordability and economic opportunity that exists in those provinces.

It reflects another hard truth, that the state of the housing market is challenging for lots of Canadians who are moving to find cheaper homes. Nearly 100,000 Canadians moved to Alberta over the course of 2023 and 2024, and affordability is part of the reason why.

Ontario also had some highly ranked cities, but they were smaller cities like London (ranked 5th) and Windsor (ranked 14th). Meanwhile, the only cities with more than one million residents in the top 20 were Edmonton (1st) and Calgary (12th).

It’s worth remembering that average wages and livability standards were an important part of our methodology. And with that in mind, I think the results show that Canadians who are willing to move outside of the country’s biggest regions could potentially find a better standard of living.

Whether you’re a young professional, a student, or someone looking for a new start, our project could be helpful for you. We hope you’ll give it a read.

Interested in understanding a city beyond its rental market? Explore our complete annual ranking of Canada’s Most Livable Cities, where we rank the best cities to live in based on 10 categories such as safety, health care, demographics and even the weather.

As world leaders gather in Brazil for the UN climate summit COP30, the small town of Oiapoque braces for change as