TORONTO — Canada Goose is flocking to China with a plan to open two stores in Beijing and Hong Kong, e-commerce operations in partnership with Alibaba Group and a regional head office in Shanghai.

The Toronto-based luxury retailer that is known for its high-end parkas says the stores and e-commerce operation will launch this fall.

Canada Goose President and Chief Executive Officer Dani Reiss says the company is expanding in the country because it has seen demand from Chinese consumers for years.

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The e-commerce operations will be launched in conjunction with Alibaba Group’s online business-to-consumer platform.

It will open bricks-and-mortar locations in Beijing and Hong Kong.

Canada Goose already has flagship stores in Toronto, Calgary, New York, London, Tokyo, Chicago and Boston.

TORONTO — The Toronto real estate market appears to be stabilizing following months of payback after last year’s frenzied pace of sales and skyrocketing prices, but home sales sunk to their lowest level since 2009 last month.

The Toronto Real Estate Board revealed Thursday that the market saw 7,792 transactions in April, a 32.1 per cent drop from the same period last year when 11,468 homes were sold. Observers believe last April may have been the peak of the market as activity soared ahead of the Ontario government’s package of measures to cool the market that included taxes on vacant properties and a non-resident speculation tax.

Sales were also down 1.6 per cent from March, while home prices fell 0.2 per cent compared to the month before.

The price decline was much larger on a year-over-year basis. The average home fell by 12.4 per cent from last year, to $804,584 in April.

TREB described the month-over-month changes as “minimal” and said sales trends have “flattened out” from the steeper drop-off seen in January and February — an indication that the market could be slowly climbing out of the sluggish state it was in at the start of the year and correcting the overheated conditions that pushed the province and mortgage regulators to introduce cooling measures last year.

Activity dropped off in the opening months of the year after cooling pressure at the federal level, including a financial stress test for buyers implemented Jan. 1 for federally-regulated lenders and increases in both variable and fixed-rate mortgage rates as a result of moves by the Bank of Canada and fluctuations in the bond markets.

“While average selling prices have not climbed back to last year’s record peak, April’s price level represents a substantial gain over the past decade,” said TREB president Tim Syrianos.

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However, he said the MLS home price index composite benchmark, which strips out the impact of changes in the mix of home sales, was down 5.2 per cent compared with a year ago and the number of new listings in April had plunged to 16,273, a 24.6 per cent decrease from the 21,571 listings seen last year at the same time.

BMO Economics analyst Priscilla Thiagamoorthy declared the market “soggy,” but she said the balance between sales and new listings “looks roughly stable.”

Sales in Canada’s priciest market, Vancouver, also fell significantly last month.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver said Wednesday that this was its weakest April for single-family home sales in nearly 30 years. Only 171 detached homes in the city were sold that month and regional sales fell to a 17-year low for April. The board said 2,579 detached properties, townhouses and condominiums sold last month in Metro Vancouver, down 27.4 per cent from April 2017.

In the Greater Toronto Area, York Region took the most significant hit. TREB numbers show the region saw the biggest year-over-year price declines in April.

Those kinds of drops “mask the fact that market conditions should support moderate increases in home prices as we move through the second half of the year, particularly for condominium apartments and higher density low-rise home types,” said Jason Mercer, TREB’s director of market analysis.

His comments are in line with the rising prevalence of condo sales, which are increasingly being eyed by prospective buyers, searching for moderately-priced housing options in a market where affordable housing is more of struggle to find than in other Canadian cities.

Tax relief for homebuyers?

TREB pleaded for parties running in the Ontario’s June election to turn their attention to housing, despite the Liberal government’ newly-enacted measures last April that included taxes on vacant properties and a non-resident speculation tax, as well as the introduction by mortgage regulators of a stress test for uninsured borrowers at the start of the year.

“We believe the next step should be tax relief, especially from land transfer taxes, both provincial and the Toronto land transfer tax, and efforts to facilitate an increase in the supply of missing middle housing that fills the gap between single family homes and high rises,” said Syrianos.

“Furthermore, we believe that any attempt to increase the Toronto land transfer tax should require approval from the provincial government, given the significance of Toronto’s economy to the province and the connections between the Toronto real estate market and that of the broader GTA.”

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Canada’s tariffs on imported U.S. goods — everything from strawberry jam to sleeping bags — could steer consumers to seek out cheaper, made-in-Canada alternatives, but domestic industry players are fearful that input costs will rise and American politicians could retaliate in kind.

Gerhard Latka, president of Canadian jam maker Crofter’s Food Ltd., said while the company does stand to benefit, he is concerned that their industry is now in the crosshairs of U.S. President Donald Trump.

“We’ve poked the bear … There’s a silver lining, but it is far outweighed by the risk,” he said from Parry Sound, Ont., noting that his company exports as much as 80 per cent of its product south of the border.

Canadian businesses are digesting the industry ramifications of the cross-border tariff war that erupted on Thursday, with Trump announcing the U.S. will slap tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau firing back with $16.6-billion worth of “dollar-for-dollar” countermeasures on goods ranging from playing cards to maple syrup to yogurt.

The 10 per cent tariffs or similar measures on selected U.S. imports are set to take effect July 1 after an industry consultation period. Part of the 10 per cent levy at the wholesale level may eventually be passed on to Canadian consumers in the retail price, if the tariff war persists.

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However, readily available Canadian substitutes for these U.S. goods could get a boost as result, said Joanne McNeish, an associate professor at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University. On top of being potentially cheaper than U.S. goods subject to the tariffs, some Canadian consumers or businesses may shop more patriotically in protest, she said.

“People will start to look at the tags more closely,” McNeish said.

While there may be Canadian-made alternatives, these tariffs will “inflict pain” on domestic firms as some inputs or unique products cannot easily be switched or replaced, said Dan Kelly, the chief executive of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

“That is little comfort for firms that have supply chains where these products are built in,” he said.

Orange juice is one example of a U.S. good that can’t be substituted easily at home.

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Thursday that the products subject to tariffs were carefully chosen to limit the impact on Canadian producers and consumers.

There could be opportunities for a bump in sales for Canadian substitutes for these U.S. products, said Mike Von Massow, associate professor in the food, agricultural and resource economics department at the University of Guelph.

However, the price advantage for domestic goods will be less than 10 per cent, as the surtax is unlikely to trickle down to the retail price of these American products in full, he added.

The potential for a tit-for-tat measure from the U.S. is indeed a risk in any trade war, he said, but Trump is likely to target bigger industries with more “leverage.”

Still, some American lawmakers have the same fear about its trade war with China. On Friday, for example, Maine Congressional members urged Trump not to put a tariff on seafood because they are worried the Chinese would retaliate with a similar measure and hurt the state’s lobster industry, which exports millions of dollars worth of lobster to the Asian country.

‘An attempt to bring pressure on the White House’

Many of the U.S. products subject to tariffs in Canada appear to be chosen based on political rather than economic impact, said Von Massow.

For example, Massow said, Canada imports just $3 million worth of yogurt from the U.S. annually — most of which is from Wisconsin, the home state of House Speaker Paul Ryan. Another product on the list is whiskey, which comes from Tennessee or Kentucky, the latter of which is the home state of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell.

“Putting a levy on something that we import $3 million worth of is not likely to have any impact whatsoever on any Canadian consumers. It’s much more likely to have an impact on someone who might have the phone number of Paul Ryan … An attempt to bring pressure on the White House that way.”

OTTAWA — The country’s annual inflation rate rose to 2.5 per cent in June as consumer prices grew at their fastest pace in more than six years, Statistics Canada said in a report Friday.

The federal agency’s latest inflation number received a boost from higher energy prices, especially gasoline, fuel oil and other fuels. It followed a 2.2 per cent reading for May.

Other big contributors behind last month’s stronger inflation figure were pricier airline tickets, restaurants and mortgage interest costs. The downward pressure on prices last month was led by cheaper costs for telephone services, travel tours and digital equipment and devices.

The June pace lifted inflation to its highest point since February 2012 when it was 2.6 per cent. It also moved the number farther away from the two per cent mid-point of the Bank of Canada’s target range.

The central bank, however, has been expecting inflation to rise.

Last week, the central bank predicted inflation to move as high as 2.5 per cent — due to temporary factors like higher gas prices — before it settles back down to two per cent in the second half of 2019.

The Bank of Canada can use interest rate hikes as a tool to help prevent inflation from climbing too high. Governor Stephen Poloz tries to keep inflation within a range of between one and three per cent.

“Downside risks to trade remain at the fore, but the economic data are increasingly making the case for further Bank of Canada rate hikes,” TD Bank senior economist James Marple wrote in a client note.

“With a positive retail sales report, and the upside surprise on inflation, the odds of one more hike this year have risen.”

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Poloz raised the trend-setting interest rate to 1.5 per cent last week. It was the bank’s fourth hike over the last 12 months.

In a separate release, Statistics Canada said retail trade expanded by two per cent in May thanks to higher sales at vehicle and auto parts dealers as well as gas stations. Sales growth was just 0.9 per cent in May if these categories are excluded, the agency said.

The May increase follows an April contraction of 0.9 per cent.

— With a file from HuffPost Canada