Canada Held Its Seasonal Line. The United States Did Not.

September 15, 2026

Canadian wholesale values fell 1.12 percent across the five auction weeks of August against a norm of 1.18 percent. American values fell 2.62 percent against a norm of 1.00 percent. The spread between the two is now the most useful fact in the Canadian used-vehicle market.

<p>Canadian wholesale values fell 1.12 percent across the five auction weeks of August against a 2017 to 2019 same-week norm of 1.18 percent. American values fell 2.62 percent against a norm of 1.00 percent. The two markets have now been correcting at different speeds for three months, and the spread decides what happens next to Canadian trade-in values, auction floors and the case for moving a vehicle across the border. That case stayed shut in August for the fourth consecutive month.</p>

<thead><tr><th>Measure</th><th>Value</th><th>Note</th></tr></thead>

<tbody>

<tr><td>CBB Retention Index, August 2026</td><td>127.5</td><td>Down 0.31 percent on July and 7.68 percent on August 2025. Seasonally adjusted.</td></tr>

<tr><td>Canada against its own norm</td><td>+0.07 pts</td><td>Five compounded auction weeks, unadjusted. Effectively at seasonal.</td></tr>

<tr><td>United States against its own norm</td><td>−1.63 pts</td><td>Same five weeks, same method, Black Book US data.</td></tr>

<tr><td>Canadian retail asking, w/e 29 Aug</td><td>$38,500</td><td>Roughly $1,600 above July while wholesale fell. Asking, not transaction.</td></tr>

<tr><td>Achieved 12-month relative swing</td><td>9.5%</td><td>Against a best-case required gross gap of 14.1 percent. Short by 4.6 points.</td></tr>

<tr><td>CAD per USD, August average</td><td>1.3898</td><td>Bank of Canada monthly average. CAD 1.48 percent stronger than July.</td></tr>

</tbody></table></div>

<aside class="nl-callout"><h2>The OCAL Market Call, August 2026: Divergent</h2>

<p>Canada’s correction is running at its seasonal pace while the American correction is running at roughly two and a half times its own, and the widening distance between the two is now the single most useful fact in the Canadian used-vehicle market.</p>

<p>The Market Call is an editorial assessment by OCAL Financial Inc. It is not a statistical index and no weighting scheme produces it. July’s call was Fragmented.</p></aside>

<p>One correction to last month’s reading before anything else. The mid-August scan called Canada outperforming seasonal on two weeks of data. The full month closed at seasonal, not above it. The +0.07 point margin reported here is inside any reasonable margin of error on a five-week compounded series, and the honest description is that Canada fell about as much as August usually makes it fall.</p>

<h2>Canada at a glance</h2>

<thead><tr><th>Series</th><th>Period measured</th><th>Value</th><th>Change</th><th>Adjustment</th></tr></thead>

<tbody>

<tr><td>CBB Used Vehicle Retention Index</td><td>August 2026</td><td>127.5</td><td>−0.31% MoM, −7.68% YoY</td><td>Seasonally adjusted</td></tr>

<tr><td>CBB weekly wholesale, compounded</td><td>1 to 29 August 2026</td><td>−1.12%</td><td>Norm −1.18%, +0.07 pts</td><td>Unadjusted</td></tr>

<tr><td>Canadian auction sale rate</td><td>1 to 29 August 2026</td><td>38.9% / 44.0%</td><td>With and without 22 Aug</td><td>Unadjusted, OCAL calculation</td></tr>

<tr><td>CBB retail asking, 14-day average</td><td>Week ending 29 August 2026</td><td>$38,500</td><td>About +$1,600 on July</td><td>Asking price, unadjusted</td></tr>

<tr><td>Canadian used listings on dealer lots</td><td>August 2026</td><td>About 169,000</td><td>Flat through the month</td><td>Unadjusted</td></tr>

<tr><td>New light vehicle sales</td><td>August 2026</td><td>About 168,000</td><td>+5.4% YoY</td><td>Unadjusted, DesRosiers</td></tr>

<tr><td>New motor vehicle sales, official</td><td>June 2026 (latest available)</td><td>190,167</td><td>+7.3% YoY</td><td>Unadjusted, Statistics Canada</td></tr>

<tr><td>CAD per USD</td><td>August 2026 monthly average</td><td>1.3898</td><td>−1.48% MoM, +0.70% YoY</td><td>Bank of Canada average</td></tr>

<tr><td>Bank of Canada policy rate</td><td>As at 31 August 2026</td><td>2.25%</td><td>Fifth consecutive hold</td><td>Not applicable</td></tr>

<tr><td>Consumer Price Index</td><td>July 2026 (latest available)</td><td>+3.0% YoY</td><td>From +2.8% in June</td><td>Unadjusted headline</td></tr>

</tbody></table></div>

<p class="nl-source">Every figure is labelled with the period it measures, not the period it was published in. Figures marked latest available are lagged series whose reporting month had not been published at the 14 September cut-off.</p>

<h2>The price pulse</h2>

<p>August produced two Canadian numbers that point in opposite directions, and the issue turns on refusing to pick one. The unadjusted weekly series improved: five compounded auction weeks fell 1.12 percent against July’s 1.31 percent. The seasonally adjusted index got worse: the Canadian Black Book Retention Index fell 0.31 percent in August against 0.08 percent in July.</p>

<p>These are not in conflict. They answer different questions. The weekly series says the raw money changing hands at Canadian auctions fell about as much as August usually makes it fall. The index says that once you strip the seasonal pattern out and control for age, mileage, condition and MSRP inflation, the underlying erosion was roughly four times faster in August than in July. July’s stabilisation call was built on the adjusted figure. August’s adjusted figure is worse. Stabilisation is not confirmed, and this issue will not claim it is.</p>

<p>What can be said is that the pace of decline has slowed materially. The index has fallen for six consecutive months since February, but the monthly declines have gone 1.28 percent in April, 0.84 in May, 1.31 in June, 0.08 in July and 0.31 in August. A market that is slowing is not the same as a market that has stopped, and the difference matters to anyone setting reserve values for the fourth quarter.</p>

<h3>Canadian Black Book Used Vehicle Retention Index, January to August 2026</h3>

<thead><tr><th>Month</th><th>Index level</th><th>Month over month</th></tr></thead>

<tbody>

</tbody></table></div>

<p class="nl-source">Seasonally adjusted, and adjusted for age, mileage, condition and MSRP inflation. Two to six year old vehicles, Canadian dealer wholesale, base January 2005 = 100. Percentages are OCAL calculations from the published index levels. Source: Canadian Black Book.</p>

<p>Retail moved the other way all month. The Canadian Black Book fourteen-day moving average asking price rose in every week of August, from $37,900 in the week to 15 August to $38,200 and then $38,500, against roughly $36,900 in July, while listings on Canadian dealer lots sat flat near 169,000 units. Wholesale fell in the same weeks. The retail-to-wholesale spread widened across the entire month, and that is the strongest retail story August produced.</p>

<p>It is also the one most easily misread. This is an asking price, and no public Canadian series reports used transaction prices. A widening spread on flat inventory measures what dealers are willing to ask, not what they are getting. If asking holds while wholesale keeps falling, the arithmetic resolves through discounting rather than through margin, because retail follows wholesale with a lag of roughly one to two quarters. Watch the spread, do not bank it.</p>

<h2>Canada against the United States</h2>

<p>The clearest way to compare two markets whose indices cannot be compared is to measure each against its own seasonal norm. Both Canadian Black Book and Black Book publish a 2017 to 2019 same-week average alongside each weekly print, so no index levels are set against each other, only each market’s distance from its own history.</p>

<thead><tr><th>Week</th><th>Canada, actual</th><th>Canada, 2017-19 norm</th><th>U.S., actual</th><th>U.S., 2017-19 norm</th></tr></thead>

<tbody>

</tbody></table></div>

<p class="nl-source">Cumulative unadjusted weekly wholesale price change, each market against its own 2017 to 2019 same-week average. Compounded, not averaged. Sources: Canadian Black Book weekly Market Insights, Black Book (US) weekly Market Insights. Index levels are not compared.</p>

<p>Canada finished 0.07 points better than its norm. The United States finished 1.63 points worse. The distance between those two results, 1.70 points inside a single month, is the widest this publication has recorded. On raw values the gap is 1.51 points: Canada fell 1.12 percent, the United States 2.62 percent.</p>

<p>The monthly adjusted series tells a similar story from the other side. The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index closed August at 208.2, down 0.9 percent on July but up 0.4 percent year over year. The Canadian index fell 7.68 percent year over year. American wholesale values are roughly flat against a year ago while Canadian values are down almost eight percent. Canada entered this correction earlier and is further through it, which is the reading this publication has carried since July, and August did nothing to weaken it.</p>

<h2>The dealer lens</h2>

<p>Canadian auction liquidity was volatile rather than weak. Sale rates ran 46.6, 46.2 and 46.6 percent in the first three weeks of August, collapsed to 18.4 percent in the week to 22 August on a range of 6.9 to 29.8 percent, then recovered to 36.5 percent. Canadian Black Book attributes the 22 August week in its own commentary to seasonal trends, political conditions and firm seller floor prices.</p>

<p>Averaging those five weeks gives 38.9 percent. Excluding the 22 August week gives 44.0 percent. This issue publishes both and calls neither the August conversion rate, because Canada publishes no monthly auction conversion rate and a five-week arithmetic mean of weekly sale rates is not one. The 18.4 percent print is almost certainly a reduced auction sample rather than a collapse in demand, and a reader who takes the 38.9 percent figure as a demand signal will draw the wrong conclusion.</p>

<p>American liquidity was steadier and higher. Weekly conversion ran 54, 58, 57, 57 and 59 percent through the same five weeks, and Manheim reported full-month conversion of 57.2 percent, up 3.5 points on July but 2.8 points below its own three-year August average. Manheim also put wholesale days’ supply at 27 at month end, 2.3 days above a year earlier and 1.4 days below July. Canada has no comparable wholesale days’ supply measure at all.</p>

<p>One disclosure on the source data. Canadian Black Book’s print for the week ending 29 August is internally inconsistent as published: the overall figure of minus 0.16 percent sits above both of its own components, cars at minus 0.24 percent and trucks at minus 0.20 percent. It is carried here exactly as published rather than quietly reconciled, and it is recorded in the data workbook. It does not change the compounded month, which is built from the overall figures as printed.</p>

<p><strong>The American warning sign is at the bottom of the price range.</strong> Cox Automotive data to 31 August shows sub-$15,000 inventory at 15.1 percent of total American used stock against 20.6 percent a year earlier, with units down 25.9 percent year over year and just 29 days’ supply against a 44-day market average. The affordable end of the American market is thinning far faster than the market as a whole. Canada publishes no share-of-listings-by-price-band series, so the same measurement cannot be made here, but the mechanism that produced it, three thin model years of new sales feeding into the used pool, applies on both sides of the border.</p>

<p><strong>Sourcing is the constraint dealers themselves name.</strong> The DesRosiers and Used Car Dealers Association survey reported in early September found 48.6 percent of franchised dealers and 52.1 percent of independents saying used sourcing conditions worsened in the first half of 2026. Average first-half used sales per dealer fell to 158 units franchised from 163, and to 54 units independent from 63. Franchised dealers sourced 67.7 percent of units from consumers, independents sourced 48.6 percent from auctions. The publisher has not disclosed the survey’s sample size, so these are read as direction only and support no ranking.</p>

<h2>The affordability lens</h2>

<p>Affordability deteriorated in August through financing, not through price, and the two moved in opposite directions. Equifax Canada’s second-quarter data, published 24 August, puts the average new auto loan at $36,979 against $34,713 a year earlier, a rise of 6.5 percent. Over broadly the same window the Canadian wholesale index fell 7.68 percent year over year. Vehicles got cheaper at wholesale while the amount Canadians borrowed to buy one rose.</p>

<p>Volume moved the third way. The number of new auto loans opened in the second quarter was 9.2 percent below the same quarter of 2025, which Equifax described as below expected levels for the time of year. Ninety-day auto delinquency improved slightly to 1.10 percent from 1.11 percent, and Equifax notes the improvement came from the used segment while new auto loans showed a small increase in severe delinquency.</p>

<p>Household capacity improved at the aggregate level. Statistics Canada’s second-quarter accounts, published 11 September, show the debt-to-disposable-income ratio falling to 176.4 percent from 178.6 percent and the debt service ratio easing to 14.52 percent from 14.68 percent, both seasonally adjusted, as income growth outpaced borrowing. Non-mortgage borrowing fell to $10.0 billion. Headline inflation was 3.0 percent year over year in July, the latest month published at this issue’s cut-off, and the Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25 percent on 2 September for the fifth consecutive decision.</p>

<p>Put together, fewer Canadians are financing a vehicle and those who do are financing a larger amount against a cheaper wholesale market. Two explanations fit: buyers are moving up the price ladder, or loan terms are lengthening. Canada publishes neither an average used-vehicle loan term nor an average used-vehicle interest rate, so this publication cannot separate them and will not pretend to.</p>

<h2>Regional and segment differences</h2>

<p>Regional retail asking prices for July, published by Clutch on 18 August, put the national average at $33,786, down 1.0 percent on the month and up 0.3 percent on the year, with a like-for-like figure of minus 1.8 percent. British Columbia sat at $37,393 and Alberta at $37,260, Ontario at $33,958, Quebec at $29,831 and Prince Edward Island at $27,325. The distance between a positive headline average and a negative like-for-like number is mix, not price: the vehicles being listed changed, and the same vehicles got cheaper.</p>

<p>Vancouver is omitted from this issue. CARFAX Canada’s first-half release puts Vancouver asking at $44,995, up 10.2 percent year over year, against a national average of $31,487, down 4.7 percent. Both are asking prices on model year 2000 and newer listings drawn from the same publisher, and CARFAX has supplied no regional mix explanation for a spread that large moving in opposite directions. Publishing the Vancouver figure beside the national one without knowing the mix would mislead a reader about British Columbia, which is OCAL’s home market. The request to CARFAX stands and the figure returns when the mix does.</p>

<p>One reading rule applies across this whole section. The Canadian Black Book asking average of $38,500, the Clutch national average of $33,786 and the CARFAX national average of $31,487 are three different listing populations compiled on three different definitions. Their directions are comparable. Their levels are not.</p>

<h2>Movers that matter</h2>

<p>There is no model-level ranking in this issue. No Canadian source published model-level sample sizes for the reporting month: the Canadian Black Book weeklies publish segment detail rather than model detail, DesRosiers publishes no model retention series, and the widely circulated iSeeCars five-year depreciation study discloses a total sample of more than 950,000 sales without disclosing per-model samples. The standing specification suppresses model rankings without disclosed sample sizes, so the rankings are suppressed and this paragraph is the disclosure.</p>

<p>Segment direction is publishable. The Manheim electric vehicle index rose 4.5 percent year over year in August against non-electric at minus 0.9 percent, but fell 4.7 percent month over month, so the electric premium is a twelve-month phenomenon that reversed inside the month. In the United States, minivans fell for a nineteenth consecutive week to 29 August, full-size pickups stabilised after sixteen consecutive weekly declines, and luxury cars fell 0.90 percent in the week to 15 August, their steepest weekly decline since October 2025. Canadian segment dispersion was narrow by comparison: cars and trucks moved within roughly ten basis points of each other in four of the five August weeks.</p>

<p>The electric residual question is worth stating precisely, because two true findings look contradictory. American five-year-old electric vehicles depreciate severely, and nine of the fifteen worst five-year depreciators in the iSeeCars study are electric or plug-in hybrid. At the same time, current-month electric wholesale values are rising year over year on the Manheim index and Canadian electric asking prices rose through the first half. Both hold. The five-year cohort was bought at peak sticker with incentives stacked on top, and is being marked against a market that has repriced the technology twice since. The current index measures today’s transactions on today’s supply. Canada publishes no electric retention series, so this cannot yet carry a Canadian call. It sits on the Watchlist.</p>

<h2>The border gap</h2>

<p>No public source provides matched Canada and United States transaction pairs, so the level of the gross price gap between the two markets is not measurable. OCAL therefore publishes a required gross gap instead: the cost of executing a cross-border move, expressed as a percentage of acquisition cost, that any observed gap would have to clear before a trade is worth doing. Three scenarios are carried and every input is confidence-tagged in the data workbook.</p>

<thead><tr><th>The southbound export case, August 2026</th><th>Percentage of Canadian acquisition cost</th></tr></thead>

<tbody>

<tr><td>Achieved 12-month relative swing</td><td>9.5%</td></tr>

<tr><td>Required gross gap, best case</td><td>14.1%</td></tr>

<tr><td>Required gross gap, central case</td><td>39.1%</td></tr>

<tr><td>Required gross gap, adverse case</td><td>73.4%</td></tr>

</tbody></table></div>

<p class="nl-source">OCAL calculation. The achieved swing is the 12-month relative movement of US against Canadian wholesale expressed in US dollars. The hurdles are the OCAL cost stack expressed as a percentage of acquisition cost. A swing below the best-case hurdle means no scenario clears. Sources: Manheim UVVI, Canadian Black Book Retention Index, Bank of Canada monthly average.</p>

<p>For August the achieved swing computes at 9.5 percent, against a best-case hurdle of 14.1 percent. The shortfall is 4.6 points, wider than July’s 1.1 points and wider than the 2.3 points recorded at mid-August. The central and adverse scenarios are not close. Southbound export economics did not work in August and they are moving further from working, not closer.</p>

<p>The driver is currency, not vehicle values. The Canadian dollar strengthened 1.48 percent against the United States dollar between the July and August monthly averages, from 1.4107 to 1.3898, and a stronger Canadian dollar erodes the export case directly. These are watch candidates, not opportunities, and nothing in this section is customs, tax or legal advice.</p>

<p><strong>Tariff position, verified to primary sources on 14 September.</strong> The Section 232 duty on used vehicles entering the United States remains 25 percent, with no per-vehicle content procedure published for used units. On Section 338, Proclamation 11065, signed 8 September and published at 91 FR 58339 on 14 September, adds 122 classifications to the 50 percent lists effective 12:01 a.m. eastern on 15 September. CBP guidance CSMS 69851916 confirms that passenger vehicles and light trucks remain at a zero percent additional rate under HTSUS 9903.03.15, and states that from 15 September only goods subject to 9903.03.13 are eligible to claim it. Two heading 8703 lines join the 50 percent list for the first time, 8703.10.50 covering golf carts and similar vehicles and 8703.21.01 covering spark-ignition vehicles not exceeding 1,000 cubic centimetres. Neither is a mainstream passenger vehicle line and no Canadian-built 8703.21.01 vehicle is known, so the used-vehicle cost stack is unchanged in practice. The form still matters: heading 8703 now appears on the list, and a future rate change could be made by amendment rather than by a new proclamation.</p>

<p>A separate instrument, Proclamation 11063 at 91 FR 58325, bans importation of motorcycles over 800 cubic centimetres under 8711.50.00 from 29 September. On the Canadian side, Customs Notice 26-23, issued 7 September and effective 8 September, imposes surtaxes of 15, 25 and 50 percent on a Finance Canada list that contains no 8703, 8704, 8708, 8711 or 4011 lines. The effective Canadian surtax rate on United States origin vehicles stays at 21.25 percent and the Customs Notice 26-10 remission remains available to manufacturers only. Northbound landed cost remains 137.5 percent of United States acquisition price, with Registrar of Imported Vehicles fees of $325 and $100.</p>

<p><strong>One disclosure on the cost stack.</strong> The documented total is $4,220 per unit. Five itemised lines account for $2,870 of it: auction buy fee $500, post-sale inspection and arbitration $200, transport $950, brokerage and border $520, and United States seller-side cost $700. The remaining $1,350 is value-scaled, covering duties, the merchandise processing fee, the customs bond and other charges that move with vehicle price, and it is carried in the July data workbook, which was not available to this run. The required gross gap hurdles of 14.1, 39.1 and 73.4 percent are unchanged and are what this issue publishes. The itemisation is flagged for reconciliation at the September issue.</p>

<h2>Forward supply</h2>

<p>New vehicle sales are recovering and it does not fix the problem that matters. DesRosiers reported roughly 168,000 new light vehicles sold in August, up 5.4 percent year over year and the third consecutive monthly gain, still about 12,000 units short of the 180,000 and better Augusts of 2017 to 2019. Statistics Canada’s most recent official figure, for June, is 190,167 units, up 7.3 percent year over year on an unadjusted basis, with trucks up 8.0 percent, passenger cars up 2.9 percent and zero-emission vehicles at 21,876 units for an 11.5 percent share against 7.9 percent a year earlier. The July release publishes on 15 September, after this issue’s cut-off.</p>

<p>Trade-in volume follows new sales, so the recovery does feed the wholesale pool at the margin. What it cannot do is repair the 2021 to 2023 sales trough, and it is that trough that sets two to six year old supply through 2027. The Canadian Black Book index measures exactly that cohort. A dealer sourcing two to six year old inventory in the spring of 2027 will be drawing from the thinnest model years in two decades, whatever happens to new sales between now and then.</p>

<p>DesRosiers cautioned on 2 September that an escalating tariff dispute and affordability pressure could weigh on sales, and expects September to come in below September 2025. If that holds, the third consecutive gain becomes a three-month episode rather than a trend, and the forward trade-in improvement stalls with it.</p>

<h2>Outlook</h2>

<p><strong>Next 30 days.</strong> Canadian wholesale continues to fall at or slightly better than its seasonal norm. The first September week came in at minus 0.05 percent against a minus 0.24 percent norm, the first weekly gain in cars since early May. The September retention index should print between 126.5 and 127.5. Retail asking holds above $38,000 and the spread stays wide. The export case stays shut short of the Canadian dollar weakening past roughly 1.45. Confidence: moderate.</p>

<p><strong>Next 90 days.</strong> The adjusted monthly index decides the story, not the weekly series. If monthly adjusted declines stay inside 0.5 percent through November, the correction is ending and the July stabilisation call was early rather than wrong. If they return toward 1 percent, February through June was not the trough. The slowing pace favours the first reading and the August deterioration argues against it, so this is genuinely open. The United States is likely to keep falling faster than Canada, which compresses the spread that makes northbound sourcing work and keeps southbound shut. Confidence: low to moderate.</p>

<p><strong>Next 180 days.</strong> The supply constraint reasserts itself. Thin 2 to 6 year old supply supports retention into spring 2027 even against weak demand, and affordability rather than availability becomes the binding constraint on Canadian used volume. The number worth watching is the average financed amount, not the average price: a market where prices fall and loan sizes rise is a market where the buyer’s monthly payment is being set by something other than the vehicle. Confidence: low.</p>

<p>All three horizons assume no change to the 25 percent Section 232 rate on used vehicles and no addition of mainstream vehicle lines to either the Canadian surtax schedule or the Section 338 lists. Both are policy decisions rather than forecasts, and either would override everything above.</p>

<h2>The OCAL watchlist</h2>

<ul>

<li><strong>OPENLANE Canada Vehicle Value Index, now treated as discontinued.</strong> Six consecutive months dark, with the latest period still March 2026 and the page unchanged since 14 May. The Insights feed continues to publish weekly marketing content while the index stays frozen, which reads as a decision rather than an outage. It was the only public Canadian measure of cross-border vehicle flow and its loss is a permanent hole in the Canadian data set.</li>

<li><strong>Canadian electric vehicle retention.</strong> Required before the electric residual question can carry a Canadian call rather than an American one.</li>

<li><strong>CARFAX regional mix.</strong> Blocks the Vancouver figure and therefore the British Columbia read.</li>

<li><strong>HTSUS 9903.03.15 after 15 September.</strong> Confirmed to primary CBP guidance for now. Re-check on any amendment rather than only on a new proclamation.</li>

<li><strong>AutoTrader Price Index, third quarter.</strong> Expected mid-October and the first quarterly mix-adjusted read covering August.</li>

<li><strong>Canadian auction fee transparency.</strong> No Canadian dealer wholesale auction publishes a buyer fee table. OCAL has verified this individually across six houses and has stopped researching it: the only lawful route is a registered dealer account. Two cost-stack lines stay at Likely confidence and will not improve.</li>

</ul>

<h2>Standing structural gaps in Canadian data</h2>

<p>Canada publishes no wholesale days’ supply, no monthly auction conversion rate, no share of listings by price band, no negative-equity data, no average used-vehicle loan term and no average used-vehicle interest rate. Each of these is reported in the United States and each is flagged in every issue of this publication. They are structural gaps in the Canadian data, not omissions in this analysis, and several of the questions readers most want answered sit squarely inside them.</p>

<h2>Method and sources</h2>

<p>Weekly series are compounded, not averaged: cumulative change equals one plus the prior cumulative, multiplied by one plus the weekly change, less one, applied in parallel to the actual series and to the 2017 to 2019 same-week norm series. Outperformance is the difference between the two cumulative results, expressed in points. The twelve-month relative swing is the ratio of the Manheim year-over-year change to the product of the Canadian Black Book year-over-year change and the inverse currency ratio, less one. Currency conversion uses the Bank of Canada monthly average for the reporting month, 1.3898 Canadian dollars per United States dollar for August 2026. Index levels are never compared across publishers, only direction and percentage change are. Wholesale is never equated with retail, and asking is never equated with transaction. OCAL calculations are identified at the point of use.</p>

<p>Primary sources for this issue: Canadian Black Book weekly Market Insights and the August 2026 Retention Index; Black Book (US) weekly Market Insights for the five August weeks; Cox Automotive for the Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, August 2026, and for used-vehicle inventory to 31 August 2026; Bank of Canada daily and monthly exchange rates; Statistics Canada for new motor vehicle sales, the Consumer Price Index and the national balance sheet accounts; DesRosiers Automotive Consultants for August new light vehicle sales; Equifax Canada for second-quarter consumer credit; Clutch for July regional retail asking; CARFAX Canada for first-half listing data; the United States Federal Register for Proclamations 11063 and 11065; United States Customs and Border Protection message CSMS 69851916; and Canada Border Services Agency Customs Notices 26-10, 26-23 and 20-26.</p>

<p>Sources checked that published nothing measuring the reporting period: the OPENLANE Canada Vehicle Value Index, dark since March 2026; the AutoTrader.ca Price Index, whose third-quarter release is expected in October; CARFAX Canada, with no release since 13 August; and the Clutch August edition, which had not published at the cut-off. Recording them is part of the audit trail.</p>

<p>The OCAL Data Lens is omitted from this issue. No approved anonymised OCAL dataset was supplied to this run, and the standing specification omits the section rather than substitute anything for it.</p>

<h2>Forward-looking statements</h2>

<p>This publication contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation, together forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information generally refers to information about an issuer’s business, capital or operations that is prospective in nature, and includes future-oriented financial information about the issuer’s prospective financial performance or financial position. Forward-looking statements are often identified by the words may, would, could, should, will, intend, plan, anticipate, believe, estimate, expect or similar expressions, and in this publication include the outlook for Canadian used vehicle prices, supply, affordability and cross-border activity over the next 30, 90 and 180 days, and the assumptions underlying the OCAL cost stack and required gross gap model. To develop the forward-looking information in this publication, the Company made certain material assumptions, including but not limited to: prevailing market conditions; general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; the continued publication and methodological consistency of the third-party data series relied on; and the ability of the Company to execute and achieve its business objectives.</p>

<p>There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Actual results may vary due to certain material risk factors, including but not limited to: adverse market conditions; changes in general economic, business and political conditions; changes in tariff, customs and trade measures affecting vehicles moving between Canada and the United States; changes in applicable laws and regulations; compliance with extensive government regulation; reliance on key and qualified personnel; and the risk factors disclosed under the heading Risk Factors in the Company’s Filing Statement. The foregoing list of material risk factors and assumptions is not exhaustive. The Company assumes no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking information in this publication, unless it is required to do so under Canadian securities legislation.</p>

<p>This publication is market commentary prepared by OCAL Financial Inc. It is not investment, customs, tax or legal advice, it is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, and it should not be relied on as the basis for any transaction. Third-party data is reproduced under fair dealing for the purpose of news reporting and commentary, with attribution. No third-party chart is reproduced in this publication.</p>

<p class="nl-source">Publication contact: Matthew Friesen, Chairman · matthew@ocal.ca · ocalfinancial.ca. OCAL Financial Inc. (TSX Venture Exchange: OCAL), 500-885 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver BC V6C 1N5. Research cut-off 14 September 2026. All figures verified to the sources named above.</p>