Canada Stopped Falling. The Border Closed Anyway.

August 15, 2026

Strip out the season and Canadian wholesale values were flat in July — the first clean month in eight, and twelve months into a correction the United States is only now beginning. The strongest export setup in years is, for the moment, unexecutable.

<aside class="nl-callout"><h2>The OCAL Market Call — Fragmented</h2>

<p>The national wholesale number is stabilising. Almost nothing underneath it is.</p>

<p>Canadian wholesale values fell 0.08% in July on a seasonally adjusted basis — effectively flat, and a sharp deceleration from June's 1.7-point drop. Unadjusted, the four weeks to 25 July compounded to about −1.3%, which means virtually the entire decline was seasonal. The United States, by contrast, fell 1.4% after seasonal adjustment and 2.6% before it: roughly half of the American decline was fundamental. On the only like-for-like measure available, Canada outperformed the United States by 1.3 percentage points in July.</p>

<p>But the composition beneath that flat headline is splitting. Compact cars turned positive at month end while compact vans fell 2.6% in a single week. Retail listing inventory jumped 15.5% month over month in the latest available data while transaction volume fell 2.9% year over year. Prices fell 2.6% year over year while the payment on them rose 0.9%. And the cross-border channel that should be absorbing Canadian supply is closed by policy in both directions.</p>

<p>This is not a firming market and it is not a softening one. It is a market where the average has stopped moving because its parts are moving against each other. The OCAL Market Call is an editorial assessment supported by the evidence cited throughout this issue. It is not a statistical index, it is not back-tested, and it should not be read as one.</p></aside>

<h2>Canada at a Glance</h2>

<th><strong>Metric</strong></th>

<th><strong>Month</strong></th>

<th><strong>Basis</strong></th>

</tr></thead>

<thead>

</thead>

<tbody>

<tr>

<td>Wholesale values (CBB Retention Index)</td>

<td>Seasonally adjusted; 2–6 year old; % of original MSRP</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Wholesale, unadjusted (4 weeks to 25 Jul)</td>

<td>OCAL calculation compounding CBB weekly changes</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Auction sale conversion</td>

<td>Single week ending 25 July; no monthly figure published</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Retail asking price, dealer lots</td>

<td>14-day moving average, as published</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Retail asking price, mix-adjusted</td>

<td>Q2 2026, latest available. Asking, not transaction</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Used days' supply, retail</td>

<td>Q2 2026, latest available</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Estimated monthly payment, used</td>

<td>June 2026, latest available. Rate and term not disclosed</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>CAD/USD monthly average</td>

<td>CAD per 1 USD. A higher number is a weaker loonie</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Bank of Canada policy rate</td>

<td>Fifth consecutive hold of 2026</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>New light vehicle sales</td>

<td>Unadjusted units. SAAR 1.90 million</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>U.S. wholesale values (Manheim UVVI)</td>

<td>Mix-, mileage- and seasonally adjusted</td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table></div>

<p><em>The first and last rows are the only directionally comparable pair on this dashboard. Their index levels are not comparable: different publishers, base years, populations and constructions. Every figure carries the period it measures, not the period it was published in.</em></p>

<h2>Six Findings</h2>

<h2>1. Canada's July decline was seasonal. America's was not.</h2>

<p>This is the month's central fact and it is invisible in the headline numbers. Canadian Black Book's Retention Index closed July at 127.9, down a tenth of a point from June, a 0.08% move and a decisive break from June's 1.7-point fall. The index is seasonally adjusted. The unadjusted weekly series tells a different story: the four weeks ending 4, 11, 18 and 25 July fell 0.06%, 0.51%, 0.42% and 0.32%, compounding to roughly −1.3%. The difference between those two figures is the season.</p>

<p>Run the same decomposition on the United States and it does not resolve the same way. Manheim's index fell 2.6% unadjusted and still 1.4% after adjustment. Canada gave back what July always takes. The United States gave back that, and more.</p>

<h2>2. The twelve-month gap between the two markets is now thirteen points — in currency-adjusted terms.</h2>

<p>Over the twelve months to July 2026, Canadian wholesale values fell 7.7% in Canadian dollars while American values rose 1.3% in U.S. dollars. The Canadian dollar also weakened 3.04% against the U.S. dollar over the same period, from a monthly average of 1.3691 to 1.4107. Re-express the Canadian move in U.S. dollars and it becomes a 10.4% decline. Set that against the American gain and a Canadian vehicle became 13.0% cheaper to an American buyer over twelve months, before any price negotiation at all.</p>

<p>The reason for the divergence is not that Canada weakened unusually. It is that the United States strengthened for a reason Canada never shared. American wholesale values climbed through 2025 on a tariff-driven supply shock; Canada had no equivalent impulse. Cox Automotive is explicit that the deceleration in its year-over-year figure, from 2.1% in June to 1.3% in July, is substantially a base effect as the market laps that 2025 climb.</p>

<h2>3. That gap is not executable. Policy has closed the border in both directions.</h2>

<p>A 13.0% swing should be the setup of the decade for Canadian exporters. It is not, because the cost of moving a vehicle south now exceeds the swing before a single dollar of margin is earned. U.S. Customs and Border Protection states plainly that used passenger vehicles and trucks are subject to the 25% Section 232 duty, exempt only if manufactured at least 25 years before the year of entry. The duty applies to non-U.S. content, but the content-deduction procedure was built for manufacturers importing new vehicles and there is no published mechanism for a used-vehicle exporter to establish a per-VIN content figure. The effective rate on any given unit is therefore indeterminate somewhere between roughly zero and a full 25% of value.</p>

<p>Northbound is worse. Canada's surtax order applies 25% of value for duty to U.S.-origin motor vehicles, and the Canada Border Services Agency confirms it covers both new and used units. A 15% deemed exclusion is available on CUSMA-eligible vehicles; the 2026 remission order is restricted to named manufacturers and expressly does not apply to personal importations.</p>

<h2>4. Prices fell. Affordability did not improve.</h2>

<p>The average used asking price in Canada fell 2.6% year over year to $36,690. The estimated monthly payment on that vehicle rose 0.9%, to $640. A cheaper car costing more each month is the clearest statement of the Canadian consumer's position in 2026, and it is corroborated everywhere in the credit data: household debt service at 14.75% of disposable income, debt to disposable income at a record 179.6%, insolvency filings up 11.5% year over year, and auto loan delinquency at 0.96% on a 60-day basis, four basis points worse than a year ago.</p>

<p>The Bank of Canada has held at 2.25% for five consecutive decisions and is 50 basis points below where it stood a year ago, so the policy rate is not the culprit. What has absorbed the price decline is loan structure. AutoTrader does not disclose the rate, term or down payment behind its published payment figure, so it cannot be decomposed exactly — but at any plausible combination the conclusion is the same, and the workbook accompanying this issue shows the arithmetic across a 60-, 72- and 84-month term.</p>

<h2>5. Small and efficient held. Large and thirsty did not — on both sides of the border.</h2>

<p>This is the one signal that transmits cleanly between the two markets. In the United States, Black Book has compact cars up 4.1% year over year and electric vehicles up 10.5%, against pickups down 2.3%, SUVs and crossovers down 1.7%. In Canada the weekly series shows the same shape: trucks and SUVs carried the sharpest mid-month pressure at −0.62% in the week to 18 July, while compact cars turned positive at +0.35% in the week to 25 July after eight consecutive weekly declines in the subcompact segment. The common driver is fuel. Canadian gasoline prices were 20.5% higher year over year in the June CPI, meeting segments left structurally short by years of reduced small-car production.</p>

<h2>6. Canada's used-supply pipeline is tightening while America's floods.</h2>

<p>Edmunds projects U.S. off-lease volumes up 25.7% in 2026, close to half a million additional units, and Cox confirms off-lease maturities kept building through July. Canada has no equivalent wave: Canadian Black Book forecasts total Canadian used supply aged nought to eight years to fall a further 2.6% this year. Canadian light vehicle assembly ran at roughly 1.2 million units in 2025, down from about 1.3 million in 2024, and new vehicle sales fell for eight consecutive months before turning positive in June and again in July. Those thin 2023 to 2025 sales cohorts are the 2026 to 2028 used supply: the structural reason to expect Canadian values to stabilise ahead of American ones, and the mechanism behind this issue's central call.</p>

<h2>Canadian Wholesale Pricing and Auction Liquidity</h2>

<p>Canadian Black Book's Retention Index closed July at 127.9 on a January 2005 = 100 base, measuring wholesale values on two- to six-year-old vehicles as a percentage of original typically-equipped MSRP. The index is weighted by sales volume and adjusted for seasonality, vehicle age, mileage, condition and MSRP inflation. The month-over-month move was −0.1 index points. The year-over-year move was −7.7%, or −10.6 index points from 138.5 in July 2025.</p>

<p>Beneath it, the weekly series recorded a seventh consecutive decline in the week to 18 July before the pace eased. Only the week ending 25 July carried a published pre-pandemic benchmark: the market fell 0.32% against a 2017 to 2019 same-week average of −0.21%, so that week ran slightly worse than its seasonal norm even as the month as a whole did not.</p>

<h2>Liquidity is thinner than the price data suggests</h2>

<p>Canadian Black Book published a numeric auction sale rate in only one of its four July issues: an average of 35.9% across a 10.9% to 56.6% range in the week ending 25 July. It rose to 46.6% in the week to 1 August. There is no published monthly Canadian conversion figure, and there is no published Canadian wholesale days' supply at all — a structural gap in Canadian market data that OCAL will continue to flag.</p>

<p>What the commentary does establish is why supply at physical auction stayed thin. Canadian Black Book reported through July that upstream remarketing channels continued to retain premium vehicles, limiting what reached open sale, and that buyer demand remained concentrated in clean, high-quality units. Firm pricing on good cars alongside a 35.9% conversion rate is not a strong market; it is a selective one.</p>

<aside class="nl-callout"><h2>What the consensus is getting wrong</h2>

<p>Two errors circulated widely in July and August coverage of this market, and both are worth correcting.</p>

<p>The first is the 57% auction conversion rate that appeared in trade reporting on 23 July as a Canadian figure. It is not. It is the U.S. comparison block printed inside Canadian Black Book's Canadian weekly. The Canadian number that week was not published; the closest published Canadian figure is 35.9% for the week ending 25 July. A twenty-point error in a liquidity measure is not a rounding difference.</p>

<p>The second is the 50% U.S. tariff taking effect on 19 August 2026, which appeared in July commentary as a driver of Canadian vehicle values. Proclamation 11048 imposes that duty under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 — the first use of that authority in history, but it expressly excludes articles already subject to Section 232, and vehicles already carry Section 232 duties. They should therefore sit outside the 50% measure. OCAL flags this as high-confidence but unverified: the proclamation's Annex II was not machine-readable at our cut-off and has not been read line by line. Nobody should transact on it until it is.</p></aside>

<h2>Retail Pricing, Inventory and Affordability</h2>

<p>Four different national average used prices are in circulation in Canada and they are not reconcilable. Canadian Black Book reports roughly $36,900 as a 14-day moving average of dealer-lot asking prices, the only figure here that actually measures July. AutoTrader reports $36,690, mix-adjusted for make and age, from a quarterly index whose latest values sit on a June basis. Clutch reports $34,134, but as transaction prices on sold vehicles no older than model year 2016 and under 200,000 kilometres. CARFAX Canada reports $31,487 across all listings back to model year 2000.</p>

<p>The $5,400 spread between the highest and lowest is a population and price-type artefact, not a market signal. OCAL publishes each with its basis attached and never blends them. On the direction they broadly agree: CARFAX has prices down 4.7% year over year, AutoTrader down 2.6%, and Clutch up 1.6% on its narrower, newer population.</p>

<h2>Inventory is building faster than it is selling</h2>

<p>CARFAX Canada recorded used listing inventory up 15.5% month over month and 2.5% year over year in June, the largest inventory level observed so far in 2026, while transactions fell 2.9% year over year to 277,361 units. First-half transactions of roughly 1.49 million were down 4.2% against 2025. AutoTrader's days' supply moved to 44 days in Q2 from 41 a year earlier. More metal, moving more slowly.</p>

<p>No Canadian source publishes share of listings by price band, so the affordable-inventory share that matters most to a subprime-exposed lender cannot be measured here. The American equivalent is revealing: vehicles under US$15,000 carried a 32-day supply against 46 days for the market as a whole. Cheap cars are selling roughly a third faster than everything else. There is no reason to think Canada differs, and no Canadian data to prove it.</p>

<h2>The Border Gap</h2>

<p>OCAL will not manufacture an arbitrage calculation the data cannot support. No public source provides matched Canada–U.S. transaction pairs at make, model, trim, model year, mileage and condition, so the level of the gross price gap is not measurable this month. What is measurable is the hurdle any gap must clear, and that is what this section provides: a required gross gap, expressed as a percentage of acquisition cost, built from published fee, tariff, transport and compliance schedules on an illustrative CAD $30,000 unit. Every assumption and its confidence tag sits in the accompanying workbook.</p>

<h2>Southbound: what a Canadian vehicle must overcome to be worth exporting</h2>

<th><strong>Scenario</strong></th>

<th><strong>What it assumes</strong></th>

<th><strong>Required gross gap</strong></th>

</tr></thead>

<thead>

</thead>

<tbody>

<tr>

<td>CUSMA origin certified, full U.S.-content credit allowed, factory U.S. safety label, passenger car</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>B. Central case</td>

<td>Section 232 applied at 25% with no content credit obtainable, otherwise as A</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>C. Adverse case</td>

<td>Light truck at 25% MFN, origin uncertifiable, Registered Importer route required</td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table></div>

<p><em>Cost stack on an illustrative CAD $30,000 acquisition: auction buy fee, transport, brokerage and AES filing, duties, compliance, U.S. selling fee, currency spread and an execution-risk allowance. Modelled, not measured. Auction fee inputs are the weakest assumptions and are tagged as such.</em></p>

<p>Set the 13.0% twelve-month swing against those hurdles and the conclusion is uncomfortable but clean: an entire year of favourable currency and relative price movement does not cover even the cheapest executable path. It falls about 1.1 percentage points short of the best case, and it is nowhere near the central case. For the currency alone to carry the best-case hurdle, the Canadian dollar would have to reach roughly 1.61 to the U.S. dollar; for the central case, roughly 1.96. It sat at 1.4107 in July. A further 2% depreciation adds only about two points to the gap.</p>

<p>Two developments made this worse during the reporting period rather than better. Toyota and Kia stopped issuing U.S. Letters of Compliance in June 2026, which removes the fast admissibility path for a large share of the most exportable Canadian inventory and forces those units through a Registered Importer at US$1,000 to US$3,000 and six to ten weeks. And on 1 July the United States declined to renew CUSMA at its mandatory joint review. The agreement remains fully in force to 2036 with tariff preferences and rules of origin unchanged, but it now faces an annual review under Article 34.7.4, which means the rules governing this trade are re-openable every year.</p>

<h2>Northbound: the arithmetic is worse still</h2>

<p>Bringing a U.S. vehicle into Canada attracts the 25% surtax on U.S.-origin motor vehicles, reduced by the 15% CUSMA deemed exclusion to an effective 21.25% of value for duty, plus the Registrar of Imported Vehicles fee, air conditioner excise tax, GST at the border, transport, brokerage and provincial inspection. On an illustrative US$20,000 unit converted at the July average, total landed cost reaches roughly 137% of the U.S. acquisition price. The Canadian retail value has to clear that before any margin exists.</p>

<aside class="nl-callout"><h2>Watch candidates, not opportunities</h2>

<p>OCAL is not publishing an export or import watch list this month, and the reason is the finding. The named candidates such a list would contain — late-model pickups and full-size SUVs, the segments where Canadian and American values diverge most, are precisely the units that fall into the adverse scenario: light trucks at 25% MFN where CUSMA origin cannot be certified for a used unit, facing a 73% hurdle.</p>

<p>The binding constraint is not price. It is that the Section 232 content-deduction procedure has no published mechanism for used vehicles, which makes the duty on any individual unit indeterminate between roughly zero and 25% of its value. A dealer cannot price a trade whose largest single cost line cannot be established before the entry is filed. That is the honest answer this month, and it is worth more than a list.</p>

<p>OCAL will publish named candidates when a per-VIN content procedure exists, or when matched transaction data becomes available to measure the gross gap directly. This report does not provide customs, tax or legal advice; verify admissibility, classification and duty treatment with a licensed customs broker before any transaction.</p></aside>

<h2>The United States and How It Reaches Canada</h2>

<p>Manheim's index closed July at 210.0 on a January 1997 = 100 base, down 1.4% month over month seasonally adjusted, down 2.6% unadjusted, and up 1.3% year over year. It sits about 2.5% below its March 2026 peak of 215.3. Wholesale days' supply rose to 28 days, up 0.9 days on June and 1.7 days on a year earlier. Sale conversion fell to 54.4%, down 2.2 points on the month and 0.3 points below the three-year July average.</p>

<p>Retail told the opposite story. The average used listing price was US$27,028 in July, up one dollar on June and 6% year over year, while retail days' supply tightened by one day to 46. Wholesale softening with retail holding is a widening gross margin for American dealers, and a signal that American retail prices have further to fall than wholesale has already fallen.</p>

<h2>Which signals transmit to Canada, and which do not</h2>

<th><strong>Signal</strong></th>

<th><strong>Assessment</strong></th>

</tr></thead>

<thead>

</thead>

<tbody>

<tr>

<td>Fuel-driven segment rotation</td>

<td>Transmits</td>

<td>Same direction in both markets in July. Compacts firm, trucks and SUVs soft, driven by fuel costs and years of thin small-car production</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Affordability pressure</td>

<td>Transmits</td>

<td>Same mechanism, worse Canadian starting point on debt service and record debt-to-income</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Off-lease supply wave</td>

<td>Does not transmit</td>

<td>U.S. off-lease is forecast up 25.7% in 2026. Canadian used supply aged 0–8 is forecast down 2.6%</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>2025 tariff price impulse</td>

<td>Did not transmit</td>

<td>Drove U.S. values up through 2025 with no Canadian equivalent. It is the main reason the year-over-year figures diverge</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>U.S. retail price strength</td>

<td>Unlikely to transmit</td>

<td>Canadian retail asking prices are falling while U.S. listing prices rose 6% year over year</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>EV value strength</td>

<td>Partially transmits</td>

<td>U.S. EV values up 10.5% year over year but decelerating. No Canadian publisher produces an EV wholesale series to confirm it</td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table></div>

<p>The transmission conclusion for this issue: Canada is not lagging the United States into softness. It is roughly twelve months ahead of it. Canada took its correction through late 2025 and the first half of 2026 while the United States was still absorbing a tariff-driven price shock. Canada is now stabilising as the United States begins the decline Canada has largely finished.</p>

<h2>Regional, Segment and Model Movements</h2>

<p>Quebec remains the cheapest place in Canada to buy a used vehicle at $34,985 and Ontario the second cheapest at $35,714, both below the $36,690 national average. Alberta and British Columbia sit near $39,500. That ranking is consistent across all three provincial series OCAL reviewed — AutoTrader's asking prices, Clutch's transaction prices and CARFAX's listing data — which is why the Atlantic Canada figure of $41,758 is flagged rather than reported: it prints above both western provinces, which no other source supports, and the underlying document has column-alignment problems in adjacent tables.</p>

<p>OCAL is not publishing a model-level ranking this month. No Canadian source published model-level wholesale results with disclosed sample sizes for July 2026, and this publication does not rank vehicles on cohorts it cannot size. Nor is there a Canadian monthly segment index in existence; Canadian segment analysis is only possible at weekly frequency, which is why the segment chart in this issue is American and labelled as such.</p>

<h2>Production, New Sales and the Used-Supply Pipeline</h2>

<p>Canadian new light vehicle sales reached roughly 173,000 units in July, up 0.5% year over year, on a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.90 million — the strongest since February 2026 and a second consecutive month of year-over-year gains after eight straight declines. Statistics Canada's official series runs two months behind and last measured May at 190,564 units, down 1.9% year over year, with zero-emission vehicles at 9.6% of sales against 7.9% a year earlier.</p>

<p>On the production side, motor vehicle parts manufacturing rose 6.2% month over month in June and real output in motor vehicle manufacturing rose 4.7% in May. Exports of motor vehicles and parts reached $7,864 million in June, up 2.4%, with passenger cars and light trucks at their highest level since March 2025, which Statistics Canada attributes directly to increased Canadian production. The longer arc is less encouraging: Canadian motor vehicle exports to the United States fell about 22% to US$20.3 billion over the year to March 2026.</p>

<h2>The Dealer Lens</h2>

<ul>

<li><p>Acquisition and appraisal. The seasonally adjusted flat reading is the buy signal, not the −7.7% year-over-year figure. If Canada has finished the bulk of its correction while the United States is beginning one, August and September acquisition is closer to a floor than to a falling knife — weighed against a 35.9% conversion rate that says sellers are still holding firm. Do not appraise from the national average: the four national used-price series differ by $5,400 because they measure different populations.</p></li>

<li><p>Inventory mix. Compact and fuel-efficient units firmed at month end in both markets after a long run of declines; trucks, SUVs and vans carried the pressure. Compact vans were the single weakest Canadian line all month, falling as much as 2.6% in a week. Weight the buy toward efficiency until fuel CPI decelerates meaningfully from its +20.5% year-over-year print.</p></li>

<li><p>Pricing and turn. Listing inventory up 15.5% month over month against transactions down 2.9% year over year means days' supply is building faster than the 44-day headline suggests. Price to turn, not to the average.</p></li>

<li><p>Trade-in strategy. Canada publishes no negative-equity data. Do not import the U.S. figure of 29.6% and an average of US$6,884 as a Canadian proxy — the credit structures differ. Use your own book, and watch the 60-day auto delinquency trend at 0.96% and rising.</p></li>

<li><p>Cross-border sourcing. Treat both directions as closed until the Section 232 content procedure for used vehicles is published. The southbound hurdle is 14.1% at absolute best and 39.1% centrally; northbound landed cost reaches roughly 137% of the U.S. acquisition price. Verify with a licensed broker before committing to anything.</p></li>

<li><p>Residual-value risk. The Canadian supply pipeline is tightening while the American one floods. That argues for firmer Canadian residuals than U.S. forecasts imply, and against importing American residual assumptions into a Canadian book.</p></li>

</ul>

<h2>The OCAL Watchlist</h2>

<ul>

<li><p>Proclamation 11048 taking effect on 19 August. Confirm from Annex II whether HTS 8703 and 8704 are genuinely absent. This is the single highest-value verification item in this issue.</p></li>

<li><p>Statistics Canada June new motor vehicle sales and July CPI, both released 17 August, and June retail trade on 21 August. The passenger-vehicle CPI sub-index at +1.9% and decelerating is the one to watch.</p></li>

<li><p>Whether the deceleration in Canadian wholesale depreciation holds into August. The week to 1 August came in at −0.16% with conversion at 46.6%, both improvements. Two more weeks like that would confirm the call.</p></li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li><p>Whether OPENLANE Canada resumes publishing its Vehicle Value Index. It has been dark since March 2026, and its export-share series is the only public Canadian measure of cross-border flow.</p></li>

<li><p>Equifax and TransUnion Canada Q2 credit releases, expected in September, for auto originations and delinquency.</p></li>

<li><p>Whether U.S. wholesale softening deepens or stabilises. If Manheim keeps falling after seasonal adjustment while Canada holds, the twelve-point gap narrows without a single Canadian price moving.</p></li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li><p>The first annual CUSMA review under Article 34.7.4, and whether Section 232 treatment of used vehicles is clarified or changed.</p></li>

<li><p>The 2023 to 2025 Canadian sales trough arriving as off-lease and trade-in supply. This is the structural support under Canadian residuals through 2027 and 2028.</p></li>

<li><p>Whether any lender or bureau begins publishing Canadian negative-equity data. Its absence is the largest single gap in Canadian vehicle-market intelligence.</p></li>

</ul>

<h2>Methodology and Source Notes</h2>

<p>Reporting period 1–31 July 2026. Research cut-off 14 August 2026. Every figure is labelled with the period it measures, never the period in which it was published. Figures whose most recent published period predates July 2026 are labelled “latest available” with their actual period attached, and are never presented as measuring July.</p>

<p>Index levels are never compared across publishers. Canadian Black Book's Retention Index is based at January 2005 = 100 and measures two- to six-year-old vehicles as a percentage of original MSRP; Manheim's index is based at January 1997 = 100 and measures mix- and mileage-adjusted wholesale prices across its full sale population. Only direction and percentage change are compared, which is why both series are rebased to a common start in the charts. Wholesale transaction prices are never equated with retail values, and retail asking prices are never equated with retail transaction prices.</p>

<p>All currency conversion uses the Bank of Canada monthly average exchange rate for the reporting month: 1 USD = 1.4107 CAD for July 2026. The 13 August daily rate of 1.3938 appears nowhere in the monthly analysis. Seasonal adjustment status is stated for every series, and adjusted figures are never compared with unadjusted ones. Where OCAL has calculated a figure rather than quoted one — the compounded Canadian July weekly change, the currency-adjusted twelve-month swing, and the entire Border Gap cost model — it is identified as an OCAL calculation at the point of use. Charts are original to OCAL and built from the workbook tables; no third-party chart is reproduced here. Where a source is subscription-only, only figures already published openly in trade press are used and the originating analyst credited. No paywall was circumvented.</p>

<h2>Principal sources</h2>

<th><strong>Source</strong></th>

<th><strong>Period measured</strong></th>

</tr></thead>

<thead>

</thead>

<tbody>

<tr>

<td>Canadian Black Book — Retention Index and weekly Market Insights</td>

<td>Canadian wholesale values, segment movement, auction conversion, retail listing average</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Cox Automotive — Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index</td>

<td>U.S. wholesale values, days' supply, conversion</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Bank of Canada and Statistics Canada</td>

<td>Currency, policy rate, CPI, trade, sales, labour force, balance sheet</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>AutoTrader Price Index, CARFAX Canada, DesRosiers</td>

<td>Canadian retail asking prices, regional detail, days' supply, payments, inventory, new sales</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>Kelley Blue Book, Black Book (US), Edmunds, Experian, BLS</td>

<td>U.S. retail, segment, credit and CPI comparison</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td>U.S. CBP, Federal Register, USTR, CBSA</td>

<td>Tariff, surtax, origin and admissibility rules</td>

<td>Current at cut-off</td>

</tr>

</tbody>

</table></div>

<p><em>A full source register with URLs, methodology, adjustment status and publication rights accompanies this issue in the data workbook. Sources checked and confirmed unpublished at cut-off are recorded there as such, not silently omitted.</em></p>

<h2>Known limitations in this issue</h2>

<ul>

<li><p>OPENLANE Canada's Vehicle Value Index has not been published since March 2026, so Canadian wholesale coverage rests on Canadian Black Book alone, with no second index to reconcile it against.</p></li>

<li><p>Canada publishes no wholesale days' supply, monthly auction conversion rate, share-of-listings by price band, negative-equity data, average loan term or used-vehicle interest rate. Each is a structural gap, not an omission.</p></li>

<li><p>The OCAL Data Lens is omitted because no approved, anonymised OCAL dataset was supplied. No proprietary finding has been invented in its place.</p></li>

</ul>

<h2>OCAL Market Monitor: Canada</h2>

<p>Published by OCAL Financial Inc. · TSX Venture Exchange: OCAL · Vancouver, British Columbia · ocalfinancial.ca</p>

<p>Licensed with the Vehicle Sales Authority of British Columbia and the Alberta Motor Vehicle Industry Council.</p>

<p><em>Market analysis prepared for informational purposes. Not investment, legal, customs or tax advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security or vehicle. Cross-border figures are modelled estimates; verify admissibility, classification and duty treatment with a licensed customs broker before any transaction.</em></p>

<p><em>Forward-looking statements. This report contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation, including statements about expected vehicle values, supply, affordability and cross-border conditions. Such statements are often identified by words such as may, would, could, should, will, intend, plan, anticipate, believe, estimate or expect. They rest on assumptions including prevailing market conditions and general business, economic, competitive and political uncertainties, and are subject to risks including adverse market conditions, changes in general economic and political conditions, and changes in applicable laws, regulations, tariffs and trade measures. Actual results may differ materially. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. OCAL Financial Inc. assumes no obligation to update them except as required by Canadian securities legislation.</em></p>