Not the full picture. Built from public records, which leave things out.Read by hand, Oct 2026Details

This is built from public records, which leave a lot out, and some of it may be wrong or out of date. Check the sources, and tell us if you spot a mistake. What this site can't tell you
Read by hand. We read Kawartha Lakes's own documents for this site in October 2026; the Sources page lists which ones. The comparisons with other places still come from the Province's yearly reports.

Compare · 2025

How Kawartha Lakes compares with similar places

Is Kawartha Lakes spending a lot or a little? The fairest way to tell is to compare it with places like it. We picked every Ontario city of the same type (Ontario single-tier municipalities with 60% to 160% of this population that had filed their 2025 return): 3 places with between 52,662 and 81,182 people.

How to read this. Each grey dot is one similar city. The large dot is Kawartha Lakes, and the line marked "typical" is the city in the middle. The label and colour say where Kawartha Lakes sits:

▼ Very low: lower than 90% of similar places
▼ Low: lower than 75%
≈ Typical: in the middle half
▲ High: higher than 75%
▲ Very high: higher than 90%
Warning mark: unusual in a worrying way for this measure, like very low savings or a very high tax increase

Being far from the middle is not wrong by itself, but it is where to start asking why.

One thing to keep in mind: "per home" uses the number of households each city reports to the Province. Some places count seasonal cottages as households and some do not, so comparisons with lake and cottage places are rougher than they look.

There are not enough Ontario municipalities of a similar size to compare Kawartha Lakes with fairly (3 found), so this page has no comparisons yet.

Source: Ontario Financial Information Return (FIR), 2025, all 4 municipalities (archived copy). Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Retrieved 2026-10-01. Figures are what the municipality reported to the Province for each year, prepared on the same basis as its audited financial statements.

Places sort costs into categories a little differently, and some share services with neighbours, so small gaps mean little. Big gaps are worth a question.