About

Reading the Canadian consumer — in boardrooms and on the opinion pages.

Two decades of public-opinion and consumer-insight research, now turned on the issues reshaping Canadian markets: surveillance pricing, housing, and crypto.

Richard Ciano is a market researcher and business insights executive. He is Chief Strategist at Yorkville Strategies Inc., a national research and insights firm working with corporate, institutional, and public-sector clients across Canada.

Over more than twenty years, he has designed and directed hundreds of qualitative and quantitative studies — segmentation, pricing research, brand tracking, concept testing, stakeholder audits, and large-scale public-opinion surveys — for organizations operating in healthcare, energy, infrastructure, aviation, mining, financial services, and consumer packaged goods.

His writing applies that same research lens to the Canadian economy. Recent columns have examined how online surveillance pricing is moving consumer protection into its next frontier, why the housing market has become a proxy for every other price signal in the country, and what a more mature Canadian posture on crypto should look like. He has been published in the Financial Post, National Post, and iPolitics, and is quoted in Canadian media on consumer markets, polling methodology, and regulatory debates.

He is a Certified Analytics and Insights Professional (CAIP) and holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts from York University.

Topic pillars

Three files I'm actively tracking.

The beats I research, write about, and talk about on air.

Surveillance pricing

How algorithmic, individually targeted online pricing is rewriting consumer-protection expectations — and why Canadian regulators, platforms, and customers are heading for a reckoning.

Housing market

Supply, zoning, household-formation demand, and the political economy of affordability — the single biggest consumer story in the Canadian economy.

Crypto & digital assets

Where Canadian investor confidence, retail adoption, and regulatory posture meet — and why the country keeps landing behind its peers.

Research practice

Sectors and methods.

Sectors

Healthcare & pharmaceuticals
Energy, utilities, and resources
Infrastructure and transportation
Aviation
Mining and heavy industry
Financial services and fintech
Consumer packaged goods and retail

Methods

Large-sample public-opinion polling
Customer segmentation & persona work
Pricing & willingness-to-pay research
Brand tracking and reputation studies
Concept and message testing
Stakeholder audits and key-informant interviews
Qualitative: focus groups, IDIs, ethnographies

Commentary

Areas I write and speak about.

Consumer markets

Surveillance pricing, retail competition, and the regulatory debate around algorithmic personalization.

Housing

Supply and demand fundamentals, zoning reform, and affordability as a political risk factor.

Crypto & digital assets

Adoption data, investor sentiment, and Canada's comparative regulatory posture.

Public opinion & polling

Survey methodology, voter coalitions, and how to read — and misread — polling during campaigns.

Rule of law & property rights

Regulatory certainty, investor confidence, and the economic cost of discretionary enforcement.

Trade & Canadian competitiveness

Supply management, tariff policy, and Canada's posture toward the EU and US markets.

Selected credentials

Record.

Chief Strategist, Yorkville Strategies Inc. · 2024–present

Founder & Principal, Campaign Research · two decades

Columnist, Financial Post · National Post · iPolitics

Certified Analytics and Insights Professional (CAIP)

Honours BA, York University

Public service

Outside the research practice.

Alongside his research career, Richard has served as President of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario (elected 2012) and as a National Vice-President of the Conservative Party of Canada. He has worked as campaign manager, senior strategist, or senior advisor to federal, provincial, and municipal campaigns — including as a senior strategist on Rob Ford's 2010 Toronto mayoral campaign. He treats that background as part of the public record rather than the core of his work today.

Read the writings →