Buying a house may remain out of reach for many Canadians for the foreseeable future, with mortgage costs unlikely to fall enough to offset lofty home prices and weak spending power, economists and real estate agents say. 0 Even with expectations that Bank of Canada will keep cutting rates in the coming months, the issue of home affordability - which has strangled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s poll numbers - is unlikely to fade before the next election.
The mandate for the Liberal minority government ends at the end of October 2025, but an election could come well before then, with the Conservative opposition spoiling to end Trudeau’s nine-year run at the top.
“You won’t get back to an affordable range for housing on a sustained basis for a decade,” Tony Stillo, director at forecasting and analysis group Oxford Economics, said last week at a conference.
No, of course not. Competition needs to be preserved through strong antitrust laws. The US used to have a very active FTC which sued to prevent mergers and attempted to break up monopolies in order to preserve competition. Then it went through a long period of inactivity due to monopoly-friendly governments.
Now, the Biden administration and their appointee, Lina Khan, have resumed this important work. Of course, this could all be jeopardized if Trump wins the election, but so could a lot of other important things.
As for Canada, we favour oligopolies under a misguided theory that large Canadian businesses will protect Canadians from foreign competitors to the south. We’re paying the price for having no trustbuster with teeth, like Lina Khan.