canada

The city of Ottawa is updating its Official Plan. Under consideration are expanding the urban boundary (urban growth boundary) and strengthening of its intensification (densification)policy. These strategies are components of urban containment policy. This report examines the relationship between urban containment policy and housing affordability  read more »

Montreal’s mayor Valerie Plante has “widened” some sidewalks to provide sufficient space for pedestrian use while providing sufficient social distancing. Where implemented, sidewalks have been widened to 4.5 meters (nearly 15 feet) by extension into streets (with barriers to protect from car and truck traffic.) This action is being taken only in the highest volume areas of the city.

After a nearly 15 year lock on Ontario’s provincial parliament (“Queen’s Park”), the Liberal Party suffered the strong rejection of voters in the June 6, 2018 election. Triumphant in the last two elections, the Liberals won so few seats that they lost official party status.  read more »

On May 3, Canada’s Financial Post, the nation’s leading business daily, published my commentary entitled: “Doug Ford was right: Toronto housing won’t be affordable unless we develop the Greenbelt: The PCs could have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to effectively deal with the housing-affordability crisis.”  read more »

Statistics Canada’s newly released National Household Survey indicates changes in the distribution of median household incomes among the provinces and territories. The new data is for 2010, and indicates that an increase of 13.9 percent per household at the national level from the 2005 data collected in the 2006 census.  read more »

For a few years, concern has been expressed about house price increases in Canada, which have been disproportionate compared to household incomes.

In this regard, the latest, semi-annual Bank of Canada Financial System Review points to the overbuilt multi-unit market, especially the Toronto condominium market, as having the potential to inflict serious harm on the economy  read more »

Here we go again!  read more »

Statistics Canada has just released the first results of the 2011 census. The nation's population rose to 33.5 million, from 31.6 million in 2006. This is a 5.9 percent growth rate, up from a 5.4 percent rate between 2001 and 2006 and nearly one-half above the 4.0 percent growth rate from 1996 to 2001.  read more »

The Martin Prosperity Institute recently released the map below, which compares the GDP of several US metropolitan areas to the size of national economies. For instance, the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy metropolitan statistical area (MSA) has a GDP of $311.3 billion dollars. If it were a country, it would be the 40th biggest national economy on earth, ahead of countries such as Denmark ($310.1) and Greece ($303.4).  read more »

Looking for a safe haven for your banking investments? The Royal Bank of Canada is about three times the size of Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland or Deutsche Bank – and they haven’t cut their dividend in more than 70 years. Although Canadian banking profits declined double-digits last year, they actually had profits. Pretty much the rest of the world’s banks are reporting massive losses.  read more »