Young Canadians have never had it so bad in this country, and yet you wouldn\u2019t know it if you listened to the prime minister\u2019s cozy \u201cfireside chat\u201d on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It was Prime Minister Mark Carney who should have done the listening, particularly to his House of Commons finance committee, which a day after his \u201cwe are all in this together\u201d platitudes revealed that younger Canadians are increasingly out of it altogether.<\/p>\n
Witnesses before the committee painted a picture of cities where young Canadians\u2019 dreams of owning a home are never going to be realized; where a \u201cK\u201d economy has one arm with older people growing ever more prosperous and the other full of younger people stagnating; where the average age of first-time home-buyers in Canada is now 40; and where impecunious Canadians are taking on debt to buy groceries.<\/p>\n
The committee was a depressing, sad and infuriating vignette of life after 11 years of Liberal rule and one year of Carney. Yet, to hear Carney talk on Sunday, one could be forgiven for thinking that all of Canada\u2019s woes are all the fault of U.S. President Donald Trump. And, of course, there was more Davos-style speechifying \u2014 the world has never been more divided.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not Trump and it\u2019s not a divided world that has put young Canadians firmly on the bottom rung of the ladder with no way up. That\u2019s the result of failed Liberal policies, which will never improve if the prime minister insists on sticking his head in the sand.<\/p>\n
In his Sunday chat, he briefly touched on younger Canadians saying they were hurting because of past historical crises \u2014 the Iraq War, the global financial crisis, COVID \u201cand now this,\u201d again referring to Trump.<\/p>\n
As for housing affordability, the Liberals were on it and seeing results, said Carney, pointing to a story about \u201caverage asking rents\u201d falling (he failed to mention that the article pointed out that prices are still 14.1 per cent higher than in December 2019.)<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the three witnesses at the finance committee were also talking about housing affordability, and their testimony was at odds with what Carney said.<\/p>\n
Ronald Butler \u2014 whose brokerage businesses operates in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario \u2014 said he\u2019s been getting 1,700-2,500 calls a month from people with mortgage issues. \u201cWe\u2019re approached to do restructuring, refinancing, change amortization, to lower payments,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In the 1980s, the average first time home buyer was 27 years old, he said. Last year, they were 40. \u201cSo that should be meaningful to everybody in government that we are denying a lot of young people the chance to own a home,\u201d said Butler.<\/p>\n
People defaulting on their mortgages has been growing and will continue to grow, he added.<\/p>\n
Butler said the biggest change was that \u201cnormal salaried people,\u201d such as a part-time nurse or a grocery store production manager, could afford a mortgage 30 years ago, but \u201cthose days are gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carney used similar words on Sunday. He criticized those who believed \u201cthe good old days will come back,\u201d adding, \u201cHope isn\u2019t a plan and nostalgia is not a strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Butler disagreed. \u201cI don\u2019t mean to sound nostalgic, but I far preferred the old way, where ordinary people making ordinary wages could go out and buy a home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As for things getting better, Butler pointed out some brutal facts, particularly in the Greater Toronto Area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe reached a landmark in the GTA last quarter, there were absolutely no condominium starts of any description in the GTA,\u201d he said. \u201cIn all of Ontario, with the minor exception of Ottawa, the housing starts, even low-rise housing, not just high-rise housing, have fallen off a cliff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carney likes to boast about Canada leading the G7 in all sorts of economic indicators, but Peter MacKenzie, senior policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute, told that committee that Canada is leading the G7 in household debt levels and rising consumer insolvencies.<\/p>\n
Particularly hurting are younger Canadians and highly leveraged homeowners in cities like Toronto and Vancouver.<\/p>\n
He cited a Bank of Canada survey of consumer expectations, in which Canadians aged 25 to 54 reported a record 27 per cent probability of missing a debt payment.<\/p>\n