City-by-City Breakdown of Canada’s Housing Market in 2025

[00:00:01] This is The Canadian Investor, where you take control of your own portfolio and gain the confidence you need to succeed in the markets. Hosted by Braden Dennis and Simon Belanger Welcome back to The Canadian Investor Podcast. I'm here for a special episode with the one and only Dan Foch. Dan, how are you today? We're going to be going over some Canadian real estate.

[00:00:26] So you've been on the podcast before, but I think it'll be a bit different this time around just looking at it via different cities, different metro areas across Canada. Yeah, I'm good. My name is Daniel Foch. I'm host of the other Canadian Investor Show, the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast. I'm also a real estate broker and co-owner and chief real estate officer at Real Estate Brokerage.

[00:00:50] So pretty in touch with what's going on. And I would agree. I think that this is, you know, it's different, but it's also a dynamic time for Canadian real estate because things vary so much on a province by province basis. You've got some markets, you know, where unemployment is really high and unaffordability is still really high and they're suffering, you know, namely Ontario. And then you've got, you know, well, Ontario and BC or maybe like the lower mainland. And then you've got other markets that are doing totally fine.

[00:01:16] And it seems to be fortunately or unfortunately that Ontario data really takes a big piece of the national data and it kind of skews it in the wrong direction. And so it's hard to get an idea for what the true story is, right?

[00:01:32] So we're going to do a little bit of an overview of national stats and then we're also going to kind of think about a couple of ways that investors can look at this based on some recent reports that came out from RBC and Deloitte where, you know, I mean, there's, we've gotten through the election. The next kind of big question mark in Canada's economy is what's our exposure from a trade war perspective? And I think you and I are going to, cause you understand the industry is a lot better, but I understand sort of the real estate side. Yeah.

[00:02:00] We're going to talk, we're going to kind of riff on that a little bit, I think. No, I think it'll be fun. And thank you for introducing yourself. Sometimes I just assume that people know you cause you've been on this show a few times. So you did what I did not do so well as a host. So thank you for that. No, I totally agree with you. And on the Ontario part, living in Ottawa, I get that sense quite a bit because obviously people talk about Ontario and it's just assumed that it's basically Ontario excluding Ottawa.

[00:02:29] When people talk about Ontario for the most part, it just seems like Ottawa, it's its own little bubble, but it's always the sense I get is when we talk about Ontario, it's really more the GTA area, right? The Southern Ontario type of area. Yeah. The, what do they call it? The center of the universe or downtown Canada. Yeah. That's funny. Or the Toronto sports network, I think for sports, right? You know, it is funny because we serve a national audience, both of us.

[00:02:55] And the more investable markets in Canada from a real estate perspective are outside of the GTA. So we get a lot of, you know, not, not complaints, but like you get criticism for the data really forcing you to think a lot about Toronto, just because it's like, you know, it's the only place where we have the office market index or, you know, things like that. It's really like the only like market that has that, that size and stature. So a lot of the data comes from, from Toronto or the GTA, but it ends up being wrong or very not applicable to the rest of the country. So yeah.

[00:03:25] I mean, maybe the best place to start is thinking about house prices, which is probably the biggest thing what people think about. So if you look at residential average price, the Canadian real estate association puts this out. And this is a really easy way to kind of visualize the skew that Ontario and BC has on the national average. So if you go province by province, every single province is up on a year over year basis in house prices from March, 2024 to March, 2025, except for Ontario and BC.

[00:03:52] Yet Ontario and BC takes up so much of the volume that they skew the average down. So national house prices are down 4% year over year. Yet in BC, they're down, let's say 5%. In Ontario, they're down 4%. Alberta is up 6%. Saskatchewan is up 11%. Manitoba is up 10%. Quebec is up 7%. New Brunswick is up 6%. Nova Scotia is up 6%. PEI is up like 12%. And Newfoundland is up almost 20%, between 15 and 20%.

[00:04:22] And so it really shows you how that kind of center of the universe Toronto thing happens in the data side of things. And are they still, I know in terms of household income to home prices ratio, Toronto and Vancouver were always near the top. Are they still near the top despite those declines? Yeah, they are.

[00:04:45] Because house prices had gone so far out of control that, I mean, they still need to come back really, really far. Calgary has passed Montreal. So if you're looking at your big four cities. And I'll pull up like one of the really good reports that I use to look at this is the National Bank Housing Affordability Monitor, where they kind of look at housing affordability. They chart it across all of the different cities in Canada. They leave out a couple of ones that I think really should be in there.

[00:05:11] But yeah, Toronto and Vancouver are by and large severely unaffordable compared to the remainder of the country. No, that's really interesting. I mean, and what like in terms of what do you expect in terms of growth for the next couple of years? Do you think it'll be really dependent on the economy, the trade war? Is that going to be the leading factor?

[00:05:34] Or do you think it's going to be offset to some extent by potentially lower interest rates, whether we're talking variable rates because of lowering rates from the Bank of Canada, or whether we're talking about potentially lower bond yield? But that's your guess is as good as mine when it comes to that, because who knows what the bond market will do. Yeah, it's a really good question, especially with the amount of spending that was proposed by all parties coming out of the Canadian election.

[00:06:01] I think it's hard to imagine a world in which bonds are coming down meaningfully without a recession in Canada, which I'm of the opinion that that's why both parties were proposing so much spending. But to answer your question regarding affordability, I mean, a lot of people overthink affordability. It's really a function of three things, right? So it's a function of incomes, which we saw recent data from the Bank of Canada and the Labour Force survey that income growth is expected to slow.

[00:06:31] So wages probably won't be growing. And that's usually what you see when we're in a recession or unemployment is rising. But the other pieces are that you have interest rates, like you mentioned. So interest rates could come down and make housing more affordable because housing affordability is measured. And you can see it here on this chart from the National Bank Housing Affordability Monitor is monthly mortgage payment of a median home price relative to income. So it's mortgage payment to income.

[00:06:57] And so incomes could go up, interest rates could come down or house prices could come down. Those are the three ways that housing affordability can improve. So far, it's kind of been a mix of all of those. If we stop seeing a lot of that growth come from income, then the central banks or house prices are going to have to do the remainder. So it's basically the stress test here. Not quite, but that's pretty much the idea behind the stress test, right? They look at your payment and they compare it to your income. Yeah.

[00:07:24] And that's another thing that is interesting because OSFI is actually in the process of they're halfway through a review of the stress test. And it seems to be that they're alluding that they might go in the direction of actually removing that or rolling it back or shrinking it. So maybe they shrink it from, you know, plus 200 basis points to plus 100 basis points. So for those listening who aren't familiar with the stress test, basically right now you have to qualify at either your contract rate plus 2%.

[00:07:52] So if you go get a mortgage for 4%, which is kind of the market right now, fixed mortgage, you have to qualify at 6% or you have to qualify at 5.25%, whichever is higher. So that's the MQR minimum qualifying rate. We could see that shrink and that could actually improve buying power. That's probably the biggest stroke of the pen that could improve buying power in the Canadian housing market.

[00:08:15] And OSFI is six months into a 12-month study where they're basically using this – have you guys talked about it, the 450% portfolio income thing on the show? No, we haven't. And just for a quick clarification to OSFI, just not to go into too much detail, but they're the regulator for financial institutions. They also regulate pension plans federally, just for people that are not familiar. So it's the Office of the Superintendent Financial Institutions. Just wanted to clarify that.

[00:08:43] I know you and I know it quite well, but sometimes people are not familiar with it. Yeah. So basically OSFI, they have this new program where they're making the banks have less than 10% or 15% of their mortgage book can be over 450% loan to income. So over 4.5x income. And then there's an average across their whole portfolio that also needs to be at 450% of income, which isn't hard for banks.

[00:09:10] Like if you imagine the average loan to value of a Canadian – like think about all of the people who have had mortgages for 20 years. They're all like 20% loan to value, 10% loan to value. So they skew it down a lot. But they're really trying to get rid of a lot of this riskier behavior that happens during manias like the one that we saw in 2021. Yeah, just don't loan to GTA and Greater Vancouver area. It should be fine. Or just get both of their parents and their grandparents to co-sign on that. Yeah. For sure.

[00:09:37] And are you not – like do you not have reservations with them potentially lowering or removing the stress test? Because to me that – like there's just alarm bells that go off in my head when I hear that because at the end of the day, right, it just – a lot of people just don't think – don't do their own calculations when trying to buy it when buying a house. And they just look at what they can be approved for.

[00:10:01] And if this increases what they can be approved for, they will probably go with the best house in terms of bells and whistles that they can get for that amount. I would say that that is true in the core markets like your Toronto and people typically tend to max out their buying power. Yeah, for sure. So I'm of the opinion that – yeah, I mean CMHC's MLI Select program is another really good example.

[00:10:24] We have a lot of investors who are buying pre-made multiplexes in Alberta as an example with 5% down. If you give Canadians a ridiculous opportunity to take on a credit product and a wild amount of leverage and risk and it's associated with real estate and it's insured by the taxpayer, they're going to take that opportunity. What could go wrong, right? Right. Yeah. I mean – yeah.

[00:10:52] Yeah, so I share the same sentiment that I think that it's – they have to be careful removing the stress test. The key really becomes where do we feel like there's – like do we feel like there's more risk to the upside or downside? I mean Routledge obviously saw this coming and I think he was one of the few people who did where he said, look, rates are crazy low. And this was even before COVID.

[00:11:16] And honestly, thank God that he did it because had he not, all of these COVID people who weren't stress tested would have been blown out. If there was no stress test during COVID, we would be in so much trouble right now. And not to say that we aren't, but I think it definitely softened the impact because he was one of the few people who said, if we keep seeing rates trending down, we keep seeing this exuberance as a result of rates trending down. People are going to – they can't be trusted and we need to test that because they're not – like you said, they're not doing it themselves.

[00:11:46] And what else happened in the meantime is the stress test doesn't account for the fact that all of your living expenses went up 20% during period one and then when you have to renew in five years. Maybe you had a vehicle breakdown and you took on a new truck or whatever, your gas bills double or triple what it was. Insurance costs. Yeah, there are so many things outside of the scope of what they can actually control. I think it was a really good policy. I think it did its job.

[00:12:12] So to kind of go back to the beginning of my thought, does Ausfie fear that there's more downside in rates or more upside in rates? Because if they think that rates are going to continue trending down, then there's really no reason for the stress test to be there. If they think that there's a risk that rates maybe stabilize or jump up in the five-year period, like if we end up having everybody getting mortgages at 3% today, refinancing at 5% in five years, then the stress test still would serve a purpose.

[00:12:39] And I think Routledge might communicate his thought on – and he's a brilliant economist. Like he actually used to work for National Bank. Like I think he'll communicate his kind of long-term bet on rates in what they do with that policy. Okay. No, that's a good point. I obviously think you know me and listeners know me. Like I'm always reluctant on too much leverage, whether it's buying a home, whether investing. I never use leverage for investing. I mean I have a mortgage.

[00:13:06] I understand some leverage can be fine if used reasonably. The problem is I think as Canadians were – even with the recent downturns, I'm sure you'll talk about it a bit more in certain markets. I know the condo market in Toronto, especially those one-bedroom small condos are really been hit hard. But I think a lot of people are still in the mentality that it's always going to go up into the right.

[00:13:30] So I think that's why it's always a bit tricky, especially in Canada because we haven't seen this big correction like the U.S. saw during the great financial crisis. And I think we kind of think we'll be immune because we powered through that 2009 to 2011 like relatively unscathed in Canada. So I don't know. I always feel there is that mentality.

[00:13:53] Switching over to how the cities look, how do you think real estate will fare across different cities, especially when we see the uncertainty related to the orange man down south? Yeah. So I guess I'm going to add a couple of thoughts on what you mentioned because I think that the rate path of our 08 GFC was really interesting.

[00:14:14] So I mean we got away with being unscathed during 07, 08 because we could keep our rates lower for longer without them becoming a problem because we were not over levered comparatively then. The problem is the way we grew our economy was people using those rates and us accumulating more leverage. Today we are over levered, you know, and so compare like what you said, all of these things.

[00:14:39] We didn't get to the highest household debt to GDP ratio in the world without trying and piling on as much debt as we can. Can you remind me who was the Bank of Canada governor back then? You're going to politicize this, of course. Yeah, I mean it was... No, no. It's just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is funny though because I mean it does... The thing could be argued from either direction, right? Yeah. And people can say, oh, it was, you know, depending on what your politics are, you could say, oh, it was Harper or you could say it was Carney, right?

[00:15:08] But the truth is during that period of time, this started a credit addiction that Canada has had basically for the last 15 years where we got by unscathed and we started feeling invincible and we started piling on debt. And now we have the highest household debt to GDP ratio in the world among the highest. And this is a headwind because we can't... We didn't deleverage. We're the one... Us in the UK, the only two places that didn't deleverage in 08. But now we can't add more leverage as a result.

[00:15:37] I guess Australia is in the similar boat too, right? Yeah. Australia, Netherlands and Switzerland actually. Yeah. And obviously I was being facetious. I knew that it was Mark Carney that was Bank of Canada governor. And the reason why I said that and you explained it pretty well is because it just does not give us a lot of room to maneuver right now.

[00:15:59] I think that's the point I wanted to make is when you get addicted to credit like that and you're so indebted, if you start seeing, you know, prices that slow down. I mean, you can get into... I don't think we're there yet and maybe we won't get there. But what we're seeing in China where they're a little bit in a balance sheet recession, right? Yeah. So they're in a deflationary environment and people have debt to service and incomes are slowing down and revenue is slowing down.

[00:16:28] So you get into a problem where at least if incomes are rising, then the debt loses value over time. So that's how you can sustain it a bit more. Yeah. You can wash a lot with inflation. It is funny though because, you know, it's like they did get us through the 08 recession, but at what cost? And this is kind of when you hear people talk about kicking the can down the road.

[00:16:49] It's like we got through it, but now because we didn't really cap that program afterwards, here we are years later saying, okay, well, we still have too much debt to deal with.

[00:17:30] So we have 1989 crash was about 13% off peak. 08, we were about 9% off peak. 2017, which was its own like little micro correction. Trump 1.0 when they had that little recession and the rates kind of had to get climbed up. And actually the stress test was put in on that period too. That was about an 8% correction. And now February 2022 peak, we're down about 16% from that.

[00:17:54] And it's crazy because RBC actually put up this chart during the rate hiking cycle that showed their forecast. And they had, it says projected price drop would surpass prior corrections. And they actually called it like perfectly. And I've been using this chart a lot. Like I was during that period of time because I always felt that this was going to be that type of downturn for Canadian housing. And they nailed it. RBC nailed it.

[00:18:21] So anyway, all of that to say, it doesn't look the same everywhere in the country. So we should talk about what it is, what it looks like city by city and asset class by asset class if you want. Start east, west, like, you know, center of the universe. And then it's up to you. Maybe the largest to smallest. So we'll go Toronto and we'll go Alberta. And then we'll go, I guess we'll go Toronto, Ottawa, Alberta. And then we'll go Montreal and Vancouver. So Toronto is pretty simple.

[00:18:51] Condo market's toast, like really bad. It's going to take years to absorb the amount of new supply that's come on the market. And pre-sales are still at record lows. So is it just specifically for these one bedroom, lack of better words, shoebox condos? Is it the two bedroom? Like, is it certain types of condos or it's really across the board? It seems to be getting, like, it kind of gets pulled down because if, you know,

[00:19:19] if the price of your one bedroom condo or like tiny condo goes, like, let's just, let's just like apply some simple logic here. So setting aside investors, which are the biggest purchasers of those units, but first time buyers are like 50% of your market. So let's just use them as an example. I'm a first time buyer. I bought a, you know, a little shoebox studio and I'm going to go sell that studio now because I want to move to a two bedroom condo.

[00:19:44] And my shoebox is gone down 15% in value. So my buying power for my next one has gone down 15 or more. And so the knock on effect spreads in that way where it kind of hasn't, where it's kind of the contagion is sort of stopped is when you get into the detached market. Like 416 detached has been pretty resilient. 905 detached has not been resilient because it was really the COVID beneficiary. And now you're seeing a lot of that detached demand come back to the core offices reopening, et cetera.

[00:20:14] But your 416 condos are in trouble. 905 condos are in trouble. 905 detached is in trouble. 416 detached has been pretty resilient. It did see a big drop, but since that big drop, it's been kind of trading sideways. The key things to look at Toronto condo wise is like presale activity is like record lows. Like we've not, not like, you know, 1990s lows. Like we're, we're beating those numbers so far we've seen, I'll pull up some, some stats from like urban nation is a good, um, good data house to look at for this stuff.

[00:20:44] But basically presale condos have fallen off a cliff and, uh, a lot of developers are trying to pivot to rental actually to, to try and keep their pipeline active. Yeah. So I guess that's why some banks are resulting now to blanket approvals, right? Like they, they want to save some of these projects that are coming online. Yeah. So the blanket, blanket appraisals are pretty interesting because I mean, yeah, they want, well, they, I think what they really want to do is they want to move the risk away from

[00:21:13] one single developer and move that risk onto, yeah, onto thousands of buyers with their incomes. And so now all of a sudden you have a, you know, you had one developer and one developer's personal guarantee, which I mean, if they trap them in the project, that developer is going to go bankrupt. Like these are billions, not, not all of them, but for the most part, these are billion dollar projects. So the GP of that, like the actual entity that owns that project is not going to be solvent if they, if they get stuck. So you take that and you move the risk

[00:21:43] to a thousand or whatever, let's say the building has a thousand units in it. You move the risk to a thousand buyers plus the rental income that, that they're going to be making from those rental, like renting those units out. And realistically, like I don't have a ton of empathy for those buyers because they did sign contracts that they're buying those units at that price. So, you know, nobody's weeping for them either, but you know, I understand why the banks are doing this because, and it's basically a private sector bailout. You get the big banks who have

[00:22:11] the staying power to do what the government can't step in and do without getting in trouble. And they're basically bailing out these condo projects to keep the sectors moving to, so that to create liquidity basically. Yeah. I mean, the, the government could be on the hook for part of it though, if some of those are CMHC insured, right? So they could, I mean, not to the full extent, but yeah. Yeah. They shouldn't be like, so we've looked at this at length and realistically, like most of the, yeah, I can't see there being much CMHC insurance involved with that. Yeah.

[00:22:38] Okay. Because that was my, that was my primary concern. Yeah. But it's, I don't think it's as much of a risk as I had originally thought. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, I agree with you. Look, I made, when I was younger, my early twenties, I made some stupid financial decisions. I was able to rectify it, but it took me like three, four years to get things in order. And at some point I was quite close to have to declare bankruptcy. I didn't, but you make bad decisions. You just have to,

[00:23:05] you know, you have to deal with the consequences. Exactly. Like at the end of the day, like, yeah. I've done some dumb stuff too. I'm not embarrassed by it. I mean, I learned from it. Like that's how you make these mistakes. So you don't do it more than once. Yeah. It's just because if you start bailing out, you know, people, individual companies like that, then, okay, well, should they give you money when their investment goes well? Like it, to me that they won't. So you basically cap their downside, but leave their upside unchanged.

[00:23:32] Yeah. What is it? Uh, privatize the, privatize the gains, socialize the losses. Yeah, exactly. That's it. Yeah. Okay. So no Toronto, that's interesting, especially, um, for the detach holding pretty well in the 416. And when you say detach, does that include semi-detached townhome stuff like that? Kind of. Okay. Those are a pretty small portion of the market, but yeah, like they've been, they've been there in between. They've been more resilient than condos, but less resilient than like a fully detached. Like when I say detached, I mean,

[00:23:59] um, yeah, exactly. And, and the reason that detached, like, or to think about it from an investment perspective, one of the big reasons why detached has been relatively resilient in the 416 is the city of Toronto upzoned the entire city to four units. And you're seeing this happen all across the country. So you can imagine the impact it's having in other, in other cities. Uh, Edmonton was kind of one of the leaders in it. Certain areas of BC have gone up to like six units. Um, Alberta has gone to like, uh, sorry, uh, Calgary has gone to four unit or sorry,

[00:24:27] four plus four. So you can actually do like almost an eight plex. So you can do, they call it a four plex with suites. So, you know, so you have a residential detached lot in one of these cities. It's, it's output value. You think about it just like a man, your manufacturer before you, you, you brought one piece of land onto your assembly line and you could get one house out of it. Now you bring one piece of land onto your, onto your assembly line and you can get four rental houses out of it or eight. And so your output value has gone up a lot, which means the

[00:24:53] willingness to pay from the market has gone up a lot as well. And that, that's been one of the things that I think has had a really strong impact on keeping values, uh, relatively stable. And I think that that was part of their policy intention to tell you the truth. And it's a limited supply too, right? Like at the end of the day, especially in that 416 area, it's not like they're building really that many new single family homes. Like not at all. Exactly. No, you know, like there's no market anymore. Nobody can afford a new single family house. So.

[00:25:21] Yeah. And it's pretty limited. I mean, we're seeing kind of similar things in Ottawa. Like, I don't know the market, like, you know, obviously as detailed as you, but it's these older neighborhoods. They seem to be holding up pretty well in value. And then when you go out a little bit more in the suburbs, that's where you're seeing a bit more, not necessarily major declines, but, um, maybe some more competition because there is already, there are still new builds being built there.

[00:25:46] Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So yeah, I mentioned, uh, Calgary there as well. So we can probably just jump to Calgary. I mean, Calgary has been, been pretty strong, but like, and, and one of the things we've seen that is a massive population growth, like tons of people leaving basically everywhere else in Canada, except for, I think New Brunswick and then, uh, or sorry, Nova Scotia maybe, but, um, one of the Atlantic provinces is still seeing slight growth and then, um, they're going to Alberta.

[00:26:12] And so, and that's been, Alberta was the fastest growing place on earth last year, I think in 2023 as well. Uh, like something like 11% population growth and a lot of it's young people, 25 to 44 that, that working age cohort, they're going there in search of affordability. They can find rent or they were and, and jobs. Um, the, the headwinds on that are, I mean, rents jumped up a lot, like the market kind of got over, over demanded. And so you get the typical hallmarks of excess demand,

[00:26:38] house prices rising really fast, fast rents rising really fast. Calgary. Well, Alberta generally is very good at responding to demand. They build a lot quicker, less, uh, red tape, um, you know, less, uh, regulations around like the environmental, less land, land scarcity. And so they hit the, you know, the, the gas on supply supplied the market. And then you saw rents drop actually pretty substantially. And post prices have kind of plateaued if not coming down a little bit in the Calgary

[00:27:07] market. Um, so that market's becoming more affordable again, and that's been helpful in kind of like keeping the demand stable, but, but from an investment perspective, the yields have kind of fallen a little bit. Rents have fallen a little bit. Prices have fallen a little bit, which I think is a healthy correction that the market needs to see. And, and I think that it'll probably be among the more investable markets in, in Canada, you know, for 2020, I'm not, I, I'd be reluctant to touch anything with a lot of the uncertainty right now, but it's, but it's,

[00:27:35] you know, if you're, if you're desperate to put money into real estate, it's going to be one of the safer ones I would say. Yeah. Do you think, um, more provinces will follow that model? Kind of a less red tape type of model looking at what's happening in Alberta, but also Southern U S States where it's a lot of, you know, a lot more free market when it comes to building new houses, less red tape. And what you're seeing right now is I do follow that as well as there was a lot of

[00:28:02] demand for the Southern States during the pandemic. So of course, builders started building a whole lot and then a lot of supply came online and then the demand wane, and then it's putting some downward pressure on prices, which clearly helps affordability. So do you think you're going to see more provinces trying to do that, uh, mimic that model to help affordability, maybe like five to 10 years down the line? I think that they're going to have to, to be honest, like, I don't think that most of them

[00:28:28] have a choice as much as they want to think that way. They either end up with, uh, there's a really good visual on it that shows basically like places that, that build, I mean, when you, when you build more, you're attracting capital and you're attracting and you're creating permanent capital stock, right? Like those are assets. So you think, you can think about micro economies in this way. If Calgary is outbuilding everybody, this is permanent capital stock that Calgary has, that is an advantage over places like Toronto. And that can give like a, almost like a, a lifestyle dividend

[00:28:55] or a growth dividend to the, to the economy because that cap, that, that greater capital stock relative to the amount of people that lives there, uh, distributes them lower rents. And that lower cost of living now can translate to, I can afford to, to take a lower wage to work for this tech company. And now the tech company wants to move to Calgary because they can have, and so the knock on effects of, of, uh, really doing a good job of building an infrastructure in a place like Calgary as an example, I think other cities are just starting to realize too

[00:29:24] little too late probably that they shouldn't be so obsessed with being restrictive and exclusionary with like zoning and building permits and stuff. And that there is a lot of merit to building and, and, um, making the, the world affordable, making their municipality affordable. And you're starting to see municipal governments compete with one another. I mean, to go back to Toronto, a very interesting example, Vaughn reduced their development charges, which is basically a tax that builders have to pay to, um, create a unit. And then Mississauga had to reduce their development

[00:29:54] charges because those two products compete with one another. And then Toronto eventually will have to probably reduce their development charges. They just put a freeze on increasing them. Um, and these are all things that would actually be deflationary on the, on the cost of housing, which will make the market more affordable, which will deliver those knock on effects. So yes, I think all, all cities across Canada are going to head in that direction. They just do it at a snail's pace because that's how governments work in this country. And for, I guess to wrap up Alberta,

[00:30:20] are you seeing this same kind of thing for Edmonton? Is it just Calgary? Is it across the, uh, the province or just a specific to Calgary? So Edmonton's interesting because, um, Edmonton kind of sees like, it ends up being a little bit later than the next, uh, or then, then, then Calgary. So it gets, it experiences like similar knock on effects. So what happens is like Toronto in 2021, 2020 got crazy expensive. And so any young people who wanted to rent or buy a place

[00:30:48] during COVID, they left and went to Calgary, let's say, you know, the next metropolitan area that they could afford where there wasn't a language barrier for example, like Montreal. And so they would move to Calgary and then all of the people who got pushed out of Calgary said, Oh, I'm just going to go to Edmonton because it's the closest city here that I can afford. Um, and so they, so they did investor capital renters, et cetera. And so Edmonton kind of went is, is just going through that actually that, that, that next phase of growth you're seeing my, my fear with Edmonton is

[00:31:17] there's, they're probably at risk of overbuilding more than anybody in the country, just because you're seeing a ton of Toronto capital going to Edmonton, buying these CMHC six plexes. We've been doing like a lot of these deals, basically like people can go buy brand new buildings from, we haven't, haven't done a lot recently because of the risk that I just mentioned, but you know, we were, and people can go and buy basically a six plex for like 5% down. They can't do that anymore. Now it's like he kind of, they changed the capital structure a little

[00:31:42] bit with a CMHC, but you know, the market probably will be oversupplied in a year. And this is what happened in, in Calgary. If you go look at Calgary vacancy rate for brand new houses, brand new units, it went from like 2% in 2023 to 7% in 2024 because of that, that big supply response. And cause supply response in real estate lag. So today Edmonton's vacancy rate is 2%,

[00:32:09] but all of these Toronto investors are piling in and underwriting their projects on a 2% vacancy and they're excited to be building supply, but they're not looking and counting how many other units, all of their other Toronto investors are building around them and saying, Oh, what's the vacancy rate going to be next year when this building's actually complete? And then it gets complete and they're trying to lease a project in, in a seven or 12% vacancy. And that's where, and then now you get the, the kind of like the, the, the whipsaw effect. Right. And that's why

[00:32:34] that volatility exists in the real estate market. I think the exact same thing that just happened in Calgary in 2024 is going to happen in, in Edmonton this year, which will probably be exacerbated by slower immigration in Canada as a whole, right? There could still be interprovincial immigration, but I mean, it would probably kind of add fuel to that effect. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I would say, um, I think the, the immigration piece is going to have a,

[00:33:02] uh, very pronounced impact in places like Ontario where that was really, and you already saw it, our rents are down like 10%. I can pull up the data, but we, we use like live.rent or, um, rentals.ca for, um, for their rental reports. And, um, you can see rents falling. Like they've been falling for six months in, in most cities across Canada. Actually, I'll pull, I'll pull up the most recent one while I'm, uh, while I'm here, but, uh, but yeah. Except Ottawa, I guess. That's

[00:33:28] what I saw. Yeah. So Ottawa rents and, um, Edmonton rents have gone up. Okay. But everywhere else in Canada has gone and they've gone up very slightly. I'll pull it up, but it's, uh, yeah. Okay. So after the rents, I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about Vancouver and BC. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, BC is very much going through the same thing that, um, that Ontario went through, except they have, um, they have some better concessions for purposeful

[00:33:57] rental. So a lot of developers, uh, so they, they basically have a bunch of condo inventory, same as Toronto, a bunch of, um, unsold condos that are being completed. Uh, there's a lot more foreign capital at play in, in, um, in Vancouver, especially that, uh, has kind of like, you know, that, that was really a lot of those people were buying those, those pre-con units in, in the Vancouver market years ago. And that, so that allowed them to pre-sell a bunch of units that are now coming onto market. And so it's probably oversupplied on the apartment stock,

[00:34:26] whether that be condo or purposeful rentals, but you're also seeing a lot of purposeful rental supply come on the market there. Detached. I mean, it's been pretty much flat since like, since the big drop in 2016. Uh, I don't necessarily think it's going to, it's kind of seems to be slowly trying to make its way back up based on a lot of these upzoning things. Now you can build a fourplex on, on a, on a house or on a detached lot in the city of Vancouver. And in Vancouver, it's a lot easier to stratify those. So you're seeing some developers start getting into building

[00:34:55] like these little fourplex condos and stuff like that, but generally very similar setup to what we're seeing in Toronto, just not as, not as severe. Okay. Yeah. And I guess there's a lot of natural constraints, right? With Vancouver, like in terms of single family homes, like it's just, where you have the, the Rockies on one side and ocean the other. And yeah, there's not much space to build on. So I guess you really have to move further out if you want to have a detached home

[00:35:22] that's relatively affordable. Yeah. It's a significantly supply constrained market for sure. And so that's been kind of beneficial for it to not, it kind of ends up having a floor, which is, you know, what's an investor willing to pay to, to buy land, to create new units. Um, but it's, you can see the impacts like, you know, as much as these markets ran up during COVID and that period of exuberance, when everyone was trying to buy condos and, you know, speculate on the

[00:35:47] market and whatever, now they're coming down in a comparable amount. Okay. Okay. And what are you seeing in, uh, the, uh, I guess Montreal, the third or second largest city in Canada? I keep forgetting. Yeah. Yeah. So Montreal is, is very fascinating. It's, it's probably one of the few places that have really managed their way through this without a ton of issues. You are seeing, you know, rents coming

[00:36:13] down a little bit, prices came down a little bit, but not like no crazy whipsaw up or down. And, um, and it, the market seems to be kind of normal there. Like, you know, and a lot of that from my perspective is they've always been pretty liberal with, um, purpose-built rental construction. And so the rental market was consistently supplied by your, you know, your rental housing providers. There was no necessity of creating this weird capital structure where you relied on pre-construction

[00:36:43] speculators basically to get housing built. And that proved to be a very good thing. And the other thing is you also have like a lot more, you know, they've always been very favorable to plexes. They didn't have to come in, you know, and go and rewrite their zoning code to allow for plexes. Like they're laughing at everyone else saying, yeah, you guys are just figuring this out. We've been having four plexes and, and, you know, we've been doing that since, since they were invented, since you could build more than two stories, we were doing it. So those, those things from my

[00:37:11] perspective have really made it a market that's been resilient against some of these issues. Yeah. Even on Montreal Island, cause obviously like, uh, people know I'm French and I live in Ottawa, but I have a lot of family and friends in Montreal. So I go to Montreal pretty often. And even on Montreal Island, I mean, you see those kind of, whether it's townhomes, whether it's like fourplex, like you mentioned, uh, into multiple units, like the townhomes, you see that a whole

[00:37:37] lot. It's just, I remember in university, a lot of my friends would live in these like, you know, triplex fourplex that were, yeah, basically like within a townhome, lack of better words. Um, it's pretty common in Montreal. Yeah. And I think a lot of that is like the easiest way to think about that is this whole missing middle concept that we're hearing in Canada is really being borrowed from European housing concepts. And, you know, with Montreal and Quebec city being the two most really European

[00:38:01] influenced cities in Canada or probably in North America, you know, you're, you're seeing this, you know, this comfort with plexes or like, uh, you know, flats, you know, that you would call them maybe in London being a credible housing type in an urban environment where, you know, you get a lot of these more metropolitan attempting cities, uh, who really are trying to say, Oh, let's rethink

[00:38:29] urban housing and make, and you know, everything has to be 60 stories and dense and concrete and blue glass and, and all of this stuff. And, and I think we've really, like, I honestly think that a line was drawn in the sand during COVID that says maybe that wasn't the right way to be thinking about housing. Maybe not everybody wants to live in a tiny little unit. Maybe it doesn't have to be concrete because that's super expensive way to build houses. Let's go back to this missing middle thing. And that's, I think Montreal is just such a good case study and why that worked.

[00:38:59] Cause they didn't see the huge run up and they don't, aren't seeing the huge crash as a result since. Do you think that's just them, uh, figuring out how to make it work with a very old city? Cause at the end of the day, right, Montreal is much older than Toronto and Quebec city is older than Montreal. So they had these already, these constraints, like anyone who's been to Montreal, you kind of know these like tiny little streets that are like super hard to get through because

[00:39:24] I guess back in the day they were used by horse carriage and not made for cars. So I guess it was over time, it got built around that and they managed to build those despite the infrastructure in place. Yeah. A lot of it is necessity of that, like adaptive reuse, uh, of like the existing spaces where they kind of just had to, had to do it the way that you're describing for sure. Yeah. I think that there's, you know, but, but also I think that there's a limited appetite for

[00:39:51] kind of like high rise, uh, residential living in, in some of those more European cities. Like you, if you're going to go live in a high rise city, you know, you might, if you're from Montreal, you might be considering New York rather than like Toronto, like, you know, and so there's less people culturally there lining up to go and live that lifestyle than, than other Canadian cities that are kind of trying to reinvent themselves as like baby New Yorks. Right. Okay. No, that's good.

[00:40:18] So I guess we'll just talk quickly about Quebec city. What are you seeing there? Um, I know Quebec city is a bit different than Montreal, smaller, of course. Um, are you seeing similar kind of things? I think there's a little bit more fear around, uh, around Quebec city and such that it probably would be, you know, with a lot of its, uh, economy based on tourism, it could be, you could really feel the impacts of a recession in Canada. That being said, like if this whole by Canada, uh, you

[00:40:45] know, staycation concept moving forward ends up being, uh, a thing that we actually see appear in, in Canadian spending patterns, which, you know, you hear about it and you see the pictures of the grocery stores and stuff, but I haven't seen it appearing in, in, uh, Canadian spending yet. I would say then maybe it could be a good thing and may, but, but generally my thought would be as consumers kind of tighten their belts and we're heading into recession in Canada, you know, assuming

[00:41:11] Deloitte's, um, call is correct. Uh, a city like Quebec probably could, could see a little bit of a turbulent time ahead. That being said, prices have always been pretty reasonable there. Rents have always been pretty strong there. The one thing that Montreal and Quebec has going for it and just, uh, the province in general is they're not afraid to be tenants. You know, there's not this obsession with, uh, homeownership that you see in a lot of other places in Canada. And so if you're an investor, you put some capital and you, you know, you, you have a much

[00:41:38] bigger pool of, of, uh, of tenants to pull from relative to the remainder. You're not competing with homeownership. Like you would be in a city like Edmonton, like in Edmonton, if your tenants leaving, it's probably because they're going to buy a house in Quebec. They could be leaving because they don't like the rental unit or they're going to a different one or whatever. Right. And do you think Quebec will have some level of resiliency though, because it is, um, the capital, the provincial capital. So I would like, I know there's a pretty large amount of provincial,

[00:42:06] um, you know, provincial government workers there. So that could give it some stability. Yeah, I think it's, it's, uh, it does have a pretty like diverse economy. Actually, if you go back to that, like Oxford, uh, report that we were looking at at the beginning, I think, you know, Quebec from a, uh, economic diversification perspective outside of that, the aluminum Valley, obviously is, is, you know, not super exposed. I think that you, in, in Quebec city,

[00:42:33] you have like, you have a pretty diverse, um, makeup of, of, of jobs. Like if you, and the easiest way to think about this is like, what, what is subject to tariffs right now, or what is subject to, to turbulent economic turbulence and how, you know, Sudbury, I think was like the lowest ranked city from a, from a risk perspective to tariffs as an example. And it's cause they have like, they have the CRA offices there, they have government jobs, they have 10 different types of mining and minerals they have, you know, and Quebec's very similar. They have hospitality,

[00:42:59] they have government jobs, right? They have the tourism. And so I think that there is, there is a lot of diversification that could, could mitigate that risk as you mentioned. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think even when you look at aluminum, obviously we've seen the tariffs on steel and aluminum, but aluminum should be pretty resilient because there's just not that capacity in the U S for steel. There is some alternatives a bit more in the U S. It'll be interesting there. Uh, speaking of government workers, what about Ottawa? So where I'm living

[00:43:28] right now, are you seeing some resiliency because of that? Um, or. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I think there's always been this thesis around places like, um, Washington DC and, and, uh, you know, that one got blown to bits in the U S. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You saw all of those like posts where basically, you know, there's record number of houses being, uh, up for sale in

[00:43:53] Washington. And I think, you know, there's, there's a couple of different ways to think about this in Canada, at least for the next four years, government probably isn't getting any smaller, but there are other, like, you know, uh, Ottawa has like the lowest office occupancy relative to pre COVID, even though it has like, you know, let's so it's office vacancy rate is like 12%, but it's office occupancy rate, which is like the footfall of the number of people actually going back to the office is like lower than Calgary's. And yet Calgary's office vacancy rate is like 20%.

[00:44:21] And so the challenge that Ottawa might have is that the, you know, the core and like the use of the office in government activity is actually still a question mark. I know they're trying to get RTO return to office, you know, kind of like three days a week or whatever, but even then it's like, yeah, I know enough people that work for the federal government to know that, uh, it's kind of hit or miss, uh, like, uh, there are, but also whether it's applied or not by the man, the various managers, it's kind of hit or miss as well. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that one, I kind of,

[00:44:51] it does make me wonder is, you know, could Ottawa, I think Ottawa will be resilient just as like, it's a place that Canadians want to live. It's a great city. I think that, you know, as people, COVID really challenged people to understand Canadian geography a little bit better and say, oh wow, there are other places I can live that have a million plus people and a cool downtown and all of the amenities that I need that aren't Toronto or Vancouver. And I think that that probably is really the longterm, um, like Ottawa really needs to grow into its own as this, as this new,

[00:45:19] you know, market for young people, especially, I think you're seeing a lot of young people moving to markets like that to start a family or whatever, cause you can't afford to in the city of Toronto. So people are going to Ottawa, Montreal, et cetera. Yeah. And I guess, uh, just to finish on Ottawa because obviously I know the market decently well, Ottawa is always an interesting, um, city just to look at it from a housing perspective, because you also have Gatineau on the Quebec side. So it always provides a more affordable option. It has always been like that ever since I've been a kid,

[00:45:48] ever since I've remember, I don't know the exact difference. Obviously you have to account for higher taxes on the Quebec side and other things, but I don't know the exact percent, but I would say it's probably a 20% difference in homes. Like just on top of my head roughly for a similar house in a similar neighborhood. Yeah. And I mean, it's really just that commute across the bridge, which is a bit of a headache, but not, you know, it's not apparently not to make people. Yeah, exactly. And so, um,

[00:46:16] I would agree. I think that that's really what, one of the things that makes Ottawa dynamic. It's just been, it's always been an affordable place. It's been an affordable alternative and it is, I think, a more comfortable city to like, as Toronto becomes more metropolitan, if we're just talking in the context of Ontario, like there are consequences to that. You know, it's a different type of city for kids, for families, for, you know, you see different things than you might see in a smaller city. And, and those are things that I think when you, you know, if you're just considering the

[00:46:44] housing market, families who are considering buying in those markets are thinking about when they do it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Ottawa is often compared to Calgary. If you've been to like Calgary and Ottawa, they have a very, obviously two very different cities. Like one is definitely more on the private side in terms of businesses versus government, but in terms of the feel, uh, the way the city spread out nature and so on, there are a lot of similarities, but enough about

[00:47:12] Ottawa. Um, what are you seeing out East? Um, I know like Halifax, for example, and some of the Atlantic, uh, provinces there. Yeah, I think, you know, East coast is fascinating from my perspective because it's really got, it's got a lot of exposure to the immigration curve where, you know, it's, you see really big booming periods in Halifax when there's a lot of population growth and then really, so the ebbs and flows are pretty, can be pretty violent for those markets. Also

[00:47:38] Halifax, like Halifax is the easiest city to look at and say, yeah, they're overbuilt on rental. Like 6% of the entire rental housing universe in Halifax is under construction right now. So yeah, so if you're just to translate that over to the vacancy rate, you've got 6% more units, which means your, your vacancy rate, assuming all of those end up vacant, you know, for a couple of months when they're trying to lease them up, your vacancy rate's going to jump up pretty big. And you're also going to see, and you're starting to see this, this is a big thing for investors all over the country

[00:48:06] is tenants are price shopping, right? Cause you know, I have the chart up right here. Vancouver rents are down 5.7%. Toronto's down 6.9%. Ottawa is up about 1%. Calgary down 7.8%. Montreal down 4%. Edmonton up 1%. So these, these changes in rents are causing consumers to go out and start price shopping. And Halifax is no exception to that, right? If you're seeing all this new supply come on, then what that does is it, it says people say, oh, well maybe I'm gonna go

[00:48:34] check out that new building that just went up. And then they, you know, and that can actually pull prices down a little bit as they vacate some of those, that older stock and, uh, and more of those new units come up. So I think how Halifax is probably, and most of Atlantic Canada, I mean, all of the cities are pretty dynamic, but Halifax and, um, and Moncton were both huge COVID beneficiaries. A lot of Torontonians moving there to live, buy houses, telecommute, whatever it was. It's always Toronto, huh?

[00:49:01] It really is, man. I mean, they just go, they show up, they just ruin it and then they leave. Bags of money and they just, uh, yeah, they show up and then they leave, right? Well, yeah. I mean, it's, it's as easy as thinking about like the, you know, that, uh, actually Peter Routledge to come full circle on this episode. He did this, this study in like 2016 about foreign capital in Canadian real estate. And, um, a lot of Chinese investors were coming and buying real estate in Vancouver and people were saying, oh, like, you know, prices went up 30% year over year. And they're like, yeah, whatever. In Shenzhen, they went up 60%. So, you know,

[00:49:31] apply the same logic, a Torontonian, you tell them, oh, prices just went up, uh, you know, whatever, 10% in, in Halifax. So like, yeah, whatever, you know, in Toronto, it just went up 22%. And so they're, they're very irrational consumers by that, by nature. And this was something that was observed with a lot of the foreign capital going into Toronto and Vancouver was the kind of, they shrug it off and they're like, yeah, whatever, you know, cheaper house price less and, and, you know, less volatile than the market I'm coming from. So Torontonians do tend to go and, and, and kind of screw up those local markets for sure.

[00:50:01] They like to do that. I hope the Leafs lose tonight. Yeah. The second, the second blue team that gets kicked out of Ottawa. Yeah, exactly. Um, and what are you seeing for Halifax and the Atlantic regions just for single family home in terms of pricing? Uh, they seem to have stabilized. Yeah. I think they seem to have stabilized quite a bit. Like a lot of those markets, they saw the, they saw the big violent rip up during COVID from Toronto money. And then they are now,

[00:50:30] they saw pretty quickly thereafter, you know, so 2021, 2022 was pretty strong for them. 20 second half of 22, they, you saw the prices start to come down 23, they kind of flatlined and they're sort of still sideways, not really growing yet, but trying to, right. So, I mean, there, I don't think they're, they're markets that are on this like super severe risk volatility curve. Like I feel like a lot of the risk has been erased by that, that correction that already happened in, in those markets. Toronto is the one where, you know, people are still super levered.

[00:50:59] Houses are still, well, not, not just Toronto, but GTA in lower mainland, any market where houses are still trading at a really high price to income, job losses are increasing. You know, I mean, there's probably still downside risk in those markets, Halifax, Moncton, St. John's, they don't have those, those risk factors from my perspective. And that's why they, they haven't, they haven't really been as severely impacted in the last year. Okay. And I guess the last city, I don't want

[00:51:25] people to think we forgot them. Do you have some insights on Winnipeg? Yeah. Winnipeg's very, very similar to Edmonton. And I would say both your Regina and, and Saskatoon are similar as well. Basically what happens there is, you know, you, you get kind of that, not that knock on effect, similar to like people leaving Calgary to go to Edmonton for cheaper, et cetera, like rents and prices in Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been pretty stable, if not growing, you know, so they actually

[00:51:52] might be seeing a little bit more benefit. And you often see this during like recessionary periods is people actually go back to those markets quite a bit. And I think that that's really been a noticeable impact in, in kind of this recessionary setup. Those markets have been pretty strong and pretty resilient. And a lot of it, it could be anything, it could be affordability. It could be people looking for jobs in those cities because they do have pretty high, they have much higher employment rates than, than Ontario. I'll tell you that much for free. I mean, Toronto's unemployment rates like 10% right now. Right. So yeah. And you had gone up, I didn't know, uh, Winnipeg,

[00:52:20] Saskatoon, uh, Regina were faring much better there. Yeah. And, and if you go get a job in those cities, like, you know, you, you might be in Toronto and, and, you know, looking at, it's not just the unemployment thing, but it's like, if you lose your job in Toronto, you might just be like, do I really want to look for another job here? Or like, I already, I don't have my job. I can forfeit my unit and I can go to take a job in whatever Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, and actually afford to live. Cause my rent to income is way lower or my house price to income is way lower. And that

[00:52:49] this is the decision that you start to see people making at one of the big, the easiest place for people to tighten their belt in a recession is housing. Right. Uh, or the most, sorry, the most meaningful. The more effective though. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe not the easiest cause you have to move. After you, after you cancel your Disney plus subscription, that's the next thing. Oh, it was too easy, but overall, so I guess we'll wrap it up. Cause I, I do have some,

[00:53:15] a time constraint, so I have to go in about less than 10 minutes, but what do you think in terms of how housing, I know it's more generally housing will be impacted by the economy going forward. I know Deloitte is forecasting a recession. I think in their forecast for GDP later this year, do you think it's going to, there's going to be a big impact by tariffs? Um, they also had a bit of

[00:53:40] a nuanced view of Deloitte saying that, you know, Canada may end up being the least dirty shirts in terms of tariffs applied on other countries from the U S. So, uh, what are your thoughts on that and the potential impact it could have on housing just as general idea realizing that of course, city like Ottawa will have a much different impact than, uh, so St. Mary, for example, if, uh, they're very

[00:54:05] reliant on steel over there, for example. Yeah. I think it's going to be a really regional story, but I would say at a national level, I think that we do actually not have it as bad as we think, or that it feels. I think that Canada still has a lot of bargaining power with the U S. I think that there are a lot of things that they rely on us from a trade perspective. I think that it sounds like the relationship between Carney and Trump is off to a good start. So I think that, um, I'm

[00:54:29] optimistic that it won't really be as bad as I might've thought four months ago, but all of that being said, you know, even a, even a good scenario in a trade war is probably, you know, you're still looking at, I think you're still looking at a contraction in GDP, you know, in that, that Desjardins or sorry, the, um, Deloitte report, you know, it shows kind of province by province. I think, I think the big one to watch from my perspective is going to be Ontario. And the reason for that is,

[00:54:55] is it's a GDP per capita thing. Ontario is still the biggest recipient of, of population growth, yet we're expected to see only 0.7% growth in real GDP in 2025, uh, based on this Deloitte report. Um, so, you know, GDP per capita is probably going to fall pretty substantially in, in, in the province of Ontario. Everywhere else. I mean, Newfoundland and Alberta are both expected to see 1.7% GDP growth. And a lot of that's probably oil market and they have, they have cheaper housing.

[00:55:23] And so, and, uh, I, I do think it is really going to be a province by province story. And I, and I, and I think there's a lot of risk for basically Ontario and East and not a lot of risk for the prairies. Okay. No, that's a, that's a good way to see it. I'm with you ever since Liberation Day. Um, I think my view on the impact that tariffs would have on Canada shifted a little bit. Of course, it's very hard to make projections. If you read any kind of economists trying to make some prediction,

[00:55:51] usually there'll be like, they'll preface it with saying, well, first of all, it's ever changing, constantly changing on the tariff front. And they'll usually outline like three or four different big scenarios. And then they'll mention that there's some multiple, almost infinite amount of scenarios that could impact that a bit. Like the bank of Canada also said, right. In their latest, uh, statement saying they had like kind of two opposite scenarios that they're working off of

[00:56:17] that encompass a bunch of different, uh, outcomes. But I would, I would be willing to say that it probably won't be as bad as we thought it would be definitely not like, you know, if we go back to March, I think a lot of people were freaking out. I was, yeah, I was one of them. I mean, like, and I'm not, I'm not really that worried. Like I, I mean, I talk about a recession almost constantly. So I feel like if I wasn't insulated against it, I would be concerned for myself. But, um, I think, you know, I'm not really concerned about

[00:56:44] my own investments and stuff like that, but it's more like, I thought that there was going to be a really bad outcome for the country. And I, and I, I'm feeling less like that than I was before. Yeah. I actually think there's going to be some positives out of it. I think it really woke up a lot of people to figure out that we need to get a lot of stuff, figure it out. First of all, like I think a low hanging fruit, and we've talked about it time and time again, I think

[00:57:10] you and I have talked about is just interprovincial tariffs or barriers, trade barriers, for lack of better words. I think that is something that, you know, without what's happening right now, I don't think we would have looked at that for multiple years or potentially decades. And it really makes us realize that we have to be, we have to develop a lot of our infrastructure and be less reliant on the U S we will. Having said that we will always be reliant on the U S but less so I think would not

[00:57:39] be a bad thing. Yeah. I mean, the challenge is it's hard to be economically competitive when we're shipping goods across like, you know, that's the one hard part, right? Where it's so it's, it's, it's just a lot cheaper for us to trade with the U S than it is for us to trade with a Europe or, or, uh, the Asia Pacific region. Cause you got to put stuff on a boat to get it there. But you know, I mean, look, China did it and they became the supplier to the rest of the world. So I think, you know, when it comes to certain products, LNG resources, minerals, et cetera, I think I'd love

[00:58:07] to see Canada play a more meaningful role in that moving forward. Yeah. And the fact that the U S may go harder on tariffs on other countries and less on Canada, even if we do have tariffs, it could make our, or actually our exports more attractive to the U S market compared to other countries. And I think that's something that's been lost a little bit here. Um, you don't see that talked a whole lot in financial media. Yeah. The last piece I'll mention, cause I know you got to jump is I think

[00:58:35] services are really an X factor in this whole thing. Cause they haven't been subject to tariffs at all. And I look at the way a lot of U S companies behave with their hiring. And like you, you see, um, Toronto or like Toronto's like, we have a lot of good talent yet. People are willing to work for very cheap, like relative to, I mean, your rents are like New York rents, your, you know, New York or LA rents. And yet your salaries are like, you know, St. Louis salaries. So U S companies, I really think

[00:59:03] could start, especially with unemployment rising in Canada, they could say, Hey, look, we're just going to set up an office and X tech companies where they're so agile, right? Hey, we're just going to move. We're going to expand Google. Everybody already has a footprint here. Why not expand my Canadian office where I can get some really cheap labor rather than I'm paying all these guys in Silicon Valley, you know, 500 grand a year USD. Why not go to Canada where I can pay them, you know, like 70 K CAD. So I think the white collar impact is going to be maybe more pronounced than the, than the blue

[00:59:30] collar impact for Canada. Yeah. A lot of things I would like to say, but like you just said, I have to run in two minutes. We just got to do this again. Yeah, we have to do it again because the terrorists, I think, you know me, I liked that. Well, the economy, not necessarily the terrorists, but the economy, I'd love to talk about that. Um, well, I really appreciate you coming on, try to give us a little bit of a breakdown by different cities. Um, I would encourage people to let us know if, uh, you really enjoy that, then we can have Dan a bit

[00:59:57] more often, maybe give an update on those Canadian markets, uh, just how things are going. If it's useful, people can find you obviously, like you mentioned on the Canadian real estate investor podcast with your wonderful co-host, Nick Hill. It's released twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. So you can both listen to our show and their show. If you're at, you want to not miss anything on that front, anything else you wanted to add before I let you go? That's it. Thanks for having me. Okay. And thanks for coming on.

[01:00:26] The Canadian investor podcast should not be construed as investment or financial advice. The hosts and guests featured may own securities or assets discussed on this podcast. Always do your own due diligence or consult with a financial professional before making any financial or investment decisions.