Federal Finances in Review

 

The last week has been a chaotic one in Ottawa given the resignation of the finance minister on the eve of the Federal Economic and Fiscal Statement (FES), the turmoil over the Prime Minister’s leadership and the ongoing verbal assaults of President-elect Trump on Canadian sovereignty.  Nonetheless, lost in all of this is that after a considerable delay, there has finally been an update to Canada’s Fiscal Reference Tables (FRT) and Figures 1-4 here provide an overview of both the past (1966-67 to 2023-24) as laid out in the FRT and the future (2024-25 to 2028-29) such as it is laid out in the FES. 

Figure 1 provides a nice snapshot of the federal fiscal footprint – the federal spending to GDP ratio. Over the period of this chart, the federal footprint reached a  maximum of 25.6 percent in 2020-21 during the pandemic. This was of a course an outlier year and if one takes this out, one nevertheless notices that from a low of 13.9 percent in 2013-14, the federal fiscal footprint has gradually drifted upwards notwithstanding the pandemic and in 2022-24 stood at 17 percent.  While not at the level of the 1980s when it exceeded 20 percent, it remains that the federal fiscal footprint both in 2023-24 and going forward to 2028-29 is the largest it has been since the late 1990s and marks a calculated expansion of federal public sector size relative to GDP.

 

 Part of this rising expenditure has been financed via borrowing and in 2023-24 the deficit stood at nearly $62 billion.  From 2023-24 to 2028-29, Canada is forecast to accumulate another $242 billion dollars in deficits bringing the national net debt to $1.549 trillion by 2028-29. Figure 2 plots the deficit to GDP ratio, and it stands at nearly 2 percent for 2023-24 and is forecast to drop to 0.7 percent by 2028-29 – assuming of course that given the deficits projected, nominal GDP growth proceeds at 4 percent annually.  Given the slowdown in the economy that appears to be underway and the likely imposition of US tariffs in 2025, this would appear to be an exceptionally rosy GDP growth forecast.

 

 Figure 3 plots the net debt to GDP ratio, and it began to take a definite upward path starting in 2019-20 when it went to 37 percent from 33 percent the year previous.  It peaked at just over 44 percent in 2022-23 and is only going to come down slowly to about 42 percent by 2028-29.  Now, while up by recent standards, it is nowhere near where it was during the federal fiscal crisis of the 1990s.  Yet, the debt is mounting, and interest rates are higher than they were during the debt and spending spiral of the pandemic and so debt service costs have gone up.

 

 In 2019-20, debt service costs were $24.4 billion representing about 7 percent of federal revenues that year.  For 2024-25 they are anticipated to be more than double at $53.7 billion or 10.8 percent of federal revenues.   By 2028-29, it is projected that annual debt service costs will reach $66.3 billion or 11.3 percent of federal revenues.  As Figure 4 illustrates, we are again nowhere near the numbers of the federal fiscal crisis when well over 30 percent of federal revenues went to service the debt. At the same time, we appear to have settled at a plateau over 10 percent for the foreseeable future and that is money better spent on programs.

 

 In her resignation letter, the outgoing finance minister appeared to have a fiscal epiphany as she noted the need to keep our fiscal powder dry to face the economic challenges coming down the pipeline.  The trends of the last few years suggest that there has been a certain dampness to federal fiscal powder for the last few years that is expected to persist into the future.  While there is still fiscal room to manoeuvre, a large recessionary shock will quickly erode that room given the gradual enrichment of long-term  federal spending via assorted initiatives over the last decade as illustrated by the federal expenditure to GDP ratio. This suggests that dealing with a major recession will be more challenging that it would have been a decade ago.

 

 

Inflation, Productivity and Real Wage Stagnation: Canada 1960 to 2023

 

Today’s CPI inflation numbers have many breathing a sigh of relief with the expectation that with inflation below 2 percent, more interest rate relief is on the way and Canadians can resume their high personal borrowing lifestyle.   Lost in the short-term euphoria and celebration of expected lower borrowing costs is the long term cost that inflation has had on our standard of living given the low productivity gains of the last five decades.  Nowhere is this more evident than when one takes a look at how real wages have performed over time.

 

Figure 1 plots the average annual monthly hourly Canadian manufacturing wage – nominal and real – for the period from 1960 to 2023.  The nominal hourly manufacturing wage data and the All-City CPI data are both from the US Federal Reserve of St. Louis data sets [CPALCY01CAA661N; LCEAMN01CAM189S] with the real hourly wage data in $2015.   Why manufacturing wages?  Well, the manufacturing sector has generally been held up as the beacon for good quality and high paying jobs with a lot of hand wringing as manufacturing jobs have declined as a share of employment.  It sounds old fashioned but many still regard manufacturing jobs as the “high ground” of an economy in terms of value added to which I would also add the resource sector (including agriculture).

 

 

 

When nominal hourly wages are examined, their performance looks impressive.  The monthly nominal manufacturing wage in Canada in 1960 averaged $1.78/hr. By 2023, it was $30.66/hr and the average annual growth rate of real nominal hourly wages in manufacturing was 4.7 percent.  However, when adjusted for inflation using the All-City CPI for Canada with 2015 as the base year, real nominal wages barely double over the period going from $13.64/hr to $24.91/hr.  The average annual growth rate of real hourly manufacturing wages over this entire period was only 1 percent annually.  Given that at 1 percent annual growth it would take approximately 72 years for a quantity to double, we can expect real hourly wages in manufacturing to be double those in 1960 by 2032.

 

 

 

Figure 2 plots the annual average growth rate of real hourly manufacturing wages and adds a 5^th order polynomial smoothing plot.  When one examines both Figure 1 and 2, it becomes apparent that the stagnation in real wage growth really sets in during the 1970s.  There was a brief uptick in real wage growth in the wake of the FTA and NAFTA (in 1988 and 1994 respectively) but decline sets in again after the 2008-09 financial crisis.  When one combines the productivity decline that starts in the 1970s following the first oil price shock with the effects of inflation, the erosion of the standard of living – as captured by real wages – is dramatically illustrated.  It makes the case for why bringing inflation under control is so important and also why we need a productivity agenda to drive Canadian policy going into the next election.

Harris or Trump? For Canada, Post November 4th Is Going to Be a Challenge

 

As we move into the final sprint of the US election, it bears as always to pay attention to the economic implications for Canada.  Whatever one’s political priors or favorites may be in this election, in the end it needs to be realized that when it comes to US trade and economic interests, it does not matter whether Trump or Harris wins– American interests trump (no pun intended) Canadian ones.  And in the case of the economy and our trade relationship with the United States, be prepared for some tough bargaining.  While 2024 marked the 30^th Anniversary of NAFTA, it has since 2020 been replaced by the USMCA or CUSMA agreement with renewal talks beginning in 2026. 

 

Along with perennial sticking points like milk and dairy or softwood lumber, in the United States, despite what economists and evidence might say about economic growth and the benefits of trade in the wake of NAFTA and CUSMA, the debate will be shaped by the widespread belief that NAFTA in particular resulted in job losses and wage stagnation.   In the case of manufacturing, the accompanying graphic summarizes quite nicely why the Americans are going to be playing hardball.  In many respects, US manufacturing job losses did coincide with NAFTA. 

 

Figure 1 presents annual Canadian and American manufacturing employment from 1976 to 2023 using a dual scale since US employment and population in general is about ten times ours.  In 1994, there were nearly 19 million Americans employed in manufacturing and 1.8 million in Canada. In the decade afterwards, by 2005, US manufacturing employment fell to 16.2 million while Canadian manufacturing grew to 2.2 million.  In the wake of NAFTA, American manufacturing employment fell by 14 percent while Canadian manufacturing employment rose by 20 percent. 

 

 

 

 Since 2005, American manufacturing employment has declined slightly to 15.6 million while Canada’s declined to about 1.8 million where it has stabilized somewhat.  In other words, over thirty years, Canada has stayed flat in terms of total manufacturing employment (notwithstanding the rise and fall from 1994 to about 2010) while the US has seen a decline.  The good news is that since about 2019, as evidenced by the 5^th order polynomial smoothing line, both countries have seen a slight increase in manufacturing employment as a result of fallout from the pandemic, trade issues with China and the rise of onshoring production activities.

 

Yet those same polynomial smooths show a pretty consistent decline for the US since 1976 with Canada doing somewhat better.  True, Canada is not to blame for the decline in US manufacturing.  Both countries have seen a decline in manufacturing employment over time both in absolute numbers as well as a share of total employment.  It is not 1960 anymore.  There have been productivity issues in both countries as well as intense competition starting in the 1990s from China and other Asian economies as well as Mexico which is/was a part of CUSMA/NAFTA.  However, that does not matter.  For the United States, creating jobs in manufacturing will mean looking at all the players – including Canada.  It will not matter whether Harris or trump becomes President in this regard.  Notice has been served.

Rising Crime in Canada: Evidence from Thunder Bay

 

Rising crime and perceptions of rising crime in Canadian urban areas have become more concerning as media reports increase and a recent study by the MacDonald-Laurier Institute provides some evidence to back up the feeling that crime is up.  The report looks at the last decade’s worth of police reported crime data for nine major Canadian urban centers: Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, Peel, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and York Region.  Essentially, crime and especially violent crime is up in all of these cities with sexual assaults in particular showing large increases.  Of course, this study omits a lot of cities and so of course the question that arises for inquiring local minds is how Thunder Bay has been doing over the last little while?  Is crime rising in Thunder Bay? Well, it depends on the time span you want to look at as well as the specific type of crime.  But overall, the feeling that crime is rising here is not misplaced.

 

Using police reported crime data from Statistics Canada, here is a quick snapshot of how some crime rates in Thunder Bay (crimes per 100,000 population) have been performing. Figure 1 plots the crime rate for total violent crimes and total property crimes for the period 1998 to 2023.  Over the long haul, the trends do not seem particularly concerning.  The property crime rate in 1998 was 6,285 crimes per 100,000 population and after 2009 it began declining quite steadily followed by a spike in 2019 and then further decline.  Between 1998 and 2023, the property crime rate fell from 6,285 crimes per 100,000 to 3,117 per 100,000 – a 50 percent drop.  

 

 

 

Violent crime between 1998 and 2023 has also dropped but not by as much.  It went from 2,401 violent crimes per 100,000 to 2,195 per 100,000 -a nearly 9 percent decline.  However, the violent crime rate seems to be broken into two phases.  It went from 2,401 in 1998 to a low of 1,414 in 2015 – a decline of 41 percent.  Since 2015, it has grown and by 2023 was, as noted, at 2,195 – an increase of 55 percent.  While violent crime is lower than 1998 that is small consolation given what appears to be a fairly rapid increase in recent years.

 

 

 

Figure 2 presents the percentage change in crime rates over a ten-year period – 2013 to 2023 – for a select number of crime categories.  The results paint a more complicated picture.  The total crime rates (all criminal code violations including traffic) are down 2.5 percent over the last ten years.  This seems to be driven in part by a decline in property crimes as the total property crime rate over the same period is down 13.4 percent.  However, over a ten-year period, the total violent crime rate is up nearly 39 percent.  Homicides are up 120 percent from 2013 (though these are two points in time.  Using a three-year moving average for 2012 and 2022, homicides are only up 87 percent if that makes you feel better).  Total sexual assaults are up 68 percent while total assaults in general are up 31 percent.   Impaired driving is up about 5 percent while robberies are up 39 percent. 

 

So, are perceptions of rising crime justified?  I would think so given that while overall crime rates might be down or flat, the rates for more serious crimes such as homicides, assaults and robbery are up.  There you have it.

Memories of Canadian Federalism

 

A blog post titled  “Memories of Canadian Federalism” evokes thoughts of a potential discourse about a President’s Choice product, perhaps a salad dressing or syrup, that promises a fusion of flavors that is both united and diverse.  Alas, that is not the case here.  I am in the process of putting the final touches on my fall Fiscal Federalism graduate course which interestingly enough seems to have a rather large number of students enrolled – for a graduate course.  The explanation for the bump in enrollment likely rests with a dearth of electives this fall for graduate and senior undergrad students in Economics at Lakehead rather than any innate magnetism on my part.

 

I have been teaching this course for a number of years now and it has evolved into a course that covers both the classic economic foundations of federalism with papers by James Buchanan, Charles Tiebout, Richard Musgrave, and Wallace Oates to more recent work that marks the new fiscal federalism with its focus on micro theory and incentives.  There are a lot of empirical papers – especially on measuring the Tiebout migration mechanism – and of course lectures on grants, transfers and equalization and those aspects that characterize what can only be termed as the “immeasurable majesty of the Canadian federal system in all its splendor.” Weekly module topics include, Federalism: Rationale and Functions, Federalism, Mobility and Resources: Tiebout Model-Theory, Federalism, Mobility and Resources: Tiebout Model-Empirical Evidence, Federalism, Spending and Public Sector Size, Centralization and Decentralization, Grants and Equalization, Public Goods and Taxation in a Federal System and the relatively new section Federalism, Health, Pandemics and the Environment.

 

Now, to the point.  In the process of going through my many folders and files, the following gem tumbled out:

 

 

 

I had not seen this for a long time, but it is a set of 20 little pamphlets in a convenient pocket sized paper carrying case called “Notes on Canadian Federalism.”  This obvious collector’s item dates back to the early 1980s or so in the wake of the national unity crises brought about by the election of the PQ in Quebec and the first sovereignty referendum as well as the natural resource clashes between Ottawa and Alberta over energy policy,  not to mention the conversion of federal grants for health and post-secondary education from a 50/50 cost sharing approach to the block Established Program Financing grant and the debate over repatriating the Constitution..  It was the best of times; it was the worst of times and in the tumult the Canadian Unity Information Office issued this 20-pamphlet set of information that in essence was a short lay person’s course on federalism but from the lens of the government of the day and its own agendas.  Why pamphlets?  Well, this is the 1980s.  There was no Twitter or Facebook.

 

 

 

As the images show, a wide variety of topics are covered by these 20 pamphlets which taken together provide a short course in Canadian federalism.  There are all kinds of interesting quotes in these pamphlets.  For example, in No. 1 What is Federalism it defines federalism as: “a type of association between groups, communities, peoples or nations who have agreed to unite in order to better safeguard their future and their prosperity…federalism ensures unity in diversity…Federalism…ensures a spirit of healthy rivalry among the member states. On the other hand, it calls for a sense of solidarity and for dialogue among participating governments.”  In No. 5, Advantages and Disadvantages of Federalism, among other things…”it should be noted that the economic policies implemented by one of the governments in the federation sometimes have negative effects on the total economic situation of the country. For example, heavy borrowing on the part of the provinces may greatly increase the deficit in the balance of payments and negatively influence national monetary policies.”  This is quite an intriguing statement given that it was eventually the borrowing of the federal government that led to the federal fiscal crisis and transfer payment cuts of the 1990s.

 

And in Note 12 The Provinces and their responsibilities there is this: “Certain responsibilities must belong to the provinces because each province has its own special characteristics that give it, its “personality”: language, culture, and different economic institutions.  Albertans may want to stress the physical sciences in university teaching and research programs, while the people of Ontario may want to concentrate more on business administration.”  Of course, in this day and age, if Alberta and Ontario were individual people, this would probably be seen as some type of gender-based career stereotyping.  But I digress.

 

These are intriguing documents and now a part of Canada’s fiscal economic history.  In essence, they provide a short course on federalism from the perspective of the federal government and issues of the day.  All things considered, they discuss concepts at a fairly high level for today’s general public and these types of discussions would not be out of place and perhaps even of benefit today.  After all, Canada is still a federation and if it seems acrimonious today it must be remembered that it has always been so.  The danger to a federation and its unity comes not from rancorous debate over issues, but from silence when the constituent units have decided to stop talking.

Canada's Life Expectancy at Birth in Decline

 

Standards of living are marked by a number of indicators most upfront of which are economic measures such as per capita GDP or per capita wealth.  However, other indicators of the standard and quality of life include basic health indicator and life expectancy at birth has long been a marker of the average “quantity of life” a country provides.   Yet after the increases of the twentieth century and 21^st centuries which saw average life expectancy in the world rise from 32 years in 1900 to 71 in 2021, much of the world has seen a decline in recent years in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.   Statistics Canada has already noted that for three years in a row, life expectancy at birth for Canadians has declined from 2019 to 2022 with this decline being driven by an increase in unexpected deaths (such as substance related deaths, suicides and homicides) as well as the impact of COVID.

 

However, what is more interesting in the Canadian case is just as real per capita GDP growth slowed after 2010, so did the growth in life expectancy at birth which highlights the connection between economic growth and performance and ultimately health indicators such as life expectancy.  The accompanying figure plots life expectancy at birth for Canada and Ontario at assorted overlapping three-year intervals since 2005 and they show that life expectancy at birth grew from 2005/07 to 2011/13 from 80.51 years to 81.73 years for Canada and 80.86 years to 82.19 years for Ontario.  Growth then slowed and life expectancy at birth peaked at 81.94 years from 2015 to 2018 for Canada and 82.41 years for Ontario.  Since then, both have declined hitting 81.55 years for Canada and 81.97 for Ontario by 2020-22.

 

 

 

While much of the decline definitely coincides with the pandemic, life expectancy was essentially flat from approximately 2011/13 to 2017/19 when the decline begins but then accelerates during the 2019/2021 window as the pandemic strikes.  So, the takeaways I get from this is that the pandemic indeed is associated with a decline in life expectancy at birth, but growth had already plateaued and begun to slip well before this in the wake of the 2008/09 recession and the slower economic growth and performance since.  The pandemic appears to have strained or augmented whatever forces were already in play prior to 2020. 

 

Of course, one might ask if this has also occurred in other countries.  For example, a quick glance shows life expectancy at birth in Japan rising from 2012 until 2020 before a decline set in going from 83.1 years to peak at 84.56 in 2020 before declining to 84 by 2022.  From 2012 to the pandemic start in 2020, life expectancy at birth grew 1.8 percent in Japan but only 0.2 percent in Canada.  Germany, on the other hand from 2012 to 2020 grew by 0.6 percent (from 80.54 to 81.04) years.  The United States on the other hand saw life expectancy essentially flat since 2012 (growing just under 0.1 percent) to the pandemic with a decline during the pandemic.  These trends are food for thought indeed. 

Canada and Ireland: The Great Divergence

 

Having returned from a great visit to Ireland, I have been reflecting on the Irish economy and economic miracle that have seen Ireland become a country with one of the highest per capita incomes in the world as measured by per capita GDP.  With its membership in the EU and access to the European market, it has pursued an economic strategy which is largely rooted in attracting large foreign multinational firms which has not only boosted activity in finance, research, and digital services but also in manufacturing.  Information technology and pharmaceuticals have been particularly important sectors. While much is made of the Irish corporate tax advantage, there is also a highly educated population which provides Ireland with human capital strength.

 

Ireland is a much smaller country than Canada with a population of only 5 million, but it has some interesting similarities.  It is a bilingual country – Irish and English – and it has seen substantial immigration in recent years to the point where nearly 20 percent of its population is foreign-born.  This of course represents a remarkable reversal from Ireland’s past as a source of migrants. And with rapid economic growth and substantial immigration, like Canada, it has not been building enough homes and housing prices and rents have grown substantially creating some tension.

 

However, despite these similar aspects including housing issues between Canada and Ireland, there is one key difference.  Ireland’s per capita GDP has soared well past Canada’s.  Indeed, as the accompanying figure illustrates, the cross-over year marking the start of this divergence was 1998 and even with the setback of the 2008-09 financial crisis, Ireland recovered and has powered its way to a real per capita GDP that is nearly twice that of Canada’s now.  Since 1998, real per capita GDP in Ireland has grown 173 percent whereas in Canada it only increased by 30 percent.  And unemployment rates remain quite low even with robust immigration and population growth.

 

 

 

It is true that Ireland’s performance has been truly exceptional and probably represents an outlier rather than the norm. And it is not only doing better than Canada but a lot of other places. Still, given that Canada has many similarities with Ireland in terms of immigration levels and population diversity, high human capital, and access to a large foreign market (the US), why we seem to have similar problems (such as infrastructure and housing deficits) but not the rapid economic growth that went with it is indeed an important and perplexing question.  With our own highly educated population, why have we not been able to leverage growth and attract investment? What is holding Canada back given the many obvious advantages we seem to possess?

Finding Canada's Most "Entrepreneurial" Province

 While employment in Canada is up since the pandemic what is disturbing is the shift towards public sector employment combined with a trend away from self-employment over the longer term.  As has been noted, since January 2014, public sector employment in Canada has expanded from 3.5 to 4.4 million workers—a 27 percent increase—private sector employment grew from 11.6 to 13.4 million—a 15 percent increase—and self-employment shrank by approximately half a percent.  From January 2020 to the present, public-sector employment has expanded nearly 17 percent going from 3.8 to 4.4 million. Private sector employment grew from 12.6 to 13.4 million, an increase of 6 percent. Self-employment fell from 2.8 to 2.6 million—a drop of 7 percent.  Self-employment has been in decline for some time but the pace picked up with the pandemic.

Of course, a regionally diverse economy like Canada has provincial differences across all kinds of economic and fiscal indicators and self-employment is no exception.  While all provinces have seen a long-term decline in their self-employment share of employment, there are some interesting provincial differences.  Figure 1 uses Statistics Canada data on employment by class of worker to plot monthly self-employment shares of employment from 1976 to the present. Up until the late 1990s, the self-employment share was actually rising in all the provinces with the exception of Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island.  The declines there are likely a reflection of farm consolidation in the agricultural sector as family farms are businesses and both these provinces have large agricultural sectors.

 

However, starting in the late 1990s, self-employment declines also commenced in the other provinces and the decline has picked up steam since the pandemic.  Self-employment peaked in Canada at just over 17 percent in the late 1990s and then declined to just under 15 percent by 2019 and has now reached approximately 13 percent.  Self-employment as an employment share actually spiked upwards during the early months of the pandemic as layoffs hit other sectors but then begins to decline rapidly.  One suspects the length of the pandemic with its restrictions was a contributing factor to many small businesses winding up their activity.

The decline of self-employment is disturbing because small business are in many respects a backbone for entrepreneurship and innovation.  New ideas are often translated into reality via the creation of a small businesses and while businesses are always being created or destroyed, if on net more small businesses are being wound up than created, then the long-term result is a smaller field for the development of entrepreneurial skills.   Small businesses provide opportunities for financial independence outside of traditional large employers and many small businesses being locally owned and based are also active in communities providing support for an assortment of charities and community activities.  And while self-employment as the owner of a small business may only account for 13 percent of total employment, these businesses in turn further employ a lot of private sector workers.

If one accepts the self-employment share of employment as a metric for entrepreneurship in Canada, then a provincial ranking does provide one measure of where entrepreneurship is most important.  Figures 2 to 4 provide a provincial ranking at three points in time and when combined they illustrate two types of trends.  First, there is an overall decline in self-employment particularly after 2000 and second, there is a shift across provinces. 

 

 

 

 If one starts in 1976, the self-employment shares are highest in Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island at 29 and 21 percent respectively.  At the bottom are Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick.  By 2000, Saskatchewan is still on top, but its self-employment share has diminished to 25 percent. Meanwhile, British Columbia moved into second place from fifth in 1976.  Ontario and Quebec moved up to sixth and seventh spot respectively while at the bottom are Newfoundland and New Brunswick.  However, in the 2000 ranking, with the exception of Saskatchewan and PEI, the other provinces all saw some fairly hefty increases in their self-employment shares from 1976 to 2000.  Moving to 2024, all the provinces have seen a decline in self-employment shares over the 2000 to 2024.  However, the ranking now places British Columbia, Ontario and Alberta at the top and Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland at the bottom.

So, self-employment as a share of total employment in Canada has been in decline for nearly a quarter century.  However, there are variations across provinces.  The takeaway from this is not that BC, Ontario and Alberta are the most entrepreneurial provinces.  The takeaway is that since 2000, all the provinces have become less entrepreneurial as measured by self-employment shares of total employment but in this diminished state of entrepreneurship some remain somewhat more entrepreneurial than others.

 

What New “Affordable” Housing Looks Like in Thunder Bay

 As the federal government ramps up the billions to address the housing crisis in Canada including $6 billion to construct housing infrastructure. $1.5 billion to protect existing apartment buildings and a $15 billion apartment loan program, one would expect to see progress on the affordable housing front.  In the end, the issue is not really a shortage of housing to either buy or rent but affordable housing.  A glance at assorted real estate site in any city shows a large number of listings either for sale or for rent.  However, when one looks at the price, it is the cost of renting or buying that stands out, not a dearth of listings.

An illustration can be made for Thunder Bay which is seeing a large number of new rental building under construction.  A glance at Rent Panda reveals that some recent building projects are renting for some pretty hefty prices.  Take for example the two north side rentals in Thunder Bay shown below  – 80 Junot which is essentially adjacent to the Picton Street area and across from an EMS station – and 312 Crossbow – which is in a prime north side neighbourhood.  Location aside, both of these new build rental units are two bedrooms and two baths and rent for $2450 and $2400 a month respectively – utilities not included.  Two people earning minimum wage together could expect to earn at best close to $60,000 a year.  The rent alone will take up nearly half of their gross income, never mind the utilities.

Perhaps, south side rents are less?  Well the accompanying slide shows that a new build two bedroom one bath on Mary Street near Neebing Avenue is going for $2,300 a month though it includes water as a utility but likely not hydro.  I guess we could argue that these are all new builds and maybe we should settle for something older.  Well, a three bedroom one bath house on East Christina Street on the south side is renting for $2400 a month.  

The point here is that there is housing available for rent and some of it is new and quite nice but at $2300 and upwards a month and often excluding utilities, it is not affordable housing given the average incomes in Thunder Bay.  Median household income in Thunder Bay is just shy of $80,000 a year which means that half of households earn less than this.  At these rental prices, these below median income households will see close to half of their household income go to rent and utilities.  This is not affordable housing.  This is not geared to income or social housing.  This is where the shortage lies not only in Thunder Bay but across the country.

Ranking Recent CMA GDP Growth in Canada

 In the wake of the pandemic, with inflation, lagging productivity growth and a slowing economy, it is sometimes useful to look back on what economic performance was like in the "before time" particularly amongst Canadian urban areas.  Statistics Canada currently provides GDP estimates for Canadian CMAs for the period 2009 to 2020.  While 2020 sees a dip in GDP for everyone, the 2009 to 2019 period provides a snapshot of which parts of the country were growing the fastest prior to the pandemic.  The accompanying figure provides the growth rate in nominal  GDP from 2009 to 2019 for Canada's 36 CMAs and ranks them from highest to lowest. 

The expansion of GDP over ten years across these 36 CMAs averaged 45 percent and ranged from a high of 66 percent for Guelph, Ontario to a low of 16 percent for Saint John, New Brunswick. Three of the top five CMAs are in Ontario - Guelph, Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo and Toronto.  At the same time, four of the bottom five CMAs are also in Ontario - Thunder Bay, St. Catharines-Niagara, Peterborough and oddly enough, the Ontario portion of Ottawa.  Western Canadian CMAs in general did quite well with the exception of Victoria and Edmonton which placed in the bottom third.  In northern Ontario, Sudbury fares substantially better than Thunder Bay while in southern Ontario, the worst performers are Peterborough and St. Catharines-Niagara along with London, Windsor and Kingston.  

 

 

What happens as we continue to move forward from the pandemic will be interesting.  Vancouver and Toronto until the pandemic were major areas of GDP growth with their economies also totaling over 600 billion dollars or over one-third of Canada's economy.  If you add in Montreal, these three CMAs account for about half of Canada's economy.  With the run-up in housing prices and rents during the pandemic as well as general labor shortages in pandemics wake, one wonders how successful they will continue to be as urban growth leaders in Canada's economy.

Thoughts on Canada's Economic Future

I was invited to make a contribution on Canada's economy and its future by TheFutureEconomy.ca which is an online media outlet "that produces interviews, panels, and op-eds featuring leaders from industry, government, academia and more to define a strong vision for our future economy."  My piece on Canada's economic challenges in coming years was published January 8th and titled:"Childhood's End: Canada's 21st Century Challenges."It was a privilege to be asked to contribute to this site given the range of leaders from across Canada who have also contributed their thoughts.  There is also a nice promotional link with a bio and describing Lakehead University.  The piece starts below and you can link to the site for the remainder:

In the pandemic’s wake, Canada finds itself in a world changed yet again with forces afoot that threaten its standard of living as well as its security and way of life. After nearly 150 years of operating under the umbrellas of relatively benign global superpowers, Canada needs to prepare for a multipolar world with respect to trade and economic growth opportunities that are linked to its foreign policy and defence capabilities. In many respects, Canada’s long adolescence has come to a rude end, and it must now learn to make its way in the world in a more adult fashion. This awakening, however, comes at a time when its economic indicators suggest economic weakness. Canada came to be...

Reflections on the New Year

 

Happy New Year to all!  One must admit that 2023 has been a bit of a ride regionally, nationally, and internationally.  Regionally, Thunder By and northern Ontario have had a reasonably good year economically though many of the trends affecting the country and the world – the higher cost of living, homelessness and a general angst and anxiety about the future – are also part of life here.  Sometimes, even the nature of “high tech”  21^st century crime sometimes makes one wonder if the world has truly been turned upside. 

 

The country’s economy has slowed but there is no recession yet.  If anything, the Bank of Canada is not given enough credit for engineering what to this point has been a soft landing of higher interest rates, slower growth and falling inflation.  As much as people complain about the cost of housing in Canada and the seeming inability to get things done, it also seems to be a feature of other countries such as the USA, the UK and Australia.  Indeed, it is interesting how similar debates around housing issues are occurring in countries around the world.  And of course, there is the international front where a definite challenge is underway from the CRINKs (China, Russia, Iran and North Korea) in three specific theatres  – Middle East, Ukraine and Taiwan – and in the Cyber world to the EU-Anglosphere-Asia/Pacific Western Alliance. 

 

Still, much of the global turmoil seems far removed from Thunder Bay which is still in many respects still somewhat both removed and integrated with life in the rest of province and country.  Air travel is still the quickest and most convenient way to get from here to anywhere but the pre-pandemic age of numerous, cheap, and conveniently scheduled flights connecting Thunder Bay to Toronto and ultimately the world has departed for now.  As much as Thunder Bay is plugged into the modern world, we still seem to wait a long time for things other places seem to get much sooner. After all, we have been waiting for an Ikea and a Costco since at least the mid 1990s.  As my running joke goes, Thunder Bay is probably a great place to wait for the apocalypse.  When the world ends, it will happen at least ten years later in Thunder Bay. 

 

Of course, as much as there seems to be constant change and turmoil, after 33 years of teaching and research and nearly twice that number of years being alive, one achieves a certain serenity from the patterns of constant change.  In many respects, one has seen it all. I reflect that during my career, my teaching has gone from hand-written lecture notes and chalkboards to electronic screens and PowerPoints while my research output was once typed on a manual typewriter after organizing index card cards from research trips to the library where sources were hunted down from a card catalogue. Today, I can surf any number of libraries and digital sources for both data and output on my laptop or iPad from the comfort of my own home. Writing - including blogging - is much faster than it ever was.

 

With all the new technology and social changes, one can sometimes start to feel like a dinosaur but the trick to avoid that fate is of course to maintain a curiosity and enthusiasm for the world around you, to see things in a different light, and to try new things.  After all, despite the gloom, 2024 should be the quintessential Canadian year.  A year of beer as we celebrate the year of 20-2-4s.  What could be more Canadian than that?  To a 2024 of hope and wonder and if things go off the rails, there is always a beer.

 

 

Solving the Homelessness and Housing Crisis

 

As rents soar in Canada and encampments spring up in cities across the country, it is evident that the country faces a housing crisis which to date seems intractable.  Even the recent slowdown in home prices does little to improve the situation given that average housing prices in Canada remain just shy of $700,000 with prices varying across the provinces. Average housing prices in Greater Vancouver are just shy of $1.2 million while Greater Toronto is slightly less at $1.1 million.  And while at an average of $322,000, Thunder Bay seems more affordable compared to Toronto and Vancouver all of these averages mask the variation in prices around the average that realistically means something half decent that you may actually like is always substantially above the average. 

 

However, the housing and homelessness crisis and what has been termed the housing shortage is not really just about the price of an average house.  There are a number of issues here.  First, there is actually not a “shortage” of houses and apartments per se as a glance at any real estate listing in cities shows that there are always houses for sale or apartments for rent.  However, the price or rents of those housing units are well above what individuals are either able or willing to pay especially given the recent rise in interest rates which has increased the cost of home ownership in particular. One could term this a crisis in affordable housing rather than a shortage of housing. Second, there is the issue of homelessness which has manifested itself with rising numbers of people in cities across the country living in tents and encampments.

 

Solving these issues requires a two-prong solution.  First, dealing with affordable housing.  The sudden drive to expand the supply of housing to make it affordable is certainly a potential long-run solution. However, in the end building more $1,000,000 homes in suburbs, which developers like to do because they can make a lot of money, really does not solve that problem. Moreover a $1,000,000 new build home program does not solve the housing affordability problem unless it is done so incompetently by the private sector that they create a glut that drives prices down which seems unlikely.  Developers across the country over the years have learned that you just do not build a couple of hundred homes in a subdivision and then sell them – you build on spec with a large deposit.  Basically, every new home built already has someone lined up for it.

 

The solution to the affordable housing is the building of either rent-geared-to-income housing or the building of standardized-government subsidized housing units (much like the Wartime Homes Program) whose design, construction and sale is also geared to income.  One example of this is the standardized house designs being put forth by the government of British Columbia which could serve as a template for other provinces. This will enable homes to be built more quickly but it could also serve as a model for lower cost housing designs. As for rent -geared-to-income, all new apartment builds should have portions of the building ranging from 10 to 20 percent of rent geared to low and middle incomes with government social housing subsidies providing the incentive to builders. This is preferable to simple erecting mega projects of low-income apartments in neighborhoods that essentially creates clusters of low-income individuals.

 

In a sense, the Ontario government’s current approach to increasing housing supply by providing incentives and powers to municipalities to simply expand housing stock does not follow either of the above approaches.  Take the case of Thunder Bay where the target is to build over 2000 homes by 2031 according to the provincial target but given that the target has been exceeded in 2023 it is now seeking to build (with federal funding of course) 2000 homes over the next three years.  The optics tout this as a success story and the start of a housing boom fueled by mining but the 167 units for 2023 (which exceed the target of 161) is largely driven by projects already planned or underway and 60 of the units (plus another 60 which have started) are apartments being marketed as “luxury” apartments.  It means the rents for the smallest units will easily be over $2000 a month.  This will not be ‘affordable” housing given the cost-of-living crisis that has gripped the nation and its media.  Moreover, the target going forward is ambitious given the past track record of housing starts in Thunder Bay to date which given the cities rate of population growth to date has been modest. 

 

The other housing crisis – homelessness. -will not be solved by new suburban housing developments, neighborhood infill, or luxury apartments.    It is an entirely different problem all together.  The solution here is best modeled on what has been done in Finland where a non-governmental organization (NGO) called No Fixed Abode founded in 1986 reduced the number of homeless in Finland from 20,000 to about 3500 at present. Note that Finland’s population is 5.5 million and there are currently 3500 homeless people estimated.  In Canada, just Hamilton Ontario with a population of 579,000 has an estimated 1,500 homeless.  As well, since 2008 Finland has also embraced another program called Housing First which creates flats in social housing complexes that along with serving as places to live also provide a fixed address for those requiring access to government services and supports.

 

Now, Finland is not Canada and simply grafting another country’s solution to solve your problem can generate all kinds of problems. However, there is something here that needs to be explored.  Some of all the money that is going to be thrown at simply increasing housing stock irrespective of whether or not people can afford it needs to be directed to what I would term Transitional Emergency Housing.  People living on minimum wage or are evicted from apartments and have no place to live need some place to get back on their feet.  Boarding houses with rooms to let used to be a place where people of limited means often ended up til they got back on their feet, but no such places really exist anymore. People who are homeless need to be housed and housed without questions being asked.  Creating a complex or dispersed network of complexes of transitional emergency housing with very small personal units combined with social support such as a community kitchen, social workers and even a nurse practitioner and mental health workers and basic security on site would be one way of dealing with the homelessness crisis. 

 

 

 

Where to locate such complexes?  They need to be built on a scale that reflects their local neighborhood and are close to where many homeless choose to locate because of amenities – often downtown cores.  Most municipalities own land in their downtown cores that could be used for such a purpose. They will not be cheap to operate but realistically what else is the solution?  Simply leaving the problem to grow does not solve the problem.  Throwing money on market rent apartments and suburban subdivisions does not solve homelessness, never mind, really create affordable housing. Using resources in a wise and targeted way is the solution to both housing affordability as well as homelessness. True, perhaps these are the ravings of simple economist who does not fully grasp the complexity or enormity of the problem.  On the other hand, perhaps not.

House Prices Are Coming Down

 

The latest house price figures have been released by the Teranet-National Bank House Price Index for major Canadian metropolitan centres in Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec. According to Teranet:

 

After adjusting for seasonal effects, the Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index™, which covers the country’s eleven largest CMAs, declined by 0.4% from September to October, the first decrease following five consecutive monthly increases. In October, four of the 11 CMAs included in the index experienced decreases: Toronto (-1.6%), Edmonton (-1.2%), Vancouver (-1.1%) and Ottawa-Gatineau (-1.1%). Conversely, notable increases were recorded in Montreal (+3.7%), Halifax (+1.1%) and Winnipeg (+1.0%). On the other hand, decreases were observed in 11 of the 20 CMAs not included in the composite index for which data are available in October. The biggest monthly decreases were seen in Saint John (-5.3%), Trois-Rivières (-3.3%) and London (-2.5%). Conversely, the biggest increases were in Moncton (+4.6% after a 2.3% drop the previous month), Kingston (+3.8%) and Peterborough (+2.6%).

The month over month figures for October show decline in most centres but the more interesting numbers are the declines from the peak price.  Peak price for most of these cities occurred in Spring of 2022 though Calgary and Saint John appear to have seen peaks in 2023. The accompanying figure shows that no one has seen a price increase since the peak though Sherebrooke, Quebec City, Moncton, Lethbridge, and Calgary appear to be perfectly flat since their peak.   

 

As for the remaining cities, the percent change since peak price range from -2.7 percent for Montreal to -18.6 percent for Brantford.  Thunder Bay is in the company of cities with relatively small declines coming in at -3.6 percent while Sudbury is a bit more coming in at -9 percent.