Canada’s Economy: Better Than Expected or Worse Than It Looks?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Investing is simple, but don't confuse that with thinking it's easy. A stock is not just a ticker. At the end of the day, you have to remember that it's a business.
Just my reminder to people who own cyclicals, don't be surprised when there's a cycle.
If there's uncertainty in the markets, there's going to be some great opportunities for investors. This has to be one of the biggest quarters I've seen from this company in quite some time. There we go. We're back. Now I got to see if we're still on. Are we still on Instagram? It looks like we're back on Instagram. I think we're good. Cool. All right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Second time's the charm. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So we were at like recession. So barely in a recession, right? Like one bad quarter, Q4 was bad. Q1 was not horrible, right? It was basically, I mean, like obviously you want to see economic growth, but it's not like, you know, massive drop in economic growth. No, exactly. And just to recap, because we restarted this live, we're going to be talking about the jobs numbers that we saw.
Of course, blockbuster job numbers, at least for Canada, the U.S. Also talking about bond yields, how they're going. And just as you mentioned, recession. So, yeah, my initial thoughts on the recession. I mean, it's it's interesting just looking back and trying to find parallels in history. And I dug into that and I know you did as well. So do you agree with me that the 1990s is probably the most similar? And there are some key differences, don't get me wrong, but the one that stands out the most is what we're potentially seeing right now. Yeah, I think the 90s is a good comp. I mean, you had the population growth, like massive population growth. And I mean, the last time we set a population growth record was 1989.
It was 1.4%. And the first time we beat that was 2023. You saw house prices go up 30%, you know, double digits for several years in a row. Inflation was coming on pretty hard as a result of that. Population growth was running hot. People were piling into the real estate asset class, which we saw here in Canada in 2021, 2022. And then the central banks, basically in an effort to curb some of that behavior, started hiking rates. And I think a lot of people... they dismiss the magnitude of rate cuts in favor of the rate itself. Like, you know, people will say, oh, well, it's different because in the 90s, rates went to 8% or whatever. And it's like, well, rates started at 4%. And so they doubled. And we saw the same thing happen in present day, right?
They went from 2% to 5% or 6%. And so I think that the magnitude, like, because... The market doesn't necessarily care, and the real estate market especially, doesn't really care what your interest rate is. They care what their total interest payable is and how that relates to their buying power. And so if you had a comparable magnitude of interest rate hikes, which you did, then you would get a comparable impact. Just because the rate's lower doesn't mean that there's any material difference there. Your mortgage payment as a percentage of household income went up comparably. Your mortgage payments are going to jump comparably on the five-year renewals. And so that to me is kind of the setup. The one other thing I'll add is you saw that big spike in immigration in 89 and in 23, 24.
What does the latest jobs report indicate about Canada's economy?
And then what happened was it organically started tapering off like and policymakers started taking credit for it. Right. They're like, you know, international student enrollment dropped like 80 percent. And then they're like, oh, we're going to cap international students because it's like, oh, there's an economic trend. We might as well take credit for it because it's already it's a populist thing. Right. And that was even the Trudeau government. That was before Carney, right? And then temporary foreign workers, same thing. You started seeing temporary foreign workers because the promise of Canada's economy is no longer good. And so people stopped electing to move here to try and join Canada's labor force and be part of the economy.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–3:32
2
What does the latest jobs report indicate about Canada's economy?
3:32–4:09
3
What factors are contributing to higher bond yields in Canada?
4:09–5:22
4
How does Canada's current economic situation compare to the early 1990s recession?
5:22–9:50
5
How is consumer debt affecting Canadian households?
9:50–14:27
6
What role does government spending play in Canada's economic outlook?
14:27–16:44
7
What are the trade challenges facing Canada today?
16:44–20:48
8
How is inflation impacting Canadian consumers and households?
20:48–53:02
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Canadian Investor
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