Households could face even greater housing affordability challenges in the years to come, according to the September 2017 RBC Economics (RBC) Housing Trends and Affordability report. In noting that " The days of ultra low interest rates in Canada are over," RBC...
British Columbia’s quandary: To keep Columbia Power, or add 15,000 teachers, nurses, or paramedics? There are two generally accepted methods for valuing a company: its intrinsic value as a cash-generating enterprise, and its standard market value in comparison with...
Canada’s middle-income housing affordability crisis (unaffordable homes) is drawing considerable attention, with good reason. Families are being squeezed out of the market and the situation is only going to worsen. Frontier Centre publications, such as the Demographia...
The Globe and Mail, a Canadian national newspaper, reports concerns raised by Magna International, Inc. that proposed provincial labor legislation (the “Fair Workplaces Better Jobs Act”) could result in seriously reduced economic competitiveness for Ontario, Canada’s...
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Frontier Centre for Public Policy!
The war against the invisible enemy of COVID-19 has unfortunately made normal rights and freedoms invisible as well. Another example manifested on September 13 when Saskatchewan’s premier renewed emergency orders for his province. The list of powers he claimed were so...
The LICO is not a poverty measure, and we wish everyone would please stop using it as one, says Statistics Canada.
Halifax Regional Municipality is in pretty good financial shape, but it could be doing better. A new report from the Winnipeg-based think-tank Frontier Centre, which is the sister think-tank to the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, has compared the finances of...
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy releases its inaugural Local Government Performance Index (LGPI). It contains some 3000 data points concerning the 2005 financial performance of municipalities in Canada’s 30 most populous jurisdictions.
The ALP's proposed tax concession for first-home buyers who have saved for a deposit may merely offset part of the excessive house prices they face. The proposal is for a concessionary 15 per cent tax rate on salary-sacrificed earnings of up to $5000 per person...
A part time Winnipegger questions the 50 million dollar cost of Manitoba’s liquor monopoly.
The way most people in Canada and the West live – in suburbs, pejoratively called sprawl – has become the target of urban planning. Strong, even draconian, land restrictions have been introduced in a number of metropolitan areas. Toronto has been among the more...
Wendell Cox explodes popular misconceptions about Portland’s Smart Growth Model.
“Relative to incomes, housing in major New Zealand cities is now some of the most expensive in the world,” Don Brash, chairman of the Centre for Resource Management Studies, told the Parliamentary select committee looking into the affordability of housing today. “And...
Did I read this article correctly? Does it really take 7 years of median income to pay for a median house in these markets? If one takes the CMHC affordability measure of 30% of total income devoted to housing as being an “affordable” budget, then it would take this...