News & Insights

After a short pause triggered by interest rate hikes, home prices have returned to their relentless, decades-long upward trend, punishing the finances of young people, newcomers and most non-owners. The policy positions of the two main parties in Canada share responsibility for home prices having left behind local earnings. To rejuvenate the ability for young people to pay for housing, version 2.0 of the National Housing Strategy must focus more on the regular market, starting with a clear goal that has wide public support: Home prices should stall.

Gen Squeeze founder Dr. Paul Kershaw recently joined TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin for a discussion about how life milestone timelines are changing and even disappearing. If the standard life-stage achievements for graduation, career, marriage, children, homeowning, and retirement created predictability and comfort, what happens when people don't meet those marks?

As we begin National Indigenous History Month in Canada, we have much to learn from Indigenous peoples' rich traditions of intergenerational solidarity. The Gen Squeeze team deeply appreciates the opportunity to publish the following article by Jayla Rousseau-Thomas on how the Indigenous Seven Generations Principle is a key building block for generational fairness.

Affordability is a top concern for Alberta voters. So it is surprising that the United Conservative Party and the NDP have blind spots on this issue, especially when it comes to younger Albertans. 

Canada’s addiction to high and rising home prices has made our country lazy when it comes to planning for economic growth. This has hurt the finances of younger Canadians and newcomers, while ballooning the wealth of older homeowners.

Alberta’s United Conservative Party delivers one of the most generationally unfair budgets in Canada, by legislating a large gap in spending between citizens age 65-plus and those under age 45.

Our age of retirement, 65, is currently five years lower than where it stood when Ottawa launched Old Age Security (OAS) in 1952, even though average life expectancy has increased 14 yearsover the same period. It’s time to strengthen our pension system by considering a potential win-win tradeoff: slightly longer work lives for shorter workweeks.

Our research identifies low-interest rates as a contributing force driving the run-up in home prices. So we were not surprised to see the market cool off when The Bank of Canada increased interest rates, undermining the cheap credit system that helped buyers bid up home prices. The Bank of Canada managed to do the unthinkable - cool off one of the world's hottest housing markets - by raising interest rates. So why do they rarely ever mention this?