It’s good to see inflation on groceries coming down.
But, like Tiff Macklem says: all governments need to get off their asses to lower the cost of housing. High interest rates have pushed the cost of real estate down a tinsy tiny bit, but it’ll take actual reform to make housing affordable.
Mandate density. Deprecate hoarded greenspace and bungalows and anything under 10 storeys (today’s magic number to eliminate mass homelessness caused by some idiot leaving his stove on) within 50km of a major center.
Transfer payment penalty for centers not served by mass transit above X people moved per hour where every station is within Y min walk of Z% of residences in buildings above 9 storey.
There’s your reform.
Even just prioritizing redevelopment of vacant/abandoned lots within cities would do a lot. The north american attitude seems to be build a second city next to the original once the original starts showing its age. Heavily tax poor land use in already dense areas like surface level parking.
It’s harder than that.
As long as our population is growing, we need to ensure the appropriate amount of new affordable housing is built. Government stopped doing that in the 1990s, so we have 30 years of backlog to catch up on.
Current infill housing can be more expensive than the housing it replaces, pushing it beyond the means of many Canadians. Density isn’t enough.
Tax write-offs created in the 1970s make real estate investments more attractive than actual investments in actual companies that create actual jobs. That encourages people to treat homes as an investment, which pushes more money into the real estate market. Coincidentally, Canadian productivity has been dropping relative to our peer countries for decades. 🤷
Government has outsourced housing to the private sector, so we’re now beholden to private investors to choose to build housing. Interest rates are higher now, so private investors will slow down the building of new housing.
Or just do Land Value Tax.
Rent up 8% while the cost of a mortgage is up 25% ( the primary remaining driver of high inflation ).
Once again the landlord ruling class manipulates the economy in their favour! Oh, wait.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The core inflation rate, which strips away gasoline and other volatile sectors, was 3.2 per cent.
“It’s a much milder reading than expected, especially given the high-side surprise seen in last week’s round of U.S. inflation reports,” wrote Douglas Porter, chief economist at Bank of Montreal, in a note.
“But clearly today’s result makes rate cuts much more plausible in coming months, and we remain comfortable with our call that the Bank [of Canada] will begin trimming [interest rates] in June,” he wrote.
While groceries are still getting more expensive, prices grew at a slower rate in January, StatsCan said.
Meat, dairy products, fresh fruit and baked goods were among the basket items that helped bring the food inflation rate down to 3.4 per cent.
Soup, bacon, shrimps and prawns saw year-over-year price declines in January.
The original article contains 338 words, the summary contains 132 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!