High housing costs are undermining economic growth in Canada, a new analysis by David Coletto, the founder of Abacus Data, says. As Canadians retire, he wrote, they typically reduce consumer spending, but in the past, that has been offset by spending by younger Canadians as they bought homes, renovated and furnished them and borrowed against the rising value of their home. This mattered, because consumer spending accounts for half of Canada’s total economy.
But today, housing is far more expensive, relative to their incomes, for young adults than it was for their parents, plus the cost of living has surged, stable careers are harder to establish, and the idea of building wealth through owning a home, which helped sustain the Canadian economy, is out of reach for many. (He doesn’t mention renters, who are also struggling with too high rent that reduces the money they have left to spend on other things, nor the way other countries have built strong economies with lower levels of homeownership.) Artificial intelligence will likely further 
undermine good jobs. And Canada, which has depended on immigrants for population growth that sustains production and consumption, has begun to turn against immigration. Coletto sees a worrisome rise of frustration among young adults.
“If we want the next generation to drive the economy the way Boomers once did, we have to give them the conditions to actually do it: affordable housing, real wage growth, and a believable pathway to stability,” Coletto concluded in his February 23 InFocus column. Well worth reading here: https://shorturl.at/cFPqt