0:03 Picture this. It is 1995. You are a high
0:05 school teacher in a suburb of Toronto or
0:07 Vancouver. You drive a Honda Civic. You
0:09 have a modest pension. You decide to buy
0:11 a house. It's a nice house. Red brick,
0:13 three bedrooms, a big backyard with a
0:16 maple tree. It cost you $180,000.
0:18 It feels expensive. Sure, you have to
0:20 budget. You have to skip the fancy
0:22 vacations, but the math works. Your
0:24 salary covers the mortgage, the
0:26 groceries, and the gas with enough left
0:28 over to put some money away for a rainy
0:31 day. You're living the promise. You're
0:33 living in the boring, stable, prosperous
0:36 fortress of the North, Canada. Now, snap
0:38 your fingers. It is 2026. You're
0:40 standing in front of that exact same
0:42 house. The bricks are a little older.
0:44 The maple tree is a little bigger, but
0:46 now there is a for sale sign on the
0:48 lawn, and the asking price is $2.2
0:50 million. Inside that house, there is no
0:52 longer a single family. The basement has
0:54 been converted into a separate unit,
0:56 rented out to three international
0:58 students sleeping on mattresses on the
1:00 floor. The main floor is occupied by a
1:02 young couple, both professionals, both
1:04 making six figures, who are drowning in
1:06 so much debt that they are terrified to
1:07 have children. They are the same people
1:10 as that teacher in 1995. They did
1:11 everything right. They followed the
1:13 rules. But the game changed. We are
1:15 looking at a crime scene, but there is
1:17 no blood and there's no yellow tape.
1:19 There's just a polite, smiling country
1:21 that has quietly decided to eat its own
1:23 young. If you're under the age of 40 in
1:25 Canada, you are not crazy. You're not
1:27 lazy. You are the victim of a 40-year
1:29 economic experiment that has gone
1:31 catastrophically wrong. You are living
1:32 in a country that has stopped investing
1:34 in the future and started cannibalizing
1:37 the present. Today, we are going to peel
1:39 back the polite veneer of Canadian
1:40 society. We are going to look at the
1:43 math that the news anchors gloss over.
1:44 We are going to talk about the hidden
1:47 mechanism that turned a G7 industrial
1:48 power into a massive real estate hedge
1:51 fund with a flag. This is the story of
1:52 how the Canadian dream became a lucid
1:55 nightmare. Let's rewind. To understand
1:57 why you feel poor in a rich country, you
1:59 have to understand that the word rich
2:01 has changed its meaning. In the 20th
2:03 century, a rich country was a country
2:05 that made things. It was a country where
2:07 productivity went up, so wages went up.
2:10 It was a factory. In the 21st century,
2:12 Canada decided to stop being a factory
2:15 and start being a casino. The data is
2:16 screaming this at us if you know where
2:18 to look. If you look at the OECD
2:20 projections for the next 30 years, the
2:22 years that define your career and your
2:24 retirement, Canada is projected to be
2:26 the worst performing advanced economy on
2:29 the planet, dead last. Why? Because we
2:31 caught a disease. It is a specific
2:33 economic sickness called the
2:35 productivity trap. For the last 20
2:36 years, while the Americans were building
2:38 tech giants and the Asians were building
2:40 advanced manufacturing, Canadian
2:43 business decided to stop innovating. Why
2:45 invest $10 million in a new factory or a
2:48 new software startup or a new R&D lab
2:49 which is risky and hard when you can
2:52 just buy a plot of land, sit on it for 5
2:54 years and make a tax-free fortune. This
2:56 is the hidden mechanism, the asset
2:58 economy. We built an economy where it
3:00 pays more to own things than to do
3:02 things. Think about the psychological
3:04 toll of this. If you work a job, you pay
3:07 income tax. You pay payroll tax. You pay
3:09 sales tax. You contribute to society.
3:11 But if you bought a house in Kitalano or
3:14 the beaches in 2005, you earned more
3:15 money last year by sleeping in your bed
3:17 than a heart surgeon earned saving
3:18 lives. That house earned tax-free
3:21 capital gains. The surgeon paid 53%
3:23 marginal tax. The message the system
3:26 sends is clear. Labor is for suckers.
3:28 Asset ownership is for kings. And this
3:30 brings us to the villain of our story.
3:32 And in Canada, the villain isn't a
3:34 single person. It is a structure. It is
3:36 the oligopoly. If you walk into a
3:37 grocery store in the United States, you
3:39 have 50 choices. In Canada, you have
3:42 three. If you want a cell phone plan in
3:44 Europe, you pay €20 for unlimited data.
3:46 In Canada, you pay $80 for a data cap
3:49 that feels like it's from 2012. Canada
3:51 is essentially three mining companies,
3:53 five banks, and three grocery chains in
3:55 a trench code. These monopolies are
3:57 protected by the government. They are
3:59 shielded from foreign competition. This
4:00 is why you pay some of the highest fees
4:03 in the world for banking, for internet,
4:05 for air travel. This is the hidden tax
4:07 of living in Canada. Every time you tap
4:09 your card, a few percentage points are
4:10 siphoned off to a protected class of
4:13 shareholders who face zero competition.
4:15 So you have stagnant wages because of
4:17 low productivity and you have sky-high
4:19 costs because of the oligopies. That is
4:21 a squeeze. But it's not the death blow.
4:23 The death blow is the housing trap. All
4:25 right, we need to talk about the
4:27 decision Canada made around 2008 when
4:29 the rest of the world and housing
4:31 bubbles burst. Canada's didn't. We
4:33 patted ourselves on the back. We said,
4:36 "Look how stable our banks are." But we
4:38 didn't fix the problem. We doubled down.
4:40 We lowered interest rates to near zero
4:42 and we kept them there. We invited the
4:43 world's capital to park itself in
4:45 Canadian condos. We turned housing from
4:48 shelter, a basic human right, into a
4:49 speculative financial asset traded like
4:51 Bitcoin. And the result is a feudal
4:53 system. I use that word carefully.
4:56 Feudalism. A system where your status is
4:59 determined by your relationship to land.
5:01 If you are young in Canada today, your
5:02 financial destiny is not determined by
5:04 how hard you work or how smart you are
5:06 or what degree you have. It is
5:08 determined by one thing, the bank of mom
5:10 and dad. If your parents own a home,
5:12 they can leverage it. They can gift you
5:13 a down payment. You can enter the
5:15 castle. You become a member of the
5:18 landed gentry. If your parents rent, you
5:20 are a surf. You will spend 50, 60, maybe
5:23 70% of your after tax income paying off
5:25 the mortgage of someone else. You're
5:26 paying for their retirement with your
5:28 poverty. This is the intergenerational
5:30 war that nobody in Ottawa wants to admit
5:32 is happening. The baby boomers, and I'm
5:34 not blaming them individually. They just
5:36 played the game as it was written, are
5:37 sitting on trillions of dollars of real
5:40 estate wealth. They vote. They vote to
5:42 restrict supply. They vote to keep their
5:44 neighborhoods quaint and low density.
5:45 They fight every new apartment building
5:47 at the city council meetings. They are
5:48 pulling up the ladder, and the young
5:50 look up at that ladder, and they realize
5:52 it's gone. This leads to a phenomenon
5:54 called delayed adulthood. It's a polite
5:56 term for a tragedy. In the 1970s, the
5:58 average age of a first-time home buyer
6:01 was 25. Today, in the major cities, it
6:04 is pushing 37 or 38. That is a decade
6:06 and a half of lost time. Think about
6:07 what happens in those lost years. You
6:09 don't have kids because you don't have a
6:11 bedroom for them. Canada's fertility
6:13 rate has collapsed to 1.33, an all-time
6:15 low. We are literally dying out because
6:18 we made it too expensive to reproduce.
6:19 You don't start a business because you
6:21 can't take the risk. If you miss a rent
6:23 payment, you're homeless. So, you take
6:25 the safe, boring corporate job. You
6:27 stifle your own potential. You don't
6:28 move for a better opportunity because
6:30 you are terrified of losing your rent
6:31 control department. You are trapped in
6:34 place. This is how a dynamic young
6:35 country turns into a stagnant old
6:38 museum. And then we have to talk about
6:40 the accelerant. The policy that took a
6:42 fire and turned it into an inferno. The
6:45 population trap. For years, the Canadian
6:47 consensus was that immigration is an
6:50 unaloyed good. And culturally, it is.
6:52 Canada is a welcoming place. But
6:54 economics is about supply and demand. It
6:57 is cold, unfeilling math. In the last
6:59 few years, the Canadian government
7:01 decided to spike the population growth
7:02 rate to levels seen in sub-Saharan
7:04 Africa. We brought in over a million
7:06 people in a single year. But we didn't
7:08 build a million homes. We didn't build a
7:10 million hospital beds. We didn't build a
7:12 million seats on the geo train. We
7:13 brought in hundreds of thousands of
7:15 temporary residents and international
7:17 students. Many of these students were
7:19 sold a lie. Recruiters in India and
7:21 Nigeria told them, "Come to Canada. It's
7:23 the land of opportunity." They arrived
7:25 and they found themselves sleeping four
7:27 to a room in Bmpton or Suri, delivering
7:29 Uber Eats in the snow, paying exorbitant
7:31 tuition to strip mall colleges that
7:33 exist solely to print diplomas for
7:35 permanent residency applications. This
7:37 isn't immigration. It is a labor supply
7:39 shock. By flooding the market with
7:41 low-skilled labor, we gave the oligopies
7:44 a gift. Why invest in automation? Why
7:47 invest in productivity? Why raise wages?
7:49 You can just hire a desperate student
7:51 for minimum wage. This suppressed wages
7:53 for the working class and the youth
7:55 while simultaneously skyrocketing the
7:56 demand for rent. It was a wealth
7:58 transfer from the poor who rent and work
8:01 for wages to the rich who own assets and
8:03 hire labor. It is a policy that looks
8:05 progressive on a pamphlet but operates
8:06 like 19th century robber baron
8:09 capitalism in practice. So where does
8:11 this leave you? The 28-year-old in the
8:13 basement apartment. It leaves you in a
8:14 state of cognitive dissonance. You walk
8:16 past the luxury condos in Vancouver,
8:19 empty, owned by shell companies. You see
8:21 the grocery prices climbing every week.
8:22 You hear the politicians talking about
8:26 GDP growth. But GDP growth means nothing
8:28 if the population is growing faster than
8:29 the economy. That is called capital
8:32 dilution. The pie is getting slightly
8:33 bigger, but there are a million more
8:35 people at the table holding forks. Your
8:37 slice is getting smaller. Per capita,
8:40 GDP in Canada is falling. We are getting
8:43 poorer. And the debt, the debt is the
8:45 invisible chain around your neck.
8:46 Canadians are some of the most indebted
8:48 people on Earth. We bought into the lie
8:51 that debt is wealth. We used our houses
8:53 as ATMs. We leased cars we couldn't
8:55 afford. Now interest rates have
8:57 normalized. The era of free money is
9:00 over and the hangover is beginning. We
9:01 are seeing the rise of the negative
9:03 amortization mortgage. This is a
9:05 terrifying concept. It means you're
9:07 making your monthly payment, but the
9:08 payment isn't even covering the
9:10 interest. Your debt is growing every
9:12 month, even as you pay. You're a debt
9:14 slave in the truest sense of the word.
9:15 And the government, they are trapped,
9:17 too. They know the housing market is a
9:19 bubble, but they can't let it pop. Real
9:21 estate and construction make up such a
9:23 huge percentage of the Canadian GDP that
9:25 if housing crashes, the entire economy
9:27 evaporates. The banks would be
9:28 insolvent. The pension funds would
9:30 collapse. So, they have to keep it
9:32 propped up. They introduce 30-year
9:34 amortizations. They buy mortgage bonds.
9:35 They do everything they can to keep the
9:38 air in the balloon. This is the suicide
9:40 pact. To save the economy, they have to
9:43 sacrifice the young. To save the young,
9:45 they have to crash the economy. They
9:47 have chosen to sacrifice the young. This
9:49 is why you feel poor. Because in a very
9:52 real mathematical sense, the system is
9:53 extracting wealth from your future to
9:56 pay for the mistakes of the past. You
9:57 are paying for the health care of a
9:59 generation that didn't save enough. You
10:00 are paying for the infrastructure that
10:03 hasn't been updated in 40 years. You are
10:04 paying the rent that sustains the
10:06 lifestyle of the asset class. But here
10:08 is the warning. Here is where the story
10:10 pivots from tragic to dangerous. Look at
10:12 the brain drain. If you are a talented
10:14 engineer from Waterlue or a doctor from
10:16 McGill or a welder from Alberta, why
10:18 would you stay? You look south of the
10:20 border. You see the United States. It
10:22 has its problems. Huge problems. But you
10:24 can buy a house in Texas or North
10:26 Carolina for a third of the price of a
10:27 shack in Toronto. You can earn double
10:29 the salary in tech or medicine. The best
10:31 and brightest are voting with their
10:33 feet. They are leaving. And who is left
10:36 behind? The old, the indebted, and the
10:37 people who can't afford to leave. This
10:40 creates a death spiral. As the tax base
10:41 leaves, the taxes on those who remain
10:44 must go up, which drives more people to
10:46 leave. Canada is risking becoming a
10:48 boutique hotel for the global rich,
10:50 staffed by a permanent underclass of
10:52 temporary workers with a hollowedout
10:53 middle class wondering what happened to
10:55 the country they grew up in. It is a
10:57 polite apocalypse. There are no tanks in
10:59 the streets. There are just fleece signs
11:01 on the storefronts and moving trucks
11:03 heading for the border and a silent
11:05 creeping despair in the eyes of the
11:08 young. But this isn't just a Canadian
11:10 story. This is the story of the entire
11:12 western world just accelerated. Canada
11:14 is the laboratory. We are the test case
11:16 for what happens when you prioritize
11:18 financialization over production. We are
11:20 showing the world that you cannot build
11:22 a nation on selling latte art and condos
11:24 to each other. Eventually you run out of
11:27 money. So is there a way out? There is,
11:29 but it is painful. It requires breaking
11:31 the oligopies. It requires a massive
11:33 resoning of our cities to flood the
11:35 market with supply, crashing the price
11:37 of housing. It requires a tax code that
11:39 rewards work and punishes speculation.
11:41 It requires the political courage to
11:42 tell the older generation, "Your house
11:45 is not a retirement fund. It is a house.
11:46 And its value needs to come down so your
11:49 grandchildren can live." Until that
11:51 happens, the young will continue to feel
11:53 poor because they are poor. They are
11:55 asset poor in a world where assets are
11:57 everything. If you are watching this and
11:58 you feel that tightness in your chest
12:00 when you pay your rent or that
12:01 hopelessness when you look at real
12:04 estate listings, acknowledge it. It is
12:07 not in your head. It is in the ledger.
12:09 You are living through the great
12:11 de-leveling. The rich country narrative
12:14 is a ghost story. It's a memory of a
12:15 time before the factories closed and the
12:17 towers went up. The question is no
12:19 longer when will I be able to buy a
12:22 home. The question is what am I going to
12:24 do about it? Do you accept the surfom?
12:26 Do you fight for policy change? Or do
12:28 you join the caravan heading for the
12:31 exit? The Canadian dream isn't dead, but
12:33 it is immigrated and it is waiting for
12:35 you to decide if you are going to follow
12:37 it or try to resurrect it from the ashes
12:39 of a credit bubble. History doesn't
12:41 repeat, but it rhymes. And right now,
12:43 Canada is rhyming with a cautionary tale.
