Economic Insights.

Dr. Cooper is Dominion Lending Centre's Chief Economist who helps Canadians understand the issues surrounding their most important financial decision – buying a home.

OSFI Considers Setting a Minimum Qualifying Rate of 5.25% For Uninsured Mortgages

April 8, 2021

Banking Regulator Aims To Make It Tougher To Get An Uninsured Mortgage With several Big-Five bank CEOs calling for regulatory action to slow the red-hot housing market, it didn’t take long for the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), the governor of federally regulated financial institutions, to respond. In a news release issued today, OSFI proposed an increase in uninsured mortgages’ qualifying rate to […]

Canadian Housing Market Still On Fire

March 15, 2021

Housing Continued to Surge in February Today the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) released statistics showing national home sales hit another all-time high in February 2021. Canadian home sales increased a whopping 6.6% month-on-month (m-o-m), building on the largest winter housing boom in history. On a year-over-year (y-o-y) basis, existing home sales surged an amazing 39.2%. As the chart below shows, February’s activity […]

Roaring Canadian Jobs Market Signals Economic Rebound

March 12, 2021

Easing Restrictions Ignite Canadian Job Market In February This morning, Statistics Canada released the February 2021 Labour Force Survey showing much stronger-than-expected job growth. The early days of the latest easing in COVID restrictions reinvigorated the labour market. Economists were pleasantly surprised by the rapid rebound. To be sure, there remain risks to the outlook, a rise in virus cases because […]

Bank of Canada Holds Policy Rate at 0.25% and Maintains QE Program At Current Pace

March 10, 2021

Bank of Canada Holds Rates and Bond-Buying Steady Much has changed since the Bank of Canada’s last decision on January 20. While the second pandemic wave was raging, new lockdowns were implemented in late 2020, and there were fears that the economy, in consequence, was likely to grow at a 4.8% annual rate in Q4 and contract in Q1. Instead, the […]

Canadian Economy Ended 2020 On An Extremely Upbeat Note

March 2, 2021

Strong Canadian Economic Growth in Q4 and January This morning’s Stats Canada release showed that economic growth in the final quarter of last year was a surprisingly strong 9.6% (annualized). The surge in growth in January was even more interesting, estimated at a 0.5% (not annualized) pace. If these numbers pan out, it means that Canada did not suffer a contraction […]