To revive Canada’s economy, housing prices must fall, property investors must take a hit

John Rapley is a political economist at the University of Cambridge and the managing director of Seaford Macro.

Canada’s economy is struggling just now, beset by both a housing crisis and a growth rate so low that real per capita income is falling. But what many of us don’t know is that the first problem is a principal cause of the second – which is to say, Canadians on average are getting poorer in no small measure because property investors have got richer. There’s probably no way around it: to revive the economy and overcome the housing crisis, property investors will need to take a hit, at least in relative terms.