The Canadian Investor - Could U.S. Elections Slow the AI Data Centre Buildout? + Millennial Moron on Housing & Population Growth

Episode Date: October 10, 2026

In this episode of the Canadian Macro Show, Simon and Dan break down another surge in bond yields and what higher borrowing costs could mean for mortgages, housing, construction and the broader economy. They also discuss the growing political backlash against AI data centres as communities push back over electricity costs, infrastructure demands and new developments.  They also look at signs of stress in private credit, including rising redemption requests and investors being offered liquidity at steep discounts to reported NAV. The conversation then turns to affordability and politics, including what recent elections are telling us about how heavily cost of living is weighing on voters.  Millennial Moron joins the show to explain Statistics Canada's major population revisions, what actually happened with temporary residents and work permits, and why Canada's recent rental supply boom may be doing more to improve affordability than many people realize. They also discuss zoning, development timelines, NIMBYism and what Canada needs to do to build more housing.    Watch the full video on Our New Youtube Channel! Check out our portfolio by going to Jointci.com Our Website Canadian Investor Podcast Network Twitter: @cdn_investing Simon’s twitter: @Fiat_Iceberg Braden’s twitter: @BradoCapital Dan’s Twitter: @stocktrades_ca Want to learn more about Real Estate Investing? Check out the Canadian Real Estate Investor Podcast! Apple Podcast - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Spotify - The Canadian Real Estate Investor  Web player - The Canadian Real Estate Investor Sign up for Fiscal.ai for free to get easy access to global stock coverage and powerful AI investing tools. Register for EQ Bank, the seamless digital banking experience with better rates and no nonsense. Asset Allocation ETFs | BMO Global Asset Management This podcast Ad Read is intended for information purposes only. The information provided herein does not constitute a solicitation of an offer to buy, or an offer to sell securities nor should the information be relied upon as investment, tax, or legal advice to any party. Particular investments and/or trading strategies should be evaluated relative to the individual’s investment objectives and professional advice should be obtained with respect to any circumstance. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The viewpoints expressed by the speaker represent their assessment of the markets at the time of recording . Those views are subject to change without notice at any time. Commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with investments in exchange-traded funds. Please read the ETF Facts or prospectus of the BMO ETFs before investing. Exchange-traded funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated.For a summary of the risks of an investment in the BMO ETFs, please see the specific risks set out in the BMO ETF’s prospectus. BMO ETFs trade like stocks, fluctuate in market value and may trade at a discount to their net asset value, which may increase the risk of loss. Distributions are not guaranteed and are subject to change and/or elimination. BMO ETFs are managed by BMO Asset Management Inc., an investment fund manager, a portfolio manager, and a separate legal entity from Bank of Montreal.BMO Global Asset Management is a brand name under which BMO Asset Management Inc. and BMO Investments Inc. operate. “BMO (M-bar roundel symbol)” is a registered trademark of Bank of Montreal, used underlicence.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Visit BMOetifs.com to learn more and find the ETF that's right for your portfolio. For full disclaimers and more information, please check out the description in today's episode. I just feel like yields is everything at this point. It's like, everyone's like, oh, your macro doesn't matter. It's like, I think that the cost of borrowing matters a lot. It matters to the AI companies who are putting financing massive projects, and they're competing with the risk-free rate for capital. The reality is, like, you can tell me that everything's going as rosy, is going great.

The economy is doing well. But if I'm having trouble making ends meet on a week-to-week basis or every time I get paid, I just use my paycheck almost right away. Like, this is what happens. If you're seeing these data centers that maybe, are being built or they're being delayed. And you have the hyper-scalers that are purchasing chips from NVIDIA or memory or all the other equipment that's just sitting idle because it can't be deployed

or not fully deployed. I don't think the market is fully pricing in these kind of implication because you're seeing this being more and more of an electoral issue, at least in the U.S. All right. Welcome back to Friday macro, which is now on Thursdays, Thursday macro, lunch. We're a half hour early this week. because I'm at a I'm at a CMHD event doing a panel. And they were nice enough to give me a recording studio here to have a call in with Simol.

We're only like you 20 minutes from each other, though, like you said. So we'll have to maybe grab a, grab a drink after before I fly out of town. Yeah, I know. That'd be good if we could make that work. I mean, you're more in the kind of east end and more in the west end, but still it's not bad. All over come say hi. Yeah, it's not Toronto. So it's definitely doable.

Yeah. Yeah. I noticed that when I tried to, I took an Uber from the airport and it didn't take me an hour and a half to get anywhere relevant. So. No, no. Welcome. We got a lot. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. We got a lot, a lot to talk about today, I think. Yeah. I think I don't know if we'll get to everything, but I think you've got some stuff to talk about for real estate and you might as well because you're, you're clearly going to be talking about real estate a little bit if you're at the CMHG headquarters in Ottawa. And then talking about. a bit of private credit because I feel like that's a part of the market that's not really talked about all that much. It was a bit more earlier this year and late last year, but I think people just, I think investors in general are just hypnotized by the AI trade and they're kind of forgetting that there's a lot of stress in the private credit space. I know you had something

you share with me about consumer discretionary stocks being crushed. We can definitely talk about that a little bit. Elections. So Quebec elections and the parts of Quebec-cappingo gaining minority in Quebec, so that would be the separatist party for people who are not familiar with this. That made the headlines. But there are also other takeaways that I think are pretty important from that election. The U.S. election, what we're starting to see, and especially data center, is becoming a major issue, but also politicians starting to flip against Trump on the trade war with Canada. and bond yields that just seem like every week, bonds yields are higher.

I think that's a constant with our show. One week later, bond yields are probably going to be higher. I can't wait for when bond yields are not higher, and we get to talk about that, because it's going to be just as crazy. Yeah, should we start with bond yields? We'll go backwards.

Sure, because I feel like that one. Bond yields. Yeah. Well, you want to talk about the long end of the U.S. or Canada? I think the, I mean, the U.S. tenure is getting crazy. US mortgage rates are now at three year highs, 10 years at what, 24 year highs, I think.

Yeah, early 2000, like before the GFC now, yeah. Yeah. So we're in kind of interesting, almost uncharted waters. And yeah, if you can pull that out to 10 years? Or like, sorry, to whatever, 27 years. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so it's, I mean, actually, yeah. There's this. And like, there was early. 2000, yeah. I tagged you in that thing on X about like even Goldman Sachs is kind of saying now that this AI trade could very much become a cost of capital problem, right? And I think we're starting to see that that is,

that's probably what's going to end up putting an end to the party at this point. So I don't know, like with, like I just feel like yields everything at this point. It's like everyone's like, oh, you're macro doesn't matter. It's like, I think that the cost of borrowing matters a lot. It matters to the AI companies who are putting financing massive projects and they're competing with the risk-free rate for capital. It matters for mortgages, which grinds your residential investment to a halt. You know, like, did you see that chart that I put up that every single type of construction

other than data centers is down? It's like data centers in power. Are the only two types of construction that are up on a year-over-year basis? I didn't see it, but that makes sense, right? Like, and that's, that's in the U.S. or Canada or both? U.S., yeah. We don't have data for Canada, but I'll see if I can pull it up here. Yeah, the national average is in the U.S. now for the 30 year.

I think it's hovering around 7.5%. So that is, that's a far cry from the pandemic level. So I'm just showing it here. It's bankrate.com. They say they have a better rate, but I think the national average is a better indicator here. Yeah. And then what does that materialize in? Well, it materializes in home sales falling, right? Yeah. Home construction, you know, there's- Or staying low. Yeah. Yeah. Staying low. And I mean, like that, so that's real estate commissions. That's builders. That's construction activity. Like the knock-on effects of the consumption economy that spread. I just think we're so early in the cycle that you had like, well, the bond yields really just started jumping up. But you give it like two or three quarters of the negative externalities. that happen as a result of this, and you start to have bad economic data happening pretty,

you know, pretty predictably. And I don't see a scenario in which this is good for anything. No, and I mean, it's definitely difficult. And if you start looking to in terms of the U.S. and what's driving the election so far, I think I'm trying to find the survey. I don't have it here. But it was something like 35% of Americans, the top issue is. inflation and cost of living. And that is something that's definitely not helping that. And like you said,

in terms of construction, yes, it's helping construction jobs, but you have more and more states that are essentially saying no or putting bans or temporary bans in place. I think now the latest data that I found according, I'll just share this with the people here, is that, yeah, there's 45 states in the U.S. that have some kind of active data center ban or moratorium in place. And I think that's a bit of a reflection. So you don't really have data center in terms of the top issues,

but I think you can probably place it in terms of cost of living and affordability. Because if you have a data center that's coming near you, there's a good chance that, for example, your power, your electricity is going to start going up. Well, yeah, you're competing with them for power and water, right? Exactly.

The data center, real construction spending growth, data center construction up 64.5% year over year power, which is obviously part of this trade is 4.1. And then everything else is down manufacturing, which is what the trade war is all about onshoreing down, what, 24%. Yeah. No, exactly. Every, I mean, it's just pulling capital away from, like, you mentioned, you know, and people aren't like people are so shiny object with the AI trade that they're not paying attention to what's happening in the consumer. economy. This and like same thing in the in in construction. It's like why aren't we looking at how bad this is getting with with the construction spending. You know, everything. Oh, because it's, you know, the national numbers and sectoral bias is shifting it away to another another sector and

it still looks like positive on GDP. It's not. It's it's over exposure to one one sector, I think. Like there's every day it becomes more risky. Yeah. And it may help. Obviously, it's going to help construction jobs. And I was listening to, I don't know, I shared it with you if you had the time, but the Wall Street Journal has a podcast and it's one for the American election. I encourage everyone to listen to it. If they want to understand the AI Data Center issue and what it's creating in the US, I think it was titled the AI voters and how Ohio has become a battleground against data centers by for,

for voters. And essentially, what you're starting to hear is you have voters that have always voted Republicans in Ohio are considering voting Democrat or just not showing up because they're so pissed off at essentially all the data centers that have popped up in Ohio near their communities and I've been supported by the Republican candidate. So the Democrat candidate, even though he's not anti-Data center, he's more kind of advocating for putting more guardrails around it. And that seems to be what, you know, At the very least, for voters, that's better than the Republican option that they have in place. And it was interesting because you heard someone that always voted a Republican.

He said, look, you go like a mile or two away and it's like you hear this constant buzz happening. So forget about all the other stuff, the power and all that is like that constant noise. Even mentioned that apparently there was one that's supposed to go a mile or two from a school. and he's like, so what kind of effects could it have on the children long term? And I mean, there are legitimate concerns if you ask me. But it also, when you start teaming that with 45 states having a data center ban or a moratorium in place, and that's not like obviously the whole state. I think there's only New York that has a full one in place.

But these are states that have for the most part a lot of local bans as well or pauses. And it's, I mean, it's popping more and more and more. And we were talking about that. I don't think there's enough press that is talking about the potential implication. Obviously, we saw it with Oracle and the force major with their New Mexico data center. I think they're having issues with one in Wisconsin with potential power supply that could be delayed as well. So if you're seeing these data centers that maybe are being built or they're being delayed and you have the hyperscalers that are purchasing chips from Nvidia or memory or all the other. equipment that's just sitting idle because it can't be deployed or not fully deployed. I don't think

the market is fully pricing in these kind of implication because you're seeing this being more and more of an electoral issue, at least in the U.S. And I do wonder if that could be the first sign that the AI hype could be cracking a little bit. Yeah, I would say there's some examples in Canada here too, Oakville, Mississauga. Oakville becomes the first Ontario municipality, an act of one year more Torame on data centers. And then there was another one. Mississauga did the same thing to blocks data center projects for a year. You know, not an outright permanent ban, but they want to consult the public, et cetera.

Yeah, I would say it's funny. Like from somebody asked on Instagram here, one second, I got to pull it up. Are we talking stocks at all? Could we get your guys opinion on a few picks? Sure. I mean, you probably don't want my opinion on stocks. Let's finish the talk. We'll get to that.

We'll finish like the U.S. election and then quickly talk about Quebec and then I can talk about a few stocks that I have on my radar right now. Having cash on hand is essential for any business. Traditional business accounts hit you with high fees while paying little to no interest on the cash you need for day-to-day operations. That was our experience too until we switched to the new EQ Bank business account. Now every dollar earns high interest with no monthly fees and no minimum balance. You also get free everyday transactions like EFTs, bill payments, mobile check deposits, and 50 outgoing and 100 incoming free interackey transfers. And to sign up, quick and

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Somebody mentioned, you know, Labrador in the chat here. Actually, I should probably pull the chat up on the street. It's only one person so far. But Labrador, where did it go? You know, why don't they just put them in the middle of like the Arctic, like northwest territories, Yukon or whatever? I would imagine up there probably because we, you know, there's harder to get to power and jobs for people to service them and whatever.

But I mean, I think it's, you pull on that threat. It's kind of the right line of thinking. We probably have places in Canada. that are like sparse enough that it is actually a decent use case for Canadian land. Proctimity to power, cold climate, and not a lot of people nearby. So I think that's a trade that can I can do okay on personally. Yeah, it could be also some leverage with the U.S. on a trade deal, right? Say like, look, clearly data centers are not super popular.

It's clear that you want to win the AI race. How can we do a deal and help you win that AI race and not. a line, like, and not piss off most of your voting base. That clearly is having some issues there. That could be an angle to take. And I are also seeing, did you see the Michigan senator running? That's a big, like, Trump supporter. And then just flip-flopped, I think it was just a couple days ago.

Yeah, he just said, right? Yeah. Yeah. That essentially just said that we need to end the trade war with Canada, that Canada is not the problem or something like that on a new ad. So clearly, I think Americans are starting to not necessarily, I guess, yeah, side with Canada. I don't know how else to put it. So I'm just going to show a survey here.

I think they don't support the trade war, right? Like, I think there was, you have the data like from the, from the poll. Yeah, the political. I think there's. Yeah. There you go. So hopefully people. So you have here.

That's on parties responses though. But is there the one on Americans, whether or not they agree with the trade war to begin with? Yeah, I was trying to, I thought. There was one from that Bloomberg article, I think I sent you. Yeah. I'll find it. It's all good. Yeah, yeah, if you can find it.

Yeah. But essentially, it's Canadian and Americans kind of agree, almost a similar level that they're kind of wondering. Well, I guess, actually, no, it is the top bar on one. It is, yeah. Okay. It says, yeah, Americans believe that Trump's tariffs on Canada were. wrong the majority, 56%. 18% don't know. Only

26% believe that it was that it was, he was in the right. Yeah, exactly. Still high number actually to me. Yeah. So yeah, that's it. So yeah. It's, yeah. I don't think they'll fight an entire

election or I don't think it'll be like a complete election issue. Like to me it's a sum of all parts thing with with Trump, which is that most people disagree with almost everything that he's done. Like, you know, with going this hard on AI. You know, so it could be, it's, you know, it's, it's like, which one's the last straw? But it's AI data centers.

It's war in Iran. It's, you know, trade war with Canada and trade war with everybody, you know, picking fights with countries all around the world. You know, I think it's like pick which issue, but I can't see him winning the midterms. I mean, it's well, it's fair. It's remarkably clear that he's not going to win the midterms. Well, I mean, he got elected on the fact that cost of living was so high and inflation was an issue, right?

Like, he got elected on that. Yeah, ignored it. And now he's like ignoring it and just using, doing the same exact thing the Democrats we're doing. They're saying like, he's saying the same thing. He's just saying, look, the economy, the numbers are great. Look at America's like booming. But people are feeling differently.

And they're just ignoring it. That's what got him in office. That's what's going to get him out of office or at least make him in into a lame duck president. And that kind of feeds into the Quebec elections. for those of you that have known me for a while or have been listening to the podcast, I spent most of my life in Quebec on the Quebec side of Ottawa, so just outside of Gatno. And obviously I know Quebec politics pretty well. I don't follow it as much as I used to because I've been living for about 10 years in Ontario now.

But still, my parents live in Quebec. I have most of my family. And all the headlines you saw was about like a separatist party. taking power. I don't think that's the main takeaway from the election. First of all, it's a minority government. Second of all, the leader of the PQ, the Patskibecois just said that you would not try a referendum on separation until after Donald Trump is out, which is two years from now, and also your minority party, so you may not even be in power in two years from now. So take that with what it is. But the other thing is that the party in power and the CAQ that lost the election, they had 79

zero suits. They had zero. Zero. Like think about that for a second. 79 to zero. They had 90 in the past election. I guess they lost some with some by-election, but 79 to zero. They like, obviously, I think they got screwed a little bit on the popular vote versus the actual

number of seats. but that is very telling because I think 29% of Quebecers were saying that the main issue was cost of living and inflation, something like that, close to 30%. It surely rhymes a whole lot with what the Americans are saying with their own election. And I think what you're starting to see, and it kind of goes into the foreturning premise,

is you're seeing more and more volatility with voters where if they don't see improvement, they are willing to switch from one side to another. And I think for a lot of people, probably they voted for Pats of Quebec, not because they really necessarily want to separate from Canada, just because they needed a change, and they thought that was the most likely party to get in.

And I think you're going to see the same thing in the U.S. or you're going to see this pendulum going from left to right to right to left and so on until people feel better about their lives and their cost of living. I feel like we've been doing that for a while. I mean, Canada, we almost went at the federal level, but it was the furthest swing. I mean, it shifted the entire Overton window, I think, in Canada. It was a disguise, this guy's swing under the liberal banner. Yeah, it is funny, right?

Like, I mean, that Cardi's really governing as a red Tory. Yeah, it's, you know, I mean, as a conservative, you know, if you're voting on the platform, you kind of got what you voted for, really. Platforms were pretty similar. Yeah. But I agree. I think, but the question is like what issue is because it and it's almost like what would like what will Trump do if he's going to lose the house?

And you know, like what, because there's going to be more of this temper tantrum and like what other things is he going to go after and go nuts with before like in Target before he loses, you know, control, the ability to act. You know he's going to go on a rampage of policy and try and get a bunch of moves done before they lose the house, especially if he thinks that they're defeated. I would imagine, right? So where are there other targets that could still? I feel like Canada, I mean, we've always kind of been in their crosshairs, but, well, since Trump came in this time, but I don't know if there's much left that they can do. And it proves to be pretty ineffective every time he does it. Yeah.

Yeah. You can say whatever he wants, but I think now it's starting to be clear that voters are not seeing his actions against Canada as necessarily something all that great. So maybe he's going to just, you know, he's going to shift his focus to the next shiny object that he thinks. Well, I think he has the lowest approval rating. Like, I don't even think it's just us. It's like everything he's done. Like, I think he's the lowest approval rating ever of a Republican president or since Hoover, which was like the same depression. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That's what I saw as well. And essentially you're also looking at. at even Republicans that are not like hardcore MAGA are like their disapproval is is going up with Donald Trump. But it's going to be fascinating. Well, he's taking away their ability to to like continue like, you know, I mean, I think for Republicans, it was an opportunity for them to to try and comment. Trump could send Canadians $5,000 each.

Well, there was a, somebody ran a calculation of like what it would cost to buy Canada, right? Like when they were talking about the 50verse state stuff, which I mean, you know, it's, It's weird that you would even have these political thought experiments, but it was like, I think they would have to rent a check, like a check to every Canadian for like, it was, it was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? And it was like, you know, I feel like there were a lot of people who would take that. Like if you were actually quantify it and say, if, you know, you had to sell your country to America, there's like, not, obviously, I don't think enough to get it like to make the deal

happen. But I think like it's weird to think about it as actual deal. deal-making numbers, right? But I don't think, I don't know, he's trying to, he's trying to buy votes on, and we've tried that with the, you know, stimmy checks round two.

Yeah, that's a Jimmy checks. In the U.S., nothing's going to happen. Like, not a single version. I don't think they can do anything to save themselves in midterms at this point. I think you're going to keep seeing the Republican Party distance himself from him because they realize that anything that touches him is probably talks

at getting into the next election. And if they want to try and try and win an actual election, which I don't think, I think, you know, I think he's pretty much sealed the, sealed the fate on that one. Unless the Democrats completely nominate somebody just like they didn't, the last couple of times where, you know, the decision was already made for voters. But I feel like if they end up running like newsome or something like that, like, I think it's pretty hard for the Republicans to beat. Yeah, let's, quick. So I guess someone had some companies in terms of stock picks. I mean, in terms of, I'll talk about some sectors that are pretty interesting.

One that you shared with me, I think it is a good one that was at the consumer discretionary. I'll share that over here. So you have some of these names that are just being completely smashed. So Home Depot, Starbucks, McDonald, Lowe's. You have booking holdings, Airbnb that's not doing. I think Airbnb is actually doing better than that. I looked at it earlier today. But regardless, you have like a lot of travel stocks here lodging as well, Marriott, not doing well.

TJX is actually one that I talked on the podcast recently. I actually like it a whole lot for discretionary. I think it's the kind of store or a company that should do really well. For those who miss it, essentially the premise, it's like it's the winners, right? winners, Marshalls, Home Sense, they own those stores. And essentially, they just, it's just the best business model ever. They, like, they're a buyer of last resort. So when Nike or whichever big retailer, they need to get rid of inventory and they want to get

rid of it quickly, TjX can just step up, buy it super cheap. They don't really care about like sizes. That's why if you go to winners, you know, you might see shoes in size 5 and 14. They don't care. They'll buy it and they have incredible margins. But I think in an environment where people are struggling and trying to stretch their money, you have also the treasure hunt type of deal that you can have with that. TjX, I think is really good.

And obviously you have other names like Lou Lame and Nike. Those I'm not, I don't know. I think they have a harder time ahead just because you're seeing the consumer again struggle. It's kind of hard to have those premium brands trying to see. sell at a premium. So yeah, consumer discretionary. If you look at the actual business, you understand them well. You could do fairly well. Dan and I have one coming up on Monday, Dan, Ken and I about engineering firms. So WSP stand tech are two examples there. There are a lot of bearishness with when it comes to AI. Could be some value there, healthcare as well, some interesting place.

And I guess those guys are, well, like not only are they like AI bearishness, but they're also like downstream of this huge contraction that we've seen in every other type of construction, then data centers, right? So, like, if you think of, you know, that chart that I showed you on construction, if I'm engineering an AI data center, like, it's obviously a big project, but it's one. Whereas if I'm engineering houses, it's, you know, thousands or, you know, so you would have this more consistent, you know, bread and butter, table stakes, whatever, keep the lights on type of work in traditional types versus, you know, these massive

absent flows in the cash flows of some of these businesses. If they're taking on like one data center project, then they don't have work for a couple of years. No, exactly. And what you're seeing, though, with the engineering firm is just AI fears. So it's fears that they won't be able to bill as many hours because of AI. So I'm just showing WSP Global here, but their backlogs are through the roof.

They're just hitting all-time eye. They have like a year worth of revenue with just backlog alone. And it's kind of the same with other. firms. So those are kind of companies. You can catch our episode that's coming up on Monday on the Canadian investor podcast feed. Those are some ideas. You know, an idea where there's value, but you have to be really careful. And Dan will probably say you're crazy. But there are, I think, certain sectors like reits in real estate that could offer compelling value. But I think you have to go and Dan, correct me if I'm wrong, you know this space better than I do. But I think you have to really

stick with high quality when it comes to that and be willing to hold it. for the longer term and almost be happy to collect the distribution or dividend while you're waiting. Yeah. I would say I think. So what areas of REITS would you like?

Do you like? I don't like any yet. So like I would say I agree with you that there's a buying opportunity soon. I mean, I just don't think there's a little bit of downside risk. And I mean, you know, I mentioned like we should chat on the stack in

revision quickly too because Canadian population got revised got revised a hundred thousand people yeah was it no because I

because I'm talking a little bit about on the like on rents right so if rents are going to go like rents have been falling and if rents continue falling then we've got

like sustained I don't know like we're sorry before we had sustained down pressure on population growth. And now it's been revised up, right? Sorry, one sec.

Yeah, so we have the lowest. Yeah, so we have the lowest. Here, like, Canadian apartment properties reed. So just to just to kind of add to what you were saying. So cap read. And I think it's generally seen as like one of the top apartment reads in Canada. And that's what I'm saying in terms of, you know, if you're more long term, you're getting 5% dividend on that, which I don't think I ever remember cap re-yielding 5%.

Yeah, and like that's better than what you can get buying those assets, right? So I would be looking at like, what's their book value? You know, what's the like what would I buy a, what cap rate would I buy a, you know, a multifamily residential building at today? Can I buy their stock at a better yield? that I can go by the same asset class, right? Most of these guys are capped on leverage. They're using now higher risk debt products,

like extended amortization, CMHC. So there's a little bit of exposure there, but I don't mind a lot of those. Like, I don't mind multifamily. I think there's a little bit more downside risk, but like, you know, I think you're getting priced okay. And if they fall a little bit further and your yield washes that, you know,

I don't think you buy a lot of these dividend stocks for price, right? So if prices fall a little bit further, and you know, over the two-year period that that takes place for that market to actually catch the bottom, your yield worth wipe that out, right? No, exactly. I mean, especially right now, maybe like a can argument to that is you're getting 5% again. I'm saying cap-reed because that's typically like I said, it's kind of the highest quality one in terms of the publicly traded reits,

it's a higher quality one. You can probably get higher yields for some that are maybe not as high on the quality side. But you're talking about 5%. But there's U.S. ones. Like some of these U.S. like mortgage rates, you can get at like 12, 13%. Well, you're still paying. Mortgage rates, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in Canada, that would be like a mick, right? But I mean, even like so in Canada you have, I don't know, like, what's the big one firm capital like that like if you look at a firm capital or like Brookfield or sorry I'm not Brookfield that bridge mark which was which is majority owned by Brook Brook Brookfield right Royal Page basically they own the Royal Page brand I mean

like that when it dropped I think I sent it to you when it dropped like huge right yep I don't know what it was it'll obviously they'll have to cut but their their yields went way up and then I mean anything that touches real estate is like just it's it's really really depressed and most categories are like this right like everything away from the AI or tech trade that's like not in some you know one or two standard deviations away from AI is is not not doing well at all so I'd be like there's some good buys it's just finding out which one which one's you know going to actually do the best I think is real estate the most hated asset class right now you think uh no I feel like it's

it was for a period of time but the thing is like reits are very different like real estate was tough because you had you had office buildings you had like so like you know office buildings were uncertain like you had the pandemic really moved through this whole thing and then then you had like immigration population growth go up and down and so there was two there was multiple factors that just created too much uncertainty for different like so many different asset classes that it was like usually you buy real estate because there's certainty you know and it's like it's a really simple business it's like own physical space and people come in or like people have to consume that and then you collect your subscription fee from though on that.

But like Allied got smoked. Yeah, like there's, that's like Royal Page. This is, yeah, that's your, that's like that's real estate sales, but that's the only really one to see real estate sales. There's a lot of US ones that, you know, have gotten smoked too because I think we've seen peak realtor, right? But, you know, they're just contracting in like total number of, or their ability to make money off of real estate transactions.

But like Allied re got smoked from the office trade. It's got to be, I think it's like off of all, I think it's like 40 or 50. Oh my God. 60 or 80% off of all time highs. And like, yeah, I hadn't looked at Allied in a little bit. I'm actually surprised because they issued equity around $10 a unit earlier this year. That's where for those watching on the live stream. So that's where you see there was a drop in February, $14 to, yeah,

like exactly like around $9, that's because they issued a bunch of equity at that price. And, like, sorry, I don't mean to laugh, but it's down significantly since. Like it's down,

it's a massive drop. 45%. I mean, it was trading out like 60 bucks for a minute. Yeah. Yeah. And man, they still like,

so that, so this is a good example. Okay. So like they still own some of the greatest real estate in, in Kent, you know? Like they said, they have like the,

the, the, the, office buildings that everybody wants to be in. They're not your Class A, kind of like financial district, like, hot, you know, towers, but they're more millennial morons in the chat. I wonder if you want, he said he might hop on to talk about, I'll see if I can pull it in here. Sure.

Yeah. Let me just see if I can get the share link. But, I mean, like, these guys, like, I know, they still have good assets. They have good properties. Yeah, they have good assets. They do. And it's the stuff that, like, a lot of your, they have, like, their own, like, class of office.

They call it, like, class eye office, which is, like, you know, your brick and beam, but it's still, it attracts those, like, those class A tenants, like Shopify is in like allied space. Like what older buildings that have been completely renovated type of thing. Yeah, like that like sexy, like, you know, that converted adaptive reuse, like old downtown building that's like brick and beam. He said he's going to set up his camera, so I'll send him over the link on, uh, cool. Yeah.

On Twitter here. That'll be funny. He's been, uh, it's actually good that we didn't touch too much on the stack and review. visions yet or the OSAP fraud stuff because he's been tracking a lot of that stuff pretty good and a sudden right now having cash on hand is essential for any business traditional business accounts hit you with high fees while paying little to no interest on the cash you need for day-to-day operations that was our experience too until we switched to the new EQ bank business account now every dollar earns high interest with no monthly fees and no minimum bowels

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Well, something I want is I did mention private credits. I wanted to, like when we prepare these, I always do a bunch of tabs, but I'm looking to just find them here. I guess I can't find the tab. Oh, there you go. So yeah, just private credit because it's been, again, I think there was a lot of talk about it earlier this year, late. last year and people not realizing that there's still some significant issues here. These are just

some examples with non-traded private credit BDCs. But what you're seeing here is some of these funds, you're seeing the redemption requests. And just keep in mind for most of these, they'll only allowed 5% of the shares to be bought back. So essentially, if you hold this fund, you can, you know, they'll essentially let you to cash out, provided that there's 5% or less. of the units that are being, that people are trying to cash out. And you see most of these funds, it's actually increasing. The Blue Owl Technology Income one is the one that's been crushed completely. So close to 40% in redemption, but they're software heavy.

So a lot of fear of AI disruption. But you get some massive funds here that are just in like the 10% plus when they only do 5% redemption. So what happens, let's say if they have 10% redemption requests and they only honor 5%. So everyone who put in a request in will get 50% of what they requested. It's not like a, you know, they don't pick and choose whoever gets the liquidity or not. And what you're seeing in the space that's even more interesting is there's some mini tender offers. So I don't know if you're familiar with mini tender offers, Dan. No.

I'll go over that quickly. So essentially it's, you can get that. that without kind of go under the radar a little bit. So sometimes you'll see companies doing that investment firms. They'll say, oh, we'll do a mini tender offer for shares of a stock that's publicly listed at a lower price. And then the shareholders will kind of get this notice. And oftentimes it's below market price, but it can confuse shareholders.

And sometimes they'll get cheaper shares because they're actually not aware of it. But what you're seeing now in private credit is you're starting to see some mini tender offers. Cox Capital actually launch a bunch of them. So what they're doing is they're offering to buy a certain amount of shares. They're essentially providing liquidity to certain private credit funds. So Blackstone B-Cred, which is a big one, HPS corporate lending. And they're saying, okay, if you want the liquidity right now, the fund clearly is not honoring all your liquidity requests. We will buy your shares, but we'll buy them at a 12.5 discount to NAV for B-CRED and 17.5 discount to NAV for HPS corporate lending.

And obviously, this is not set in zone. It's what they're offering. It can always change and be negotiated. But it's just showing that there's more and more investors that are probably inclined to start taking these offers because they need the liquidity. I know it's a bit of a vulture kind of play, but I mean, they could be doing this all the time, but clearly they're doing it because they're seeing distress in the private credit market in terms of the redemption request. It doesn't mean that the underlying assets are distressed, by the way.

No, I mean, it's interesting because we like we saw this in Canada in the real estate sector. Yeah, like ROM spend, which is like one of the biggest Canadian funds of this nature that was gating redemptions over the last, was it two years ago? And like they can't, like a lot of this is trapped in construction debt or like debt for different types of buildings. I mean, a good example of that is that chart I sent you earlier about the office, CNBS. Yeah. So these are commercial mortgage back security, but still like the delinquency rate above financial crisis levels. So, you know, what ends up happening is creditors see issues or they, or sorry, investors in these funds see issues or they want to get their money out because they want.

they want to go put it into anthropic IPL or something like that, right? And so these guys just gate redemptions. But we saw this like, there was, there was a period of time like during the pandemic when like it was like, you know, every other week there was a fund that was gating redemptions in Canada. You saw it with Blackstone. These are those like, we had an institutional one with my old employer because I was in the pension team. And there was a real estate one that got gated. Yeah.

An institutional level fun. Yeah, just got delegated. Yeah, so, okay, so let's go through that. Like, what, if that happens, why are people taking their money out? Like, what's leading us to the, to them, is it because they want to go into the shiny object of Anthropic IPOs and SpaceX IPOs? Or are they, or is this bearish and companies are trying to get money out because they're afraid of? I think there's three reasons. The first, and not in necessarily any order.

So the first reason I can't remember where I read that, but I know I saw it in the past week is there is a record number of investor. I think it was JPMorgan, but I'm not 100% sure. A record number of investors are actually transferring investment income from their investment account to their checking accounts. So I think, and their reasoning is that people need this money for essentially day-to-day expenses and pay for cost of living increases. So I think that's probably part of it where investors do need liquidity for various reasons, but it could be, you know, for investing in other things like you just mentioned, like the entropic IPO or something else or just seeing the AI trade and seeing like, oh, this is not doing well.

The second reason is just there's been a lot of negative news for private credit in the past year and a half. And I think more and more people are questioning how these loans are actually marked. Yeah. It may say that these loans are solvent. but we've seen some examples where these loans were solvent one quarter and then the next, they were worth nothing. They were completely written on the property side. On the property side, you see it all the time, right?

Like these guys aren't the office buildings. People aren't marking their office buildings down to current market value. You know, they're probably just hoping they can, people will forget about it. And they can wait for a cycle to bring it back and just for, you know, but now the market's calling their bluff, I think, on a lot of this stuff. I'm laying more on. population to keep increasing or decreasing. Which one is it?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the trade is here in Canada. We didn't touch on, we touched a little bit on Stackin revisions, and I didn't even mention the OSAP stuff that's happening in Ontario there. Malaya Moran, anything you want to. Have you met Millennium Moran?

He's a legend. He's a TikTok famous, Gen Z or whatever they call it. I've seen some of his content, but it's our first time meeting. So thanks for coming on. That's why you want, TikTok, because you like, millennial moron is like, that's probably the most searched thing

by Gen Zs and right now. They just want to watch. They hate millennials. I don't know what it is. Yeah, everyone's doing the millennial moron official dance. What's, uh, what's happening, man? I don't know, not much. Just thought I'd hop on.

I know we were, uh, we've been talking about the population revisions, which I did a lot of work on. And then, um, yeah, the OSAP stuff I'd mentioned briefly. I haven't looked into it super deeply yet. But it is suspicious. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think everybody knew that was happening.

I'm just surprised it took them this long to get serious about it. But I think, and it's got to be bad because like the OPP, R-CMP and Auditor General are all involved now. Yeah. Yeah, the looking into it seems to have been going on for a while. But there was, I forget the name of the paper that did the F-O-Y request, but seeing the split of where OSAP grant funding was going, there's like public universities, public colleges, and then this huge ramp up in private colleges,

basically after they started giving people larger grants, pretty much, or like a larger proportion of your OSAP funding is grants, right? Because I, not to docs myself, but I went to university in Ontario, and back in my day, it was kind of, you would get something like the Millennium Grant or whatever they called it,

but your OSAP money was a loan that was fully repayable. And then they kind of united everything under the OSAP umbrella. It was up to 85% would be non-repayable grants. And what was news to me actually was that private college students were eligible for this instead of just public accredited universities and colleges. You can get it at the private institutions, which I guess does set up a situation where it would be easy for private colleges to start recruiting. just a huge volume of students, regardless of what the quality is and see if they can get some of that

OSAP grant money. Incentives and outcomes, man. Yeah, there's obviously the potential for, you know, kickbacks and all sorts of things. So I think it's not necessarily related to, but similar structurally to what we saw happening with public colleges and international students. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, no, I'm interested to see how that all the thing plays out. And then what happened with sack and revisions, like, I mean, I feel like you documented this

better than anybody. But so we went from population. We thought population was falling. It now is rising, but at the lowest rate since 20 or since forever, since they started recording the data. Yeah, I think like outside of the pandemic, there's probably some kind of blip that we saw there. I'd have to look back and check again.

But I usually just kind of ignore what happened around 2020 in all these statistics for the purpose of saying like slowest growth since whatever. But yeah, it's on record. So like since the 40s, it's the slowest percentage rate of population gain. And yeah, basically. Still growing, though. So we got the bullcase back for the real estate sector, right? Yeah.

Well, actually, I wanted to bring up a piece that I did with Urbanation and Rentals.ca on this. That was about how the population's... Yeah, I'll put it up on my screen here. But it's about how the population revisions kind of make the case for housing supply being... Is my mic still on? I think I accidentally shared the on. No, no from the tab. Yeah, okay.

But it's basically about how previously we had these two narratives about why rents were decreasing, because we focus on rents. And it was the surge in supply and the decline in population. But if you look at the revisions, you see, okay, population wasn't really falling. It was steadily growing. So it's really just all the new supply coming to market that's influencing things. And I think the important thing with that is if you get down to vacancy rate by rent quartile, This is data from CMHC.

What we've seen is that as this new supply comes to market, everyone is saying, is it really benefiting affordability if it's just all these higher prices coming to market? But I think the data does prove out the concept of vacancy chains where as those new units are absorbed, people are moving out of less expensive units. Other people move up into those units. And it eventually does work its way down to the lowest end of the market.

Obviously not at a one-to-one ratio, as you can see here. I mean, the highest quartile is, vacancy is increased by, that would be like 60, 70%, and then the lowest quartile, it's up a bit. But there is a positive impact on availability and therefore affordability as you get into any scatter plots like where vacancy rose the most or where you have the highest vacancy rates. That's where you tend to see larger drops in rent. And at a sort of more holistic view, if you're looking at where rental supply outpace, population, like where there were more new units coming to market than there was population growth, you see the same effect, right? So to me, this makes a very strong case that if we're going to try to make housing affordability policies rather than trying to like tinker with monetary supply

or add like a couple of units here and there at the margins, like I think there is still a case for subsidized affordable housing for that most core in need market. But for the whole market and for the average working person, what you need to do is just allow more housing to be built. I agree. I guess the challenge has become like the debt, you know, with yield is getting blown out, more and more CMHC projects become unviable. So I'm like, well, you're already seeing, you know, the CMHC housing search data beginning to taper off.

I would imagine it's going to continue over the next little bit until we get into a better credit environment. So do we, yeah, particularly. Do we think that that can... Sorry, go ahead. Finish your question. No, I was just going to say, like, can that, like, is that a trend that can sustain or are we kind of past that point in the cycle where, you know, like,

inflationary yields are going up and, you know, we're back to supply starting to drop and inevitably the government's going to ramp up immigration again in the next couple of years. Well, I think from a, from a supply perspective, obviously, we've seen things taper up because of the amount of uncertainty that we've seen, You know, people don't know if the demand is going to be there to absorb these units. But like I said, you can't just rely on monetary factors to drive new housing construction or housing affordability. Like, you need to actually make it easier to build housing. And as much as people don't like to admit it, a lot of that is not on the federal government or even the provincial governments.

It happens at the municipal level, right? We can say, okay, we can make construction cheaper by allowing cheaper financing. But if you could get the timeline shortened or some of the other costs that happen at the municipal level development fees, land transfer taxes, that sort of thing. I think the timelines is a big one. Like it takes so long to rezone and permit and approve a property. And often if it's a larger project, it will be, it'll go to these public hearings. They'll have the whole design and everything ready to go. And then they'll say, no, come back with something smaller.

We don't think about the time value of money at the municipal level, and we don't think about how much. I think most government. It's just, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they don't care. They don't care how long it takes to, you know, they don't know that developers paying millions of dollars on land debt before they approve the project, right, a mortgage on that land. And that's on a variable rate, too, typically. And like the staff from imagination is that the average time for a new purpose-built rental project

from first application to completion on average is 100 months, which is a long time, right? Even if you're trying to make financing cheaper, for example, that's still going to take, what, eight and a half years to work its way through seeing your results. Whereas if you could speed up the timelines, you could cut, you know, immediately a couple years off of that time, I think, and that would say a tremendous amount of carrying cost, of financing cost of staffing cost. And that all flows through. It reduces market risk too.

Yeah, exactly. Right? Yeah. Then similar, that circles back nicely to what you're talking about with like the cap reeds of the world. Like this is where, you know, if supplies were still ripping and that's pushing rents down, then, you know, that's a little bearish on a cap rate of the world. But a lot of these guys, like cap reed is a good example.

Allied's a good example. Allied built a well with, you know, Rio Can and Diamond Corps was in it, but they're not anymore. But anyway, you know, they're adding at, they're using these programs to add more assets, more income streams. So there's like that's the bull case for them. But then the bear case is if they're not doing that with the capital that they're, that they have, they're vulnerable to rents continuing to fall and more supply coming

online to compete with them. Yeah, I mean, I think the quality apartment rates are pretty well positioned because most of their rents are below market, right? So if you start looking at what they're presenting, like they have rents, they're still able to increase rents because they're well below the average market rents. So I think they're in a decent position. But I think for me, it all remains like staying with quality. I don't think you want to start investing in stuff that's not sketchy, but not the best managed companies, because that's where you can get in trouble. And just on the municipal front, I wonder,

and you both probably have more experience in this than me, but I did start working when one of my first jobs at the city of Ottawa. And I do know at the city for workers and especially, well, not especially, but I think it's a big part of it. When you have the zoning consultation, there's a lot of loud voices for NIMBY's, right? And I do wonder to what extent that impacts the speed because you have managers that are in place, employees, you have counselors that hear the loud voice is the most. Sure, they may also, I'm sure they hear from developers that they need things to be sped up, but they're elected every four years.

And they have like developers, I mean, they won't give them elected. That's just the honest truth. Yeah. No, 100%. Well, I mean, we've seen what happened with the federal government. Like, I don't think the Carney government has gotten in trouble with any, for anything other than doing something nice for developers. which was like, I don't really, like, I don't, the bailout, like, you know, logic is less, less developer to me than just market.

But for sure, like, most politicians, you know, I think we've arrived into, like, this populist era of politics. And if people can reject multiplexes or, you know, big projects, like, it's easy for them to get a political win if they have a bunch of angry homeowners that they can appease. I mean, at a municipal level, you see it, like, you can, you see it a ton right now, municipal elections. You want to add there, Jeff? Yeah, something that we're just seeing today is that I was having trouble

to find the press release where the stream video this is going to be, but apparently it's going to be an announcement from the Alberta provincial government on what they call like thoughtful housing development or whatever. And it's, you know, they're making the announcement with the premier and the industry minister and then someone who is well known as like part of these kind of NIMBY opposition groups in Edmonton. because Calgary, as you might know, they had done a citywide rezoning thing, which was actually leading to stimulated housing construction. They reversed it after a new council was elected.

Edmonton has been doing looser zoning regulations for a long time. They've been very progressive on market-based housing policy. And of all the cities in Canada, they've done the best job of keeping rents low and housing prices low. but they've sort of now leapfrogged the government, which was re-elected the city government. They've leapfrog them, gone up to the province and are trying to get them to, I guess, restrict municipal zoning, which is the opposite of what we've seen everywhere else in Canada

where the provinces are trying to push cities to loosen zoning regulations in Alberta. They're trying to tighten. Well, I don't know if I'll give Ford that much credit because I feel like Ford started at four and then he got nimbied into going to, three with Bill 23, right? Which I feel like Bill 23, you know, is to, you know, up down, like, you know, put a

basement apartment in your house or whatever. There's already tons of those over there. It's like tolerable for the average person or like a garden suite or whatever. Toronto, though, is interesting because Chow's running and, you know, doing okay. And both Olivia Chow and Brad Bradford would be supportive of infill, like scale of development. I think in Toronto is probably a different beast, though. Like, they don't have this massive sprawling landmass where they, They could say, well, they do.

They also have to appease all the boomer homeowners that don't want to see them, all that stuff erased. Whereas, you know, they have like city suburbs, I guess you would call them. You know, Edmonton, they could just do what Calgary did and be like, well, let's just go out another 100 acres and 100 acres at a time. Yeah, it was interesting. We did our event out there with CMHC and a couple of other companies in Edmonton. And it's kind of mixed.

But I think nimbism is just something you see everywhere. People are just very protective of property rights. And they forget that the owner who's developing also has property rights. Yeah, that's the other thing for me is that's the idea that you have the right to everyone else's property around the property you bought. Yeah. Like I've never thought about even as a homeowner. Capitalism does give you that right. You just have to buy it.

Right? Like, you can, you could, you could not develop a multiplex on the house next door. You just have to buy the property. It's like, if you guys all care about this, put your money where your mouth is and put together a million bucks and take the capital risk and own the property yourselves. Yeah, that's how. Maybe the, uh, that's how capitalism works. Maybe the solution for those people, which, you know, I wouldn't be opposed to people

necessarily doing this, but it would be to, uh, instead of trying to do restrictive covenants and all this sort of stuff, form a corporation that actually buys the land and has a, like, a centrally-clanned community of landowners. But the idea of that's what I can do. It's just trying to obstruct this to the government is like, yeah. I don't know if you ever seen one of these public hearings, but they are excruciating. Oh, yeah, dude. I go to them all the time.

They are. We should live stream one of those. Simone, anything else you want to, they do live-stream, actually. They're on, they put them on YouTube every single one. And it's amazing to watch. It's hilarious. But anything else you want to shine? I know we had a couple more other topics we wanted to get into there.

I think those were the biggest things. I think we talked about, yeah, bond yield, real estate, data centers, consumer discretionary, private credit. So if there's anything else on your mind or a millennial moron, if there's anything that comes to mind quick, I think we're good on my end. You had Jeb to dump dunk on pension funds for a minute if you want. So you are on the Canadian investor podcast. This isn't the real estate one. So you have people who get stocks and all that. I think I do that all the time.

But it's, you know, my opinion on active management versus passive management. And I think active management needs to start doing a better job of justifying their fees if they want to keep their jobs, especially when they're working with public money. Although they don't necessarily face the same level of scrutiny that perhaps they should. But to add on to a topic that we talked about earlier, the population revisions, I think a lot of, lot of people are confused about what the source of those was. And so what I did was I started pulling all the IRCC data for study and work permits. Let's share this here. And kind of built it into a dashboard for myself.

Vibode? Vodhashing? Sure. But yeah, basically what I found was that it was these, there's like a post-graduation work permit category in here. Yeah. I think it's under Canadian insurance. Yeah, post-grad employment. So what we saw was this huge surge in these permits in the first couple quarters of

2026, and that's associated with a big spike a couple years prior in study permits, right? And so you become eligible for these work permits after you complete your program, and the system got so backlogged with them. And this is why Stat Can made this error in their methodology and hadn't updated it in time. I think a lot of people think they're trying to push a false narrative, but I think it's just because of the way this all happened. Their previous methodology worked just fine for when we had a slow and steadily growing temporary resident population. We had this big surge in students. And then all of their permits were expiring while they still had an application in for their post-graduation work permit, which they were allowed to get.

So they were very backlogged processing those. And then by the time they had processed them, a lot of the study permits had expired, but they were allowed. to stay on maintained status while their application was pending. So what was counted as a lot of outflows in the stat can data were actually people just waiting on these post-graduation work permit approvals. And that really tied together the discrepancy I was seeing between Statcan and CMH, or not CMHC, IRCC data, where StackC was showing work permit holders dropping off, whereas IRCC was showing them flat at about one and a half million.

It was just study permit holders converting. to work permit holders through the regular process. And they wouldn't have caught it in the first release this year, the Q4-2020-5 release, because IRCC data is like not complete for the last few months. Then in the June release, they've warned us that there were going to be huge revisions because they could start to see this coming. And then September is when they normally do changes to methodology revisions to pass data. And so that's that's when it all showed up.

That's why we saw this big change in population, which was driven by, changed temporary residence, primarily driven by a change in work permit holders. But for other things like asylum seekers and study permit holders, they were actually tracking it pretty accurately. They just were not capturing that lag in the conversion between study permit and post-graduation work permit holders. I think I would see it as a transitory status. I mean, it is, it is. Most famous Canadian word ever. But I think, It was too easy.

That won't happen again, right? Like, we, because we haven't really ever had this, like, these two violent, like, corrections and, you know, like the whipsaws and those data curves where we had massive increase in international students and then massive drop-off, you know, even, like, because the drop-off did happen. Like, people, lots of non-firmary residents have left, not nearly the 7 to 5% drop that they've mentioned, but just not enough to offset how much growth we've seen, right? Yeah.

Well, another interesting thing was that there were, and, you know, this is not going to make a difference to people who are concerned about, like, quality of life issues and per capita GDP and whatever. But there were downward revisions to population in the Trudeau years in this set. I can find it here, but they, it was basically they went back with CBSA, the Canada Border Services Agency data. They are adding that in. and yeah, I'll put it up here, but they started capturing people

who had left the country before their permit expired, which they also weren't capturing before, right? So they were overestimating population to some extent. Like you can see here back in like Q3 of 2024 or even all the way back to like 2023, we were overestimating population

and we had these switch into bars, but we had downward revisions to those quarters, right? And it's just these last few that we've seen upward revisions. I make your down bars red, man.

This is just for me, really. Your guys are seeing behind the scenes right now. Nice. But that is a good idea. Yeah, I'm interested to see, do you think that the government will be able to get that non-permit resident population down to 5%

it feels like it's completely very unlikely within the time? By the end of 2027? No. Well, yeah, at any point, I don't think they're going to do it at any point. I think they'll leave it high or like, oh, or like that population will just gradually become PR, right? And then so that's how they'll get absorbed in. This is a matter of can they do it versus will they do it?

And I mean, they could. Well, yeah, but the political pushback of what's necessary to do that is I think that they're not something they want to. I don't think that. I guess they just have so much political. cover on everything at this point because of the trade war, right? Like all of the issues that we were talking about and then, you know, some earlier in the episode, you and I were talking about this was the, you know, these are the issues that Trump's election was run on.

Housing affordability, you know, immigration, whatever, right? That was the same election in Canada, but now we, you know, as the victims on the trade war side, like politicians have a lot of political cover to ignore a lot of the issues that Canadians had problems with before, you know, we're always talking about housing affordability, not not nearly as much as we were before the trade war. I don't know if it's just a trade war, to be honest, because I think the Quebec election, I don't know, if that's any indication of how the other elections will go,

we'll have to see with BC. But the Quebec election just showed that you can only use Trump and the trade war for so long until people will just start tuning your out, right? Yeah, I would agree with that at a provincial level because I think that they assume, like I think in a lot of cases, that you see Eby do this a lot, where it's like we have to stand up to Trump and whatever.

It's like, well, like you guys don't sit really sit at the same table. So like, I get there's certain things you can do. But like, you know, what is Doug Ford doing with this stuff too, right? Just like poking the bear and exacerbating issues.

I think that you, you kind of assume that voters are stupid. If you are acting like you as a premier, you know, can do a lot about that. It's a federal issue. And so they have to go, go, oh, okay, that's not resonating with the voters. Let's pivot to something that actually is

and is relevant to them and something that we should actually be focused on. I think that people elected Mark Carney to deal with this issue and that's his mandate. And so like provinces need to deal with province problems, right? I don't know. That's my thought on it. Yeah, I mean, what's that? What about bike lanes? Isn't that the top issue for the province of Ontario? Yeah, yeah, Apparently. I guess we'll see what happens in Toronto election. Maybe they'll all be gone. Sorry, Samuel. Were you going to say, was there anything you wanted to add? No, I was just going to say, I think, from, I'm just looking at the top issues here from Ipsos for BC. So they released a survey in the top issues. I guess people could have answered more than one.

But again, same thing as the Quebec election, same thing as the U.S. election, cost of living inflation. Number one. Number two, same thing. What's that? not trade war like nothing not trade war yeah no the US trade and tariffs issue so I'll just show it

because I think this is super this is great to see because you're I think EB as I think thought he could capitalize on the trade war

and I think you're seeing that very similar to Quebec actually Quebec was just like one issue I think here you probably just based on the percentages people could pick several issues

but you had cost of living same as Quebec healthcare, same as Quebec number two. And then secondary issues, US trade and tariff issues, comes in pretty far behind, like middle of the path.

Like, it's not, yeah, like, just same as crime in public safety. Yeah. Well, and like crime and public safety to me, well, crime and public safety and like healthcare

are the only two in like that top set that are sort of like on their own. But if you like at the cost of living and inflation, housing affordability and availability and jobs in the economy, like those are all like grouped into one issue, right? So, like, it's very much an economic election. Exactly. And we, you know, so like, you can't really be told, you know, it's hard to convince voters that they should be caring about the trade war and tariff issues at a provincial

level in this election if they've clearly decided that that's not the case. But it's amazing to me that it's the same thing, B.C. Kittack and the U.S. Like, these issues have been downloaded to provincial governments now because the Fed got, because the Fed capitalized on the political cover from the trade war, I feel like. That's probably what happened. But it also goes to show how the aggregate economic data is just so misleading. Like, I mean, from a GDP perspective, the U.S. is crushing it. Still, there's the same concerns.

And I think what you're starting to see more and more is people are feeling, and I'll steal a term from who was it, vibe session? vibe session. I'm sure wear my vibe session t-shirt. Freelands. Yeah. I think she has a new book out, but I think I saw it not a couple days ago. But I think people are just, the reality is like you can tell me that everything's going

as rosy is going great. The economy is doing well. But if I'm having trouble making ends meet on a week to week basis or every time I get paid, I just use my paycheck almost right away. Like, this is what happens. And it's not specific to any province, to any country. I think it's like this around the world. I mean, it's not, yeah, I think it's just where we're at right now.

Yeah, I don't have much else to say. It's just so obvious. I don't know. Yeah, if you look at like CPI data even going back like quite a while, it's not just an issue affecting us right now. It's if you look at those core areas of expenditure like housing food and transportation, those are typically growing faster than overall CPI inflation. And in many cases, I think food in particular has been growing faster than wages for quite some time. Like,

it's really not just the last 10 years or however long people have been feeling it. But it's, it's now gotten to the point where people are coining the term luxury poverty, where it's, you know, luxuries are cheap. Like, it's very, it's much cheaper today to buy a flat screen TV than it would have been to buy. like a crappy little CRT, you know, back in the 90s or 2000s. But everything else, like all the stuff that you actually need, need to live your life, is thinking of a bigger and bigger portion of people's incomes. These guys in touch with the Gen Z struggle, man. That's cool.

I never heard that, but that's, that's, that's, that's, that's well said. I think that's really, like, and we're, we're in this, like, I think the big problem is we're so disparate. People see the rich getting super rich, like rich are the richest that I've ever been. And they feel like I can hardly, you know, I work my ass off. I feel like I make a ton of money and I have no money. And that's just like, I don't know, it breaks people, man. I feel like that's what the society is just about.

And politicians, a lot of them, like, I mean, they're all fine. So they don't, they're not in touch with the real struggles of their voters. Yeah. Like one thing I've said once is that I feel like I kind of sprinted through the door to the middle class before it slammed shut behind me. Right. Right. You know, like right around when I graduated, if you could manage to get a job in that economy, which is also not that great back then. But if you had like a professional degree from a good university, you kind of punched your ticket to the middle class and like a, you know, a decent comfortable lifestyle. And by comfortable, I mean, you're not uncomfortable, right? You're not wondering about how you're going to afford rent next month. You're not wondering where your next meal is going to come from. You're not necessarily living a ton of luxury, but you don't have a ton of. financial stress unless you decide to create it for yourself somehow.

But now you have people graduating and it's, you know, they're struggling just to keep their head above water, even if they get a job, even if they're working full time or, you know, working overtime, whatever. Like when I, when I graduated the first job, I got out of university,

which took a while to get, but it paid like 60,000 a year, which was good money back then. It wasn't like, you know, I wasn't live in large, but it was decent money. And now that same, job still pays $60,000.

But $60,000 is not $60,000 anymore. Yeah. It's inflating away the middle class, man. Here. Historically, this only ever ends in revolution. I think this is the most disparate, like, we've been ever without a revolution. So. The bearer speaks, but, I mean, but the one thing I'll add to, I think that's a great point you made,

because I think economists tend to focus on the. rate of inflation and the Bank of Canada and the Fed too. But it's cumulative, right? It's cumulative, exactly. Like, I think they just, they kind of forget. Like, it's just so funny how sometimes they're tone deaf. It's just they forget that, you know, comparing to 2019, 2020, before we had those, like, massive increases of inflation 21, 2020.

I mean, it just compounds over it. And people are feeling it wages, like you said, millennial moron. Like, it just hasn't kept up with that inflation and now it just compounds on. And that's what people are feeling. They don't care that inflation has gone back down to two and a half, three percent. All daycare is that when they go to the grocery store instead of, you know, paying $100, now it's $150. And their salary has only increased 10% in that time frame.

So something's got to give. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think that the consumer, like at a certain point the consumer breaks and it's going to have to like take down the economy and probably not take it down. But you know, it'll erase a lot of that paper wealth that's been created by these trades that are that are creating that disparity, right? Like I that's just how it normalizes. Or you have a revolution, which I'm not cheering on by the way.

It wouldn't be that fun. What's a positive thing before we wrap this up? Like any of you two have something positive before? just so we don't end on revolution? Yeah, well, look, I actually feel like, you know, based on a lot of the things that we discuss, other than like, I mean, things are messy here, but you're cleaning up like a 15-year, I don't know how to say this, like, without being too political, but just like a mess of politics, right?

Like from the, you know, the Trudeau area, I think we just didn't do, we did a lot, we made a lot of mistakes during that period of time as a country. And I think that, you know, I'm confident that things are being cleaned up. I think that Canada has a decent service area. for exposure to a lot of really, really good trades and economic growth that could happen as a result of the things that we need. I think we have, you know,

the not just leadership, but people in Canada are paying attention to the fact that we, you know, we care about our resources again now. We want to, you know, we want to lean into that. We want to, you know, do a better job at diversifying our economy. Like I could see this being like, you know, the golden age for Canada, you know, like, it could become a

I think there could be a really good period ahead for us if we play our cards right and I think the trade war stuff's gone in two years anyway. Might even be gone after the midterms but I think it's gone before that yeah yeah yeah so I'm not I'm not I mean it's a passing passing ship in the night it's going to suck for a little bit

and it'll be like COVID it'll be like we'll look back on it and be like what a weird period of time you know but I think we position ourselves right on AI and on like data all the power all the power buildouts plus oil. Like, you know, if we're going to going into a trade where I'd rather do it when gold and oil and all these things are at historic levels.

And, you know, the only other one thing we didn't get to talk about. So we'll have to talk about a $80 next week. But it didn't, it didn't keep dropping the way it was. I'm not as topical. But we'll touch on it next week. Yeah. Cool. Is that positive enough?

Yeah. Yeah, that's good. I think I'm almost bullish on Canada. I think Canada is better positioned. most countries. I agree with you on that. Man, we went from, we went from like being one of the worst position in the world. Like we had to have our made in Canada recession when nobody else was getting smoked to now this well-driven recession, which will eventually probably happen. Probably be pretty mild, but like it's going to happen. Canada's will be fine by comparison to

everywhere else in the world. Like we probably would have had it the worst and been like an economic outlier and now we're probably in the best position or like, you know, among the best position. I think my good news story is I'll plug the Rentals.Ca National Rent Report that we just released yesterday. We've now seen 24 months of consecutive year-over-year declines in average asking rent for Canada. And we've seen this huge surge of first built rental constructions, which I know there's been a lot of skepticism about and the idea of, oh, they're making stuff that we can rent and not stuff that we can buy. But since the 70s, that's something we've really had just like not enough construction of is apartment buildings, right? What I lived in when I was early on in my career were apartment buildings that were built in the 70s and 80s. And then 90s, 20s were really building anything.

And I left this huge void of those older apartment buildings that is going to be with us for a while. But I do think that if there is demand for rental, which there is, because a lot of the condo construction units were being bought by investors to be rented out anyway, that it's better to have it kind of managed by a competent entity that knows what they're doing. doing and that can take advantage of economies of scale. And these buildings that we're building now, yes, they're expensive right now, but as they get to be 20, 30, 40 years old, they're going to be forming a core part of the affordable housing supply in the future. So hopefully for, you know, Gen Z is going to be screwed the whole time, I think, but maybe the next couple generations after that will be able to take into the same. Gen Z's kids will be all right. They'll hopefully be able to have the same kind of housing environment that, you know, it was not even that great at the time,

but you know, the sort of thing that I was able to enjoy where I could get an apartment that was a reasonable portion of my income. And that allows you to save and acquire assets, whether that's, you know, a house or whether you want to buy investments, whether you want to start a business, whatever it is. Like, not everybody needs to own their own home. Not everybody needs or wants to do that, but pretty much everyone wants to live indoors. And so that's why I always, say that having a healthy rental market. Yeah, having a healthy rental market is kind of the bedrock of a healthy housing market. I think we just lost half of the realtors listening to this.

No, that well said, man. That was better. That was more optimistic than mine. And he threw a bone to Gen Z. So hopefully we'll rank on TikTok now and maybe get some new listeners on the show. Amazing. We'll wrap it there. Yeah, I think that's a good spot to wrap it.

you have to go and do your presentation. So give you some time for a little bathroom break. Doing a presentation. So amazing. Okay. Thanks guys. Thanks for coming on. Thanks guys.

Bye. The Canadian Investor podcast should not be construed as investment or financial advice. The host and guests featured may own securities or assets discussed on this podcast. Always do your own due diligence or consult with a financial professional before making any financial or investment decisions.