The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #64 — Hanif Bayat: Macroeconomics and Entrepreneurship in Canada

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Our guest this episode is Hanif Bayat — founder and CEO of WOWA.ca, one of Canada's largest personal finance platforms. A former quantitative analyst at BMO and RBC with a Ph.D. in theoretical chemical physics from the University of Toronto, Hanif left banking in 2018 to build WOWA into a resource of over 1,000 calculators, guides and market reports now used by millions of Canadians every year. In this episode, Dave and Hanif dive into the state of the Canadian economy, starting with the story behind WOWA and how it grew into a platform reaching millions of page views. They explore the drivers of Canada's housing affordability crisis, why asset prices have climbed so far beyond the Consumer Price Index, and how loose monetary policy has reshaped what Canadians can actually afford. Along the way, Hanif shares his perspective on policy solutions for Canada's real estate market, the looming US debt, the lack of financial knowledge among consumers, and where the mortgage industry stands today. Whether you're trying to make sense of Canada's housing market or curious about the bigger economic forces shaping your finances, this episode is packed with sharp analysis and practical perspective you won't want to miss.   Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:55) Intro to Hanif Bayat (06:44) What is the WOWA Platform? (07:35) Reaching One Million Page Views (09:16) The Origin of WOWA (11:37) How AI Could Threaten Content Businesses (15:09) Drivers of Canada's Housing Affordability Crisis (18:44) Asset Prices vs. the Consumer Price Index (CPI) (21:51) Competitive Realities of the Modern Job Market (23:20) The K-Shaped Economy and the Impact of Asset Prices on Entrepreneurship (25:55) Policy Solutions for Canada's Real Estate Market (29:34) The Looming US Debt (32:07) Addressing the Lack of Financial Knowledge Among Consumers (35:05) Mortgage Industry Dynamics Today (36:49) Conclusion

Hey, it's Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber and former Dragon on Dragon's Dent. Welcome to the Wealthy Barber podcast. Well, we'll be hosting some of the top minds in the world of personal finance. Yes, that's to balance me out. The podcast is about making this subject not just easy to understand, but dare I say, even fun, honest. Whether you're trying to fund your retirement, figure out how to build a down payment, save for your kids' education, manage debts, whatever, will be here to help you.

You do it. Before we jump in, a quick but important note, nothing we discuss here should be taken as investment advice. We don't know you and your personal financial situation. So we're not here to tell you we're specifically to put your investment dollars. We're here to educate, get you thinking, and we hope entertain. But please do your own research and or consult with your financial advisor before taking any action. Hey everybody. It's Dave Chilton, the wealthy barber with the Wealthy Barber podcast. I say this almost every week, but we are thrilled with the feedback to the podcast. The total enlisting audience is continuing to grow. It's up to remarkably high numbers. We're often second in the country, the dire of a CEO, number one, often of the Canadian-produced

business podcast, so it's been great, but also how much we hear back from you. What do you still want to hear? Whom do you want us to have on? And we listen, by the way. We've woven a lot of that in to the podcast over time. I'm interested that ever since I announced I was retiring at the end of the year, a lot of people are approached me when I'm out in public. And honestly, more people mention the podcast than anything else and how they're going to miss it and the quality of the guests. So thank you so so much.

And we're going to continue that tradition today. We have a great guest on. Somebody who's becoming very well-known in personal finance circles in Canada. Hanif Bayet. It's funny. I asked him earlier, do you want me to hit the second syllable of Hanif? Is that how it's pronounced? and he said, I really don't care.

So I like that kind of attitude. I really do. I'd say whatever, whatever. And he is with Wola Leeds and remarkably interesting background. We're going to get a lot more to his current company in a moment. But his educational background is he has a PhD in theoretical chemistry. How do you get from that, which wasn't that long ago, I think you graduated U of T in 2011. We're only talking 15 years.

How do you get from that educational background over to that? to running a personal finance platform. I am a person that like many things. You know, it means I have lots of hobbies, especially when it comes to anything, you know, that need thinking. You know, I love history. Every single day I read history. I can now tell you the world war, even like based on months, maybe,

from like, you know, 1937 to 1945. So I have this wide range of interest. But it happened that I did my bachelor in physics, masters in physics, and PhD in chemistry. During the chemistry, we were doing quantitative things. It was a theoretical approach, to solve a problem. And those problems were like, you know, analytical problems.

But honestly, if someone was asking me 2011, do you see yourself in 15 years, no way I would say that, oh, I'm running this platform of personal finance. No way. So even when I was graduating 2011, I didn't have any plan to go to the bank. I wanted to go actually work higher education policy makings.

But I went to a few interviews just to know people, and people signaled to me that maybe it's better to you go. Another path, and I remember there was a guy that that at least sometime before was head of Calgary University. He told me that, you know, you have option in the bank. I said, I know I've seen someone went to the bank. I said, maybe you should go to that path because of like, right.

They appreciate more your, you know, technical skills and, you know, your quantitative skills. And so it was actually, when I was like defending my thesis, I decided to go to finance. First is very different than this one. It was like derivatives, like equity market. Well, that's what I was going to ask. So you're working on the quant side of derivatives and the capital markets, I assume. And I think you're with RBC and two banks.

With BMO as well, who was the other one? Yeah, BM on the RBC. Yes. Yeah. So, but again, even then, that is a long way from a personal finance platform. What made you jump over to this business? So I was mathematician before, and I was mathematician in the bank, to be honest. Right.

And that was chemistry with theoretical chemistry. So in the banks, I started learning finance. I knew about equities. Again, I always liked to read about finance or almost any subject. But that time that I got exposure, we were talking in the working environment about different subjects, about personal finance. And honestly, my, now that I'm thinking, my not. knowledge of personal finance was very weak. I couldn't even like when I got my first mortgage, I didn't know the difference between insured

mortgage and uninsurable mortgage, something that now someone, if it doesn't know, I would be surprised, but I was one of them, you know, that time. But during those discussion in the desk with others, not the work, honestly, that we were doing, because the work we were doing very mathematical is complex products, options, features. So it was not that one, but the talk that we were chatting, those chats, I don't. learned a lot about equity market, about products, you know, ETFs. So make it a story short, I become tired of that environment because again, it was too focused for me. I wanted to have like, you know, can approach and do different things. So then I quit. It was a very bold decision.

And I quit 18, like January 2018. And to be honest, I didn't have any clue what I'm interned. He means I never have done any entrepreneur work before. Like I had a website, but then it's very different. Money comes, money goes. You should have employee and you should have products. And then another funny thing is that typically when it comes to going to this path, typically if you talk, I haven't talked to much people that time, but they said I go to B2B business.

Do some product and sell it to another business. This is a much easier path. But we started B2C is like kind of the most complex one, especially in Canada. Maybe we covered that later, why, that you need to make happy a big audience to come to your platform. At the same time, you want to make happy some businesses to buy something, advertisement, whatever from you. So it's a very big step for me.

So in the first year, honest, now I'm looking back at 2018. I don't know what I was doing. I was doing it something from morning to night. I think I was just trying to figure out what's going on. Tell our audience, what is the business? Because I think if they understand exactly what the platform is all about, then it'll be easier to understand how you eventually kind of got your way there. So the platform is a personal finance encyclopedia.

So it has more than 1,000 page, and I'm not exaggerating. So 1,000 personal... He's not exaggerating. It really does. Calculators, all kinds of really cool things. It's a personal finance platform that it, cover all the products, more focus on real estate. So the focus, the start point was real estate. So you see more stuff about like housing market, like first home buyer incentives, mortgage,

anything about real estate journey. But by time we expanded to other things like equities, credit cards, ETFs, anything like taxes, all of those stuff. Now it's quite remarkable how many people use the site. They come there for the calculators. You update interest rates on the mortgage front, on the GIC front, lots of new fresh articles covering off current events and changes the tax policy, etc. It's not easy in Canada to build up the kind of numbers you have. I give you a lot of credit. I mean, some months I've read that you've had a half a million to a million unique visitors. That's remarkable a country of 40 million people. Yes, that's honestly very satisfactory that you see the impact of your work and you have done.

It's always I'm thinking that, okay, you wrote a book that is so two million, I was like trying to digest this one, honestly, like in 1980. Like you understand what I'm talking, that you, a big audience using a product that you're creating is very satisfactory. But people don't know that how hard is it. It means when we started, I said that 2018. 2018 I was like trying to figure out. Confused.

Confused. I know what I was doing. Right. Even until end of 2019, I don't think we reached even like a few even, like maybe a small 10 maybe organic visitors. The thing happened just in 2020 suddenly. But I could see the past. I was seeing like a specific, one of our specific pages was like page third of the Google noise

going to the second page of Google. You see that is something happening in 2013. But suddenly I reach one million page views per month, more than half a million. Now is a bit less because of the AI impact. Now is half a million monthly visitors. They are more committed than before, but AI has an impact. impact the penalty. But yeah, we have now half a million page views each month. So did you pattern this after the fellow out of Britain who's had so much success with a

similar type platform with the articles and the tools and credit card rates? You probably were watching what he was up to. And of course, that's been an amazing success. Did you learn a lot from his efforts? Actually, RST is very different. Many people say that what is WOLWO means, okay? Actually, when we asserted, we wanted to be marketplace for real estate agents. So Wow agent was the first I mean. We didn't want to make this fun. We make this marketplace for real estate agents that you can see their transaction, you can see their fees, something that, okay, you can go each neighborhood and you want to know, okay, who has done more transaction? Because that was

my experience that, okay, instead of going to friends and everyone, it's better to go and talk to who has done transaction in that building, you know, in the last three years, who is the most, who understand the most neighborhood? But for many reasons, that didn't. progress well. That's another story. But during that, we make contents, lots of real estate content. Right. People come to our website and see, okay, this is real estate. And those were real estate content. And suddenly we saw, oh, we have a traffic and we are earning more from mortgage side, not real estate side. So we kept that business for a while, but then we said that, okay, when the money comes from the mortgage and lenders, maybe it's better to focus that one. But honest, it was not like I decided to do that one. No, it was like making content to make it cheaper for customer acquisition for the real estate agent side. Then I see that this is working.

And there are platforms in Canada that have done similar work like Raythob is the main one. So I could see that it, okay, they started in 2007. It's very different that you started in 2018. But we saw that the traffic is moving up. So we continue just make page after page. So we continue that one in the last like eight years. Now when you talk about weed, you have a lot of the last like eight years. Now, when you talk about weed, do you have a big team? Have you raised capital or have you

bootstrapped all of this? We raised very small capital just from friends and family. At first that I didn't have income. So it's very small amount of money. After that, no, we didn't raise. So we just bootstrapping after that one. And the team is not big. It's 10. So we work a lot. Yeah, you put out a lot of content for sure. That's quite impressive that you've been able to do that. You mentioned AI and how it's had a negative impact on the traffic because people are turning to the chat GPTs and the Anthropics almost as search engines now. Are you worried that when agentic AI becomes a regular part of people's lives, they're basically

going to say to their agent, go find me the best mortgage rate current to today, do all the homework for me, make the connection, et cetera, and that's going to put the site's traffic in jeopardy. Of course. Good, good honest answer. I like that. Very succinct. Very succinct. I say reality, and I talk to people that AI is like the invention of electricity.

I was telling that from two years ago, people tried to say that, okay, this is computer or this is cars. It's not, none of them. If you look at the history, it's 1879 that Thomas Edison. There was electricity before that, but light up a press lamp. In like in two years, it light up the Manhattan. And if you look at the history, like I'm talking about 1879 the third. By 1900, there was electricity in many parts of the U.S. because it passed. And then just look at what happened after that.

Many works that were being done by hands suddenly started to be done by devices that people were not thinking that is possible from doing laundry or anything. So this is, we are dealing something like that. It's not like computer. Completely agree. Companies just replace something else, you know. Yeah, it's going to be woven into every aspect of our life. We'll create new opportunities, new challenges too.

lots of displacement, but it's going to be a fascinating next few years. Watching all this play out. But I still love your answer, of course, because you're right. All of us who are in the information business in some way, shape, or form are intimidated by what is coming through AI. Of course. The thing is that in the fair, if it was everything fair, I think content creators should get some reward from these AI companies. Because what is... They're training on us.

Exactly. But it's not happening. Okay, so that's a reality. And so it's very clear by time they become better and better and they are becoming better and better. So the thing is that we are seeing the impact on the traffic. That's reality. But that's the reason we switching the other side of the business

that actually is selling data. Because the data that now we sell, some of them is proprietary, not secondary. What does mean is that we don't survey. Okay, we don't serve it. So what is the appetite for a specific product? And you're not publicly putting this out there either because then it can get trained. Absolutely.

I mean, I think that's your future probably. These AI algorithm at end need data. Now they are getting everything free, but eventually they need data, real data to distinguish themselves. For example, one of the data that we have, because maybe the viewers would be interesting for your viewers is that. Like big six banks in Canada, you know, the advertiser rate that everyone knows that. It's not a real right. Everyone knows that. But what is the real rate?

how you can get the real rate. There's nowhere, actually. We run a survey, we sell that weekly report, that we say that, okay, as of now, like in this sample of people, like RBC is giving, for example, 3.89 for three-year fixed. And actually what they are rating,

the advertises 4.7 something. So this is, for example, very valuable information for more people or others that no one else has. I know it's amazing. A lot of Canadians still don't know that. Don't know that. You can grind down to a much lower rate, and you've made the point in another medium that it can be 0.48.7.

I mean, we're talking huge differences, especially extended over a lot of years. So, but you know what our listeners are going to find interesting is that we've talked about your rather unique educational background. We've talked about your current website and how you make your living. But none of that is why I reached out to you initially. When I called you way back, it's because I enjoy a lot of your macro views. So even though you're not an economist by training, that's how I first came across. you was following some of your thinking about the macro space. And I particularly liked it as it applied to real estate, where you've had some very unique

takes and very deep takes. I'm not surprised earlier when you said you're very curious that you study history because I found you've done a good job of coming at the real estate market from a lot of different perspectives, that you're not saying exactly what everybody else is saying. So for a few moments, let's take it that direction. When we look at the affordability challenges in Canada, on the real estate, estate front. In your mind, what has kind of led to this over the years? How did we get here? Again, there are lots of factors when it comes to real asset is always better. It's a supply and

demand. Demand has two aspects. One is a real demand. One is a speculative demand. So demand has two sides. When it comes to supply, supply production is very dependent on regulation too, because regulation and friction, for example, development. fee or how long does it take that a person can start and finish a project because all of them add a risk to the whole thing. So then look at all of this one. So then you try to look at everywhere in North America. Then you try to see that, okay, what caused things in Canada? For example, is it population growth? Is it restrictive zoning? The low interest rates? There are so many factors. But one thing that we studied clearly is that most of the thing happened in Canada,

happened between 2005 and 2015. It means we try to look at two a snapshot. It's 2005, 2015, 2015, 2025, and most of the thing happened that time. So that actually makes things interesting because the population growth that time was not that huge, which was not like what we have seen in the last maybe five, six years.

So then what caused it? And then when you look closely, you see that most of this is actually monetary policy. Again, I'm making a decision that people People make, that's unfortunate in the politics, they make, there's some, they give some medication that if I see the economy as a sick person, that it helps the person at the moment, but it's not very clear what's its impact, like in terms of them. So if you go to your personal doctor and say, okay, I cannot sleep, it doesn't give you

colonos, pump, for, like, you know, some specific drug that addictive every night. They don't do that. They say to try something that is not addictive. But cheap money is something that everywhere they are doing, I'm very honest, because politicians see the term that they are there, most of them. And always cheap money is good. What's bad? Well, that's one of the problems. We all love democracy, but it's big challenges that the number one priority of every politician is to get reelected.

And therefore, naturally, you tend to think short term about the economy and low interest rates in the short term tend to do some positive things. But they lead to a lot of speculation and a lot of other things that you and I will talk about in the moment. So I'm with you. I think that was the biggest single driver. Now, we took rates low, of course, coming out of the credit crisis, made a lot of sense. But we were trying to survive the systemic risk, but we kept them so low for so long that it drove up prices. And one of the things you've really highlighted, even lately you've been talking about again, is what's happened with the asset values flying up relative to incomes and relative to CPI. And so for those of us who are older, boomers, we have a lot of the assets. We own our own home. We have stocks within our RRSs, etc. For those people starting out, they're forced to pay inflated valuations for many of the assets that they're trying to invest the wealthy barber 10 and 15% in. Exactly. And do you know, people don't talk enough, in my opinion, about this matter. But again, it's in my opinion.

One of the lies that everyone, I don't know is lie or misunderstanding. I don't know how to frame it. Right. The valuation of the money is inflation. No, the valuation of money is not inflation. Inflation is a basket that you use in like you have meal, grocery, and everything. Shelter, transportation. It goes again, the way it comes from the population, okay, that end of the day.

So if you are more older people that paid off their homes, the effect goes down in that inflation. So the point is that, no, the valuation of the money comes from money supply. Money supply is increasing in the rate of close to 7% in the last 20 years. It means that the money we have in the society, okay, I'm just making things simple because we can go M1 or M2 or M3. I'm going with M2 definition. The money supply is become doubled in 10 years. So we're averaging 7.7% a year type thing.

Exactly. And 7.1. And now you go and check the inflation at that time. It's average. is, I don't know, one and a half, something like that. And GDP growth is like, for example, two percent. The combination of GDP growth plus inflation is like maybe four percent. So then what's the difference there? That three percent. So then you see that the gold, the impact on their housing, you see everywhere. And people see at home, just look at gold now. Gold is one of the things

that from old ancient time people bought it because it keeps its value. It's always, why it keeps its value simple because all of the mines in world maybe generate maybe one or two percent equivalent of the current supply, whatever is the supply, is it? Right. We're adding maybe one or two percent. Even it's not that constant even, like it's not, is it growing, but with very slow rate. And the gold, if I'm not mistaken, the growth in the last 20 years, it was more than like 11 or 12 percent annually compounded.

Yeah, it's defeated the standard and pours over certain time segments that you take in terms of return. So you're right. In a way we always used to say that an ounce of gold should be able to buy you a very high quality men's suit. And that's kind of the comparison they made. But I think what you're really saying here is that all this money printing is spilled over outside of the regular CPI into asset inflation. And that assets have gone up at a faster pace than they have historically putting those who haven't yet purchased them at a disadvantage. And I think we really see it with housing in Ontario. It's amazing to me how many boomers, to me as I travel across the country, all these young kids are complaining. They're whining too much. It was always tough. It was tricky for us. Interest rates were higher. That's a fair point. But holy smokers, think about the down payment relative to your income 30 years ago. Compared to today, it's way harder to build a down payment today relative to incomes than it was for precisely your point. And the job market is much more competitive. So something they don't

look at from that perspective. I remember I was in university. I told you that when I was doing PhD was a professor of history, was not in my major, not telling me that when I was in third year of the like PhD, he already had the offer of the job. Right. Okay, finish your PhD and come and join the faculty of Finerys of Toronto. Now at this, in the same major,

if my understanding is not updated, is like it takes six or eight years to get the PhD in history and you should make it like a book, something like fascinating. And after that, there's no job. So I'm just comparing some of the realities that they don't see that, that job market has become more competitive. So, no, there is a real pain. And now over all of this, all of this thing that happened, that it's very hard to save for down payment, the job market is tough.

The AI is coming. And guess what? The AI is not targeting actually older people. That's an interesting part. It first target the inter-level. No, no question. And I see it with the people who have truly been replaced. It's been the entry level positions, go to a law firm and think about the juniors who are helping with the research.

There are now programs through AI that can do that very effectively. Many times they're adding to the productivity of those who stay, but that's the point. There's fewer people needed therefore. And again, that puts more pressure. A lot of what you're talking about here is that case-shaped economy. And I have said many times that I normally don't like those simplistic analogies, but I like the case-shaped economy analogy because we are seeing the people who have good incomes. they also have the assets. And so because assets are doing very well heading up.

And then people who are struggling with the cost of living don't have the assets and their lives aren't keeping up. And we really are getting the K-shaped. And it's unfortunate and not healthy for society long term. Not that all. Because, you know, for example, to become an entrepreneur, I'm just giving one example. At least you need some safety. When I quit, I work for a while.

Do you know, my wife has a job. So, you know, the thing is that you're, you're, have this buffer that, okay, something bad happened, I can go back, but I have money for this. A couple of years, I have this house, for example. But another thing is happening is that when younger people go feel this kind of pressure from different directions, one that, okay, I cannot buy what my parents bought, that's a reality. An AI is coming. One of the other things happening is that I don't have any asset, I don't have any buffer. Okay. So I cannot quit my job. So it means that there's not much upside from like, you know, I quit or start something that's risky because there's no

buffer. There's already struggling to have a kid. You see it very clearly like in not only Canada, in many other countries that there's a biggest struggle about having kids from both time and money, you know what I mean? Because already are on depression. I have to cut in and say that to any listeners, Henifah is bang on here on both those fronts because I hear it all the time. My kids are in their 30s. I know their friend group and I know my friend's kids and so many are talking about having two, one or zero children because of financial pressures. But you made such a key point a moment to go because of these challenges, building a down payment, et cetera, that buffer's not there that lets people take the risk to start a business and we're seeing business formation trend

out. You have to look deeply at the numbers because a lot of one person companies where people are incorporating themselves professionally is skewing the data. But when you look at people starting up companies to employ multiple people, we're seeing that trending down. And a lot of it's because of the point that you mentioned. So let me go a different direction, a positive direction. Let's go to real estate specifically. What are the policymakers missing?

So if you look at this from a quant perspective, you're a very math-oriented person, what are they missing? What would you do differently? How can we help on the affordability front? What can we change? Oh, okay. That's a very interesting question. No one asked me like that because it's very easy to criticize things.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm good at that. I love this criticizing, but coming up with solutions, it's tough because it's a complex world. And, you know, there's no simple solution or the politicians would be doing it. But on the supply side, do you see any opportunities for us to make some policy changes there? One thing that is when we comes to increase the rates or decrease the rates, we should not only look at inflation, CPI inflation, We should look at assets too. But this is a very long process.

And the one will do that because there's no political incentives and other stuff. But that's one of the things. So if we have done that, we would increase the rate sooner than 2016. We would increase it like maybe 2014. That's one aspect. Then people look at a bit more long term about monetary policy. That's what they are doing because they're just printing cheap money. this cheap money doesn't go to those young people.

It goes to those older people or those people that already have a rich. You know what I mean? So that's one thing. Second is that is regulation. You know, people don't understand any risk, any entrepreneur takes or any builder takes or any, it will pass eventually to the end consumer. It's always like that. That's a joke that if you think that, okay, we increase the tax of developer.

And somehow just their margin change is not like that. They pass it to you. Okay. So I think regulation and my article in the globe also mentioned is one of the main aspect. You see the Texas, one of the example, you see Texas versus California. I'm not talking about Canada. Right. But Texas, the population growth is much more than Canada into some parts.

The people are just going to Texas in the last, I don't know, five, ten years. And what do you think? Yeah, there was a home price growth. but it's cheap. It's like Montreal. It's like even not Montreal, maybe like suburb of Montreal, like from the price prospective. And the salaries are much higher. How does this happen? Because they build. People come, they build. People come, they build. If you have that kind of mentality. And regulation is honest is one of the main thing. Like after monetary policy, I think regulation, because we can absorb more population, at least from the housing market, if our supply elastic enough, our supply is very,

inelastic. It's very inelastic. So, okay, of course, when you bring one million people come back, it takes five years to build something for them. So of course it doesn't work because they want to live now, that place. Right. No matter whom we have on the show, left, right, whatever, everybody believes that we've got to be careful of the amount of regulation we have in Canada, figure out ways to limit it to some extent. Many of the regulations are well thought, well intended, but cumulatively, they can overwhelm the business environment. But also, how do we speed up the implementation. How do we make it more crystal clear for people so they can gauge the risk, figure out the timeframes ahead of time? We have to take that a lot more seriously. We pay

lip service to that all the time. Politicians always talk about that being a key part of a platform, but nothing ever changes. And I think for a lot of business people, they're going, holy smokes, this is too much. And unfortunately, we're driving some capital away. So it's hard to disagree with any of your points. You know, all decisions in politics and life involve tradeoffs. That's why they're decisions in the first place. And it's tough. We talked about you were saying higher interest rates maybe earlier because we saw what was happening with the asset price inflation.

But of course, politicians are looking at that and saying, I'm not going to get reelected, going back to our earlier theme. And so they're trying to balance all this off. And then, of course, in the states where you've got this massive deficit and debt, a debt that I would argue is dramatically understated because of all their unfunded liabilities. If they have to face higher interest rates, they get on a cycle that's almost impossible to get out of. So there's a lot of tricky and challenging things facing North American

society right now. Of course, actually, when people ask me, what is the, what do you afraid most like in future, like 10 years to 20 years? Okay. Is it like environment? Is it like AI? I'm saying that I'm afraid of the amount of the US government. And you know what it is? It's because we both love math. And that's why we both answer that. Because I answer the question the same way. It's the US death that's really got me most spooked, especially when you allow for the unfunded liabilities because the basic arithmetic of it doesn't work. And so at some point this is going to blow up. I'm not sure how that'll play out, but it is very, very scary. There are reserve currency, but always that reserve currency can pass to something else. And there are other superpowers that are emerging.

And always I say that if something like that happened, because we are just here, it's like a, flood that comes and it taught every Western society is because so much debt that is unsustainable and no one is doing anything about it. No one is not about left or right. No one cares to be honest because they want to be elected and said, okay, let's suspend. And people don't understand what's going on to be honest. It's worse lately. Like the last three and four years, forget nobody caring. Nobody's even pretending to care anymore. It's not a part of the discussions when you watch, for example, political debates in Europe and in the U.S. It doesn't even come up on the debate stage very often anymore.

Like basically, this is where we are and we're stuck and we're not getting out of it. And yet the bond market at some point will very much care. And you're going to have to look at all of this. And I think you're almost inevitably going to see central banks get back involved and buying their own government's bond issuance. And I don't know how else you get out of this, which could lead to lots more inflation and all of it. You can see why gold had the run it did if you believe in the debasement trade.

Obviously, it's softened lately. Okay, let's get off of all that for a second and wrap up with something. I wanted to talk to you about. Talk to me a little bit about the lending environment in Canada right now. That's one of your areas of specialty, both at your platform, but also you personally are passionate about it. What's going on with the bank lending and the mortgage business right now? What concerns do you have? What are you seeing out there? One of the my main concern is the lack of financial knowledge by Canadian. When it comes to lending, borrowing, choosing financial product, you should be savvy. You should not be naive because all of these people,

want to sell and they use any technique, every technique to have a higher margin. So you as a personal, you are responsible, you yourself, responsible to educate yourself to know the basic of personal finance and this based on that make decision. And I can talk about that one is fascinating and discouraging how Canadian just go with brand. That's something that I can talk. our Canada are so loyal to brand, so loyal that I wrote a piece for Globe and I'll always mention that in the US people search 800,000 the term mortgage rate, 800,000.

And the GP Morgan chase that the biggest brand there is like maybe 40,000, like people, means 2% of like maybe 2.5% of the whole. In Canada, these two are the same for RBC and mortgage rate. It means mortgage rate is 50,000, RBC mortgage rate is 50,000. It means these amount of people, just when I start a journey, they know what they want to take. Then you are just making the banks lazy. So the big sticks are really dominate. All of the others have a problem.

They are against something very big, against the lack of financial education Canada, that they just go with the brand. Because when you borrow, especially when you borrow, you are borrowing the money. So if someone else gives it, what does it matter that this bank give you? It doesn't matter. If they do run into trouble, you're the one who has to pay it back. I mean, I think there's tremendous inertia. People are so loyal. And also another thing is that transparency of the rate that I wish at least there was that part,

there was some regulation that, okay, you cannot just advertise something nonsense. Because it should have some correlation with what you're doing. And this big gap, who pays? The people pay that actually are poorer. Yeah, because they don't have enough knowledge. They go to the branch and get that garbage rate. And the people are richer, more savvy, go there and negotiate the best. and get the best. This is not fair.

No, and that's absolutely true. By the way, you'll get a kick out of this. When I was 17 years old, I started a business. It was a GIC agency. And instead of using an internet platform, we just had a chalkboard with all the trust companies and banks written down and all the interest rates on one, three, and five year. And I remember my father coming in.

There had been a big article on a saying how clever we were. And he said, what do you two young, clever guys do? And we just circle the highest number in the chalkboard. And he goes, yeah, yeah, that is very sharp. and then we'd have the people make the check directly out. So I love the GIC business of the old days. But you're right, the vast majority of people don't shop to this day, 40-something years later. On a mortgage, there's huge inertia, huge loyalty.

I think it's almost a bit of laziness, by the way. If you look at a lot of other countries, including south of the border, a much higher percentage of general population uses mortgage brokers than they do in Canada. What's your thoughts there? The role is a bit different. And honestly, I'm not that knowledgeable about that domain that what's mortgage brokers do in the U.S. but I know that the task is different. But the thing is that the relationship is also different

because these big banks, for example, the RBC, the biggest fund, doesn't work with the broker's channel. So they want to do all the sales in their branches. So that itself, just this itself is 20% of the 18% of the market. So 18% of the market gone. If you talk to Ron, he knows much better because he has been there on. But he told me that he has seen it before like in 1990s. But for me, it's new, is that because the,

There's no population growth. There is no home appreciation. So the mortgage sizes cannot change. So the banks become more aggressive to increase their mortgage. Absolutely. You can see that. You can see it right now. So then a specific bank, I can tell that, for example,

RBC in the last two, three months, its rate is much lower than anyone. So it's like, yes, they're aggressive. And another thing is in the U.S. It's a mortgage broker that get you like 15 or 30 years mortgage. Yeah, it's a very different environment down there, as you say, when you're taking the 30-year mortgage in many cases. And it's a big commission there.

Okay, because it's 4.30 years. But actually in Canada, it's also similar. It's four, five years. But then the banks always keep that person. It's very hard for mortgage workers come in that journey, in renewal and get it. Most of the time is a purchase refinance. It's quite different than here than U.S. Okay, well, listen, I've really enjoyed this.

You did a wonderful job of not letting my shirt throw you off. Thank you. I thought that at some point it would distract you and lead you astray. But no, in fact, you stuck to the theme. that we wanted to cover and thank you so much you seeming a very bright guy obviously you've got a great curiosity your background is very fascinating to me it really is very unusual but in a positive way continued success with the business and hopefully you and I will cross pass again at some point it was a real pleasure

talking to you are a legend maybe for many including the people who create content because at the end of the game anyone who create content is thinking that how I increase the audience and you have done great job like to be your book. And so it was a pleasure to talk to a legend. Well, thank. I don't know with that, but I'm going to definitely tell you on that. Yeah, I'm going to quote you on that for sure. In fact, I'm going to just go say that to my kids right now. I'm a legend. The hardest sell is always to the kids. Absolutely. Anyway, thanks again. You did a wonderful job and I enjoyed the report. You said, hey, I should hold that up by the way, because this is beyond in-depth. Wow. And so that's

a report put out by that group, and I highly recommend it. Anyway, thank you again, and I'm sure we'll cross past soon.