Insights

Overall, the story of Budget 2025 is as expected. There is big new spending and deficits that would be even larger without review savings. Buffers are slim against the two fiscal anchors of a balanced operating budget by 2028-29, and a declining deficit-to-GDP...

The Bank of Canada delivered an expected 25 basis point rate cut today, lowering the overnight rate to 2.25%—the bottom of the neutral range that would not add to or subtract from inflation pressures over time. Beyond the rate cut itself, two themes stood...

A new playbook for balancing bigger government with fiscal health We believe the context and composition of government spending matter as much as the quantum. Cyclically, our outlook has Canada avoiding a recession from the current set of tariffs, but...

Canada's population growth continues to slow since tighter federal targets on permanent and non-permanent residents with Q2 marking the weakest quarterly growth since the pandemic. As of July 2025, the population reached 41.7 million, reflecting a year-over-year...

1. Fed Independence: Why It Matters for Investors We’re paying attention to President Trump’s challenges to the Federal Reserve’s Independence. Lately, he’s called for Fed Chair Jerome Powell to more aggressively cut rates. Powell, so far, has held his...

The U.S. economy seems in many ways an anomaly. Interest rates are, by many measures, in “restrictive” territory, and yet the unemployment rate remains quite low. The U.S. is in the midst of a historic trade shock with 100-year high tariffs, but inflation...

There was further evidence of a recovery is taking hold in many housing markets across Canada in August, but local price trends still varied considerably with declines continuing in affordability-challenged areas where inventory has piled up. Early reports...

1. Why Volatility Isn’t The Real Risk There is a distinction between risk and volatility, and understanding this difference is central to long-term investing success: Risk is the permanent loss of capital, including the slow erosion of purchasing power...

The trade war remains in its early stages, with U.S. tariff revenues trailing behind announcements into the summer. Nevertheless, import tariffs collected as a share of U.S. imports have already risen to their highest level since the 1940s.