Mike’s Musings

The World Economic Forum this year became a tale of two Davoses. Inside the main Congress Centre, a record number of attendees, including 850 CEOs, 80 tech billionaires and founders, hundreds of ministers and 65 heads of government spent the week hearing...

A narrative spun that a recession was nearly unavoidable for a country that had become so dependent on a trade partner who now looked to sever parts of its economic relationship. And yet, Canada’s economy did not collapse. There were no two quarters of...

A Word from Mike Hello, Markets have entered the new year digesting a steady stream of headlines, underscoring the importance of staying focused on fundamentals. I discuss geopolitics, corporate earnings, and monetary policy in more detail below. Geopolitical...

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...

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...