Voyageur 95
Canada's Expensive Homeowners Are Defaulting Faster Than Anyone Else, and Canada Has Been Trading With Itself the Hard Way. There's a Push to Fix That.
News for residents of the “11th province”: Canadians abroad.
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Canada's Expensive Homeowners Are Defaulting Faster Than Anyone Else
Brampton has the highest mortgage delinquency rate of the larger Canadian cities, and it's not really a close contest. Equifax data puts the delinquency rate there at 0.6 percent in Q4 2025 - more than double the national rate of 0.26 percent, and ten times the 0.06 percent it tallied in 2019. Higher borrowing costs, falling home prices, and rising job losses all hit the same market at the same time.
The stranger story is who's falling behind. Historically, small mortgages carry the highest default risk. That's flipped. Mortgages of $850,000 or more are now delinquent at 0.55 percent - more than double the rate on loans under $200,000. Analysts call this a risk inversion, and it's the kind of signal that tends to precede something larger. When the safety nets are all concentrated in the segment that turns out to be cracking, the system can get caught off guard.
Brokers in Brampton say the people in trouble bought at peak prices in 2021 and 2022 - homes that nearly doubled in price, then fell 30 percent - and are now renewing at higher rates with no equity cushion to fall back on. Canada's banking regulator flagged rising delinquencies and upcoming renewals as risks to the financial system earlier this year.
Mortgage rates have climbed again since the Middle East war broke out and oil hit record highs. If the Bank of Canada raises rates later this year as some economists expect, the renewal pressure gets worse.
Read more: The Globe and Mail / Better Dwelling
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Canada Has Been Trading With Itself the Hard Way. There's a Push to Fix That.
A beer brewed in New Brunswick has historically faced more barriers getting to Alberta than one shipped from Belgium. That particular absurdity is finally getting serious political attention. The Bank of Canada's governor Tiff Macklem said this week he was "encouraged" by Ottawa's moves to diversify the economy - and pointed to stripping out interprovincial trade barriers as one of the biggest unlocked opportunities Canada has.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce appeared before a parliamentary committee last week making the same case. The IMF put a number on it in January - eliminating policy-related internal trade barriers could raise Canada's real GDP by roughly 7 percent over the long run. For a country that's just realized how exposed it was to US-only trade, removing internal walls is the version of diversification it can actually control.
US tariffs and the trade war have forced Canada to think harder about what it can do without Washington's cooperation. Building a more integrated domestic economy is one answer - and for once, the political will from Ottawa and most premiers seems to be there.
For Canadians keeping an eye on whether to come back, a more economically unified country is a better one. Whether the federal system can deliver on the political will is the part nobody has solved yet.
Read more: Chronicle Journal / Canadian Chamber of Commerce