Young Canadians are increasingly seeing homeownership as out of reach. While 86% of non-homeowners under 30 and 75% of non-homeowners between 30 and 44 still aspire to own a home one day, only 51% and 47%, respectively, are very or somewhat confident they will achieve this goal. The combination of higher interest rates, stagnant wages, and a two-decade-long increase in price-to-income ratios has made it increasingly difficult for them to qualify for a mortgage. Their ambition has turned into uncertainty, and for many, that uncertainty is turning into defeat. The issue is not willingness to buy, but rather whether they can afford to enter the market at all.
Some good recommendations in this paper. I think that part of the solution also needs to be a cultural shift away from seeing home ownership as necessarily a desired outcome. That said, for those who do want to own, we have a lot of work to do to make this possible.
In arguably one of the biggest bits of news for outdoor-focused Apple Watch owners in years, Komoot just announced true offline mapping and routing for their Apple Watch app. Up until now, their app required some sort of connectivity, notably to the phone, in order to have offline maps/routing.
This looks quite promising. I’ve been using the WorkOutDoors app for offline maps, but Komoot looks much easier.
Finished reading: The Emergency by George Packer is a very good story about the collapse of empire, complexity of parenting, optimism of youth, and our terrible capacity to create “others” 📚
As my penance, I’m now sending her a weekly song to make sure that her musical foundation is sound. These won’t necessarily be the best, most popular, or my favourite songs (though sometimes they will be all three). Rather, they will be influential to my musical tastes and worth her consideration.
Given how this started, the first song is Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel. There are plenty of his songs to choose from. I think this one is a great place to start.
There’s a lot to like in Mark Carney’s speech at Davos. I certainly didn’t expect Thucydides and Havel to get cited.
Carney was clear about the problem. For example:
More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied— the WTO, the UN, the COP—the architecture of collective problem solving — are greatly diminished.
Along with ideas about how “middle powers” should proceed:
This is not naive multilateralism. Nor is it relying on diminished institutions. It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations. And it is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities. Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not.
But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.
And a pitch for Canada:
Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. We have capital, talent, and a government with the immense fiscal capacity to act decisively. And we have the values to which many others aspire.
Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse, and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability. We are a stable, reliable partner—in a world that is anything but—a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.
Nor can we trust the American people to rise up against tyranny in any great numbers: they are not who they think they are, and far short of what they once were. Americans as a people today are unequal to their nation’s history and to their own sense of greatness. This is being demonstrated to us, every single day, in the clearest possible terms.
Out of a swirl of emotions that include anger and fear, I think the dominant one for me is sadness. America was obviously not perfect, but it at least had aspirations that I could admire and a long friendship with Canada that brought us both prosperity.
Of course, as Gerson points out, the real test will be what Carney and Canada do next:
In short, the Canada that Carney is describing is one that isn’t satisfied with half assery and speechifying. What would be truly provocative is if Carney didn’t just say the right things, but also demonstrated he was dead serious about following through with a plan to make this country tough enough to withstand America’s increasingly crazy bullshit.
Finished reading: The Second Mountain by David Brooks raises many important questions. According to Brooks, the first mountain is about personal achievement: career progression, wealth, and achievement. The second, more fullfilling mountain is about community, marriage, and religion. Although positioned as a “how to” book, Brooks provides many examples of paths to the summit of the second mountain. I think that’s appropriate. Each of us needs to find our own path, but good to know that the mountain exits and is traversable 📚
My right leg was signalling a potential injury. So, I converted this morning’s bike ride into a sleep in. Then had an extra coffee and listened to an episode of the Focused Podcast on Getting Intentional. Now I feel like a superhero, ready to take on the day!
Watched: The first few episodes of Alien: Earth Season 1 are good. Then the season gets bogged down. Several cool ideas though and definitely the creepiest sheep in TV. I’ll check out season two. The Incomparable has a good discussion of the season. 🍿
Finished reading: Breaking Point by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson provides a very clear description of Canada’s challenges. Thankfully it also provides good ideas on how to fix them. Pairs well with Andrew Coyne’s recent book, though they disagree on electoral reform. Although daunting, I’m optimistic that this is an exciting time for Canada’s rejuvenation 🍁📚
This gap, between the world as it is and how we’re told to see it, comes down to a choice about what we do with our attention. Mission control doesn’t ignore danger. It’s acknowledged, monitored, taken seriously. But knowing which emergencies require immediate action means you need to watch all the instruments, not just the alarms. That’s the difference between panic and an effective response.
An important reminder about the sensationalization of news
Finished reading: The Random Universe by Andrew H. Jaffe is an interesting exploration of probability and models in physics and cosmology. I also appreciated the historical context that showed how the models developed 📚
Finished reading: As a Canadian public servant, I’m not the target market for Scaling People by Claire Hughes Johnson. Nonetheless, I found the sections on managing teams and navigating conflict useful 📚
