Finance Minister Jim Flaherty takes part in a news conference. Today’s topics: home has a price; bullies on the school bus; Julian Assange; down on the farm with supply management; women with gaggles … and moreCHRIS WATTIE/Reuters
Home has a price
Prior to the first Conservative budget in 2006, Canadians had long needed to meet the mortgage conditions that the Conservatives are now, finally, reverting back to (An Ounce Of Bubble Prevention – editorial, June 22).
In 2006, the Conservatives flooded the housing market with cheap credit by permitting 40-year mortgages, a minimal downpayment, and generous provisions to borrow against the value of the house – the result, a dramatic surge in housing prices over the past six years and a concurrent surge in household debt.
The CMHC has doubled the size of its balance sheet from about $300-billion of taxpayer insured mortgages in 2006 to $570-billion today, or just over 30 per cent of Canada's GDP. For a government that supposedly prides itself on financial probity, and regularly receives such praise in the media, this is a shocking record. The result? Canadians now pay more than twice as much as Americans for an average house. Now the question is, for how much longer?
Mark Wolfgram, Ottawa
.........
The Globe is correct to advocate a foot on the brake to dampen an overheated Canadian housing market, particularly in Toronto (An Ounce Of Bubble Prevention – editorial, June 22), and to praise Finance Minister Jim Flaherty for applying the brakes through tightened CMHC mortgage rules.
Now, could you please persuade Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford to take their feet off the accelerator by heavily subsidizing new condos through low development charges?
C. R. Jenkins, Stouffville, Ont.
.........
The real estate market in Vancouver has already tipped down. The last thing it needs now is a tightening of the rules for insured mortgages, which will take a substantial number of first-time buyers out of the market. This is likely to convert a mild adjustment into a much deeper decline.
I was disappointed to read that the Finance Minister's justification for this action is the overheated Toronto condo market (Condo Boom Triggered Crackdown – June 22). Economic policy should be made for the whole country, not just Toronto.
Garth M. Evans, Vancouver
.........
The condo boom is largely financed by foreign cash-buyers. Making it harder to get a mortgage will reduce the number of local buyers looking for a place to live. It may even depress the market in the short term, thus attracting more foreign investors in the longer run. Talk about unintended consequences.
David S. P. Cheung, Toronto
.........
Bullies on the bus
There is no shortage of students scared of being targeted in the same way a New York state school-bus monitor was (A Grandmother's Unexpected Gift From A Stranger – June 22). Make no mistake. It happens.
Either we accept the inappropriate and cruel behaviour that is the norm on many school buses as kids being kids, or we do something about it. Unlike the tormented grandmother, our children do not receive an outpouring of public sympathy for their pain. They simply endure.
There are now reports that the bullies who inflicted the abuse on the monitor are receiving death threats. And we wonder why so many kids resort to bullying? If we want to change the behaviour of our kids, we might start by examining the behaviour of adults. Bullies are not born that way. It has to come from somewhere.
David Millen, Ottawa
.........
Asked, answered
What do the girl with the dragon tattoo, Julian Assange and panhandlers have in common (The Good Guys Write Again – Arts, June 21)? They're all hackers of sorts, annoying pests who provoke us to look deeper into our ignorance and hypocrisies.
Héleyne d'Aigle, Fredericton
.........
Supply has a price
With the rising calls for the end of agricultural supply management (Don't Touch the Milk and Eggs – June 22), I hope we won't forget where it started. My wife's father was one of the founders of marketing boards in Ontario because of his father, who was a fruit grower in the Niagara Peninsula. At harvest, when ripe fruit had to be sold quickly before it spoiled, he would be visited by truckers who offered a pitifully low price. If he declined, they would add that they'd be back tomorrow – with a lower price.
That is the abuse the original Ontario marketing boards were formed to remedy. Providing food at a reasonable cost to the consumer is no simple problem, especially if we also want to provide a reasonable living to the farmers of Canada.
Garth Goddard, Toronto
.........
The countries leading the charge for dismantling Canada's supply management system have their own ways of supporting their domestic dairy industries.
Unlike Canada, the U.S. spends billions of dollars in farm subsidies that amount to an estimated 31 cents per litre of milk. New Zealand's government supports Fonterra, a farmer-owned co-operative and quasi-monopoly that processes 95 per cent of the milk produced in the country. Milk prices are close to and, in some cases, above those in Canada.
Since supply management was introduced in Canada, consumer prices for milk have risen at the same rate as the Consumer Price Index, processors have had an assured supply of milk at a predictable price, and family dairy farms have stayed in business, supporting the rural economy.
Wally Smith, president, Dairy Farmers of Canada
.........
'Woman with gaggle'
According to Jessica Massa's book, Gaggle: How the Guys You Know Will Help You Find the Love You Want, young women have "gaggles" of men who each provide something toward the woman's overall personal and emotional needs (The New Way to Date: Don't Date – Life, June 22). This insight into a world where relationships are based on the commodification of people is appreciated: I will now add "woman with gaggle" to my dating red-flag list under the heading: Warning! Too self-absorbed and insecure to commit.
Alex McLellan, Aurora, Ont.
.........
In their interests
Since mainstream economists will not look, or cannot see, the evidence that austerity does not work, maybe it's time financial markets recognized austerity is not in their own interests (Merkel Must Bend Or Face Total Collapse – Report on Business, June 22).
In the domestic arena, bankruptcy law recognizes it is better for creditors (as well as the debtors) to get debtors back on their feet as viable customers than to cannibalize what remains of their assets. While this sensible and pragmatic approach has not translated yet into an international bankruptcy court, private-sector creditors could help push the international system toward this objective.
In the meantime, they can serve their own bottom line by telling the purveyors of austerity to ease off, and backing François Hollande and other proponents of growth.
Roy Culpeper, Ottawa
.........
It seems the pain in Spain is plainly quite a strain.
Eliza would sympathize.
Anne Spencer, Victoria