True North: The Facts About the Canadian Mortgage Banking System

Abstract:     
Given the relative stability of Canadian housing markets, many observers try to draw comparisons between the housing finance policies of Canada and the United States. Why is it that the United States suffered through such a painful housing bubble and bust in the last decade, while Canada did not? After all, the two countries enjoy relatively similar homeownership rates and share many other attributes. The answer, quite simply, is that Canada did not become enthralled with the laissez faire ideology that dominated U.S. economic policy making in the 2000s, and thus did not allow major gaps in its regulation of housing finance to develop.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 28

working papers series