LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Flawed numbers shared by columnist

Re: Liberals have made Canada worse off, (Think Again column by Michael Zwaagstra, March 27 edition)

Does Michael Zwaagstra have even a scintilla of shame? His statistical presentation would argue otherwise. For example he stated, “In 2015, the total national debt was $612 billion. Today, it stands at more than $1.4 trillion.”

Before providing the current amount, did Zwaagstra adjust for inflation? Spoiler alert! I did, by using the Bank of Canada’s 2015-to-2025 inflation calculator. Adjusted for inflation, Canada’s 2025 debt would be about $790 billion in 2025 dollars. As if that (ahem) “discrepancy” were insufficient, comparisons of debt-to-GDP ratios are also instructive. According to the International Monetary Fund, Canada’s general government debt was 107.49 percent of GDP in 2023. By comparison, the United States’ figure was 123.01 percent; Japan’s was 249.67 percent. In a perennially imperfect world, Canada is doing well. This isn’t to say that improvements are impossible; rather, it is only to say that perspective is preferable to scare-tactics.

Housing costs? Zwaagstra says, “In 2015, the average national house price was $413,000. Today, the aver-age house price is $722,000.” What does the Bank of Canada’s inflation calculator say about that compari-son? That $722,000 shrinks to $536,830. And yes, I know. There’s that pesky “house price as a percent of annual income ratio. A Globe and Mail article dated March 25, 2025 explores that issue. For Canada, that ratio is 135.3 percent; for the United States, 130.6 percent — hardly a seismic difference. Social housing? For Canada, in 2022, it was 3.5 percent of all housing; for the United States, 3.5 percent — again, not a seismic difference. However, both countries pale in comparison to the OECD’s average of 7.1 percent, and even more so compared with the Netherlands’ 34.1 percent and Singapore’s 78.7 percent. But, of course, we mustn’t linger unduly long on social housing. Otherwise, we risk offending people who eschew any form of governmental intervention into the private sphere.

Housing supply as a remedy? A recent working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco offers this insight,

“…from 2000 to 2020, we find that higher income growth predicts the same growth in house prices, housing quantity, and population regardless of a city’s estimated housing supply elasticity. We find the same pattern when we expand the sample to 1980 to 2020, use different elasticity measures, and when we in-strument for local housing demand. Using a general demand-and-supply framework, we show that our findings imply that constrained housing supply is relatively unimportant in explaining differences in rising house prices among U.S. cities. These results challenge the prevailing view of local housing and labour markets and suggest that easing housing supply constraints may not yield the anticipated improvements in housing affordability.”

If supply constraints are not the problem, but if affordability is the problem, we might just have to revisit the Netherlands and/or Singapore. But, gosh, I forgot and re-offended those who eschew governmental intervention.