Watch the video: Should pension funds help build Canada's future? | TVO's The Rundown
TVO’s new nightly current affairs show lays out that the federal Liberals are pitching big, costly bets such as nuclear power, critical minerals and high-speed rail as central to Canada’s economic future, raising questions about who pays and whether pension funds should help finance projects tied to economic sovereignty. Matthew Mendelsohn and Keith Ambachtsheer join host Jeyan Jaganathan to examine the risks and rewards of tapping pension capital. Then, economist Kaylie Tiessen looks critically at the surge in “Buy Canadian” policies and whether they actually deliver on their economic promises.
Speakers
Keith Ambachtsheer
Co-Founder, KPA Advisory Services
Matthew Mendelsohn
CEO, Social Capital Partners
Tied Up: Unleashing Canada's non-profit housing potential
Introduction
Housing affordability is one of Canada’s most pressing economic and social challenges and non-profit housing providers have emerged as a critical partner delivering long-term, stable affordability across market cycles. They have demonstrated strong stewardship, low failure rates and a proven ability to deliver and operate affordable housing over the long term.[1]
Despite this, Canada’s non-profit housing sector remains structurally constrained. Well-intentioned accountability mechanisms, designed to protect public investment and ensure affordability, often have the unintended effect of limiting balance-sheet capacity, restricting access to financing and preventing asset leverage. Consequently, the non-market housing sector remains underdeveloped.[2]
In consultation with stakeholders and partners in the non-profit housing space, we have identified three technical issues that merit immediate attention: grants structured as forgivable loans, how leaseholds on public land are structured and how depreciation and capital reserve requirements are applied to non-profit providers. We propose practical ways to overcome these problems and reduce administrative burdens, while maintaining accountability.
We suggest that as a next step, municipal and provincial governments commit to resolving these and similar issues, and work with non-profit organizations to operationalize these (or other) solutions. Governments can move forward with a problem-solving mindset, committed to changing rules that prevent non-profits from leveraging the value of their assets to build more affordable housing. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) should also be brought to the table as their rules also sometimes act as an obstacle rather than an enabler of affordable housing.
1. Grants structured as forgivable loans
In some cases, governments provide grant funding to non-profit housing providers to purchase affordable housing stock, but structure that grant funding as a forgivable loan secured by a mortgage or charge on title. These loans are typically forgiven gradually (e.g., 1% per year over 99 years). The intent of this structure is to ensure long-term affordability by retaining a remedy in the event of non-compliance.
Issue:
While this structure protects affordability, it also immobilizes asset value. Although non-profits hold legal title, the encumbrance prevents them from leveraging the asset to reinvest in existing stock or finance new affordable housing developments. As a result, assets funded with public dollars are prevented from contributing fully to the public-policy objective they were intended to serve.
Potential solutions:
- Provide grants outright, with affordability requirements ensured in other ways, particularly covenants registered on title. Accountability can be preserved through legally binding affordability agreements registered on title. If registering agreements on title is deemed insufficient, governments could pursue additional mechanisms.
For example:
-
- Registering a Right of First Refusal on title. This would ensure that if the property is sold, or affordability thresholds are not met, the government (or a designated non-profit) can make a first offer and/or buy on the same terms.
- Using statutory title restrictions where appropriate. For example, a Land Titles Act s.118 restriction (as used in Toronto) can require municipal approval for sale or refinancing without blocking financing entirely.
- Registering repayment obligations related to affordability breaches on title. For example, agreements could be developed wherein in the event of a grant recipient breaching affordability requirements, it must repay any public benefits it has received (e.g. property tax exemptions) and/or the difference between the affordability threshold and rents charged.
- Pair forgivable loans with public guarantees. Where forgivable loans are retained, a guarantee in the amount of the value of the asset could be provided by government. This guarantee would enable lenders to extend financing to purchase other properties, allowing the asset to be fully utilized in pursuit of shared objectives. Given the stability of non-profit housing assets, this represents a low-risk use of public balance sheets.
2. Public leaseholds on municipal land
Municipalities frequently lease land to non-profit housing providers for long terms (often 49–99 years) at nominal cost for the lease, with the expectation of indefinite renewal. These arrangements facilitate the building of housing stock, while retaining public land ownership and ensuring long-term affordability.
Issue:
While effective as an accountability mechanism, leaseholds eliminate the ability to leverage land value, even where the non-profit bears the full cost of construction, maintenance and long-term stewardship.
This has three consequences:
- Reduced access to federal grants. CMHC development grants are calculated as a percentage of total project value. Leaseholds prevent non-profits from including land value, materially reducing available grant funding.
- Constrained access to financing. Despite their long-term and effectively perpetual control, non-profits cannot use the land to support borrowing, limiting expansion and acquisition opportunities.
- Challenges associated with tenant management and support. Given landlord-tenant legislation and other considerations, holding a lease provides considerably less latitude and control over management of tenants. Full scope of ownership provides non-profits with the latitude to support tenants, particularly those hard-to-house.
In effect, the value of public land is not being leveraged by either the municipality or the non-profit housing provider in support of expanding affordable housing options.
Potential solutions:
- Conditional title transfers with reversion clauses and multi-party agreements. A defeasible fee (i.e. conditional ownership) could be used to transfer title of public land to a non-profit housing provider while making ownership conditional on continued public-purpose use. This would allow the asset to live on the non-profit balance sheet, which would unlock CMHC grants and potentially increase access to private financing. Making this solution work would require sophisticated multi-party agreements between governments, housing providers and financing institutions that outline risk mitigation around the reversion potentiality.
- Accounting treatment carve-outs under the Housing Services Act. Provincial amendments to the Housing Services Actcould allow non-profits to recognize the value of leased public land on their balance sheets where long-term control is effectively equivalent to ownership. This would enable access to CMHC grant funding and may have some impact on access to private financing.
- Adjustments to CMHC process of assessing total project value. CMHC could allow land value to be recognized for grant purposes even under leasehold arrangements. While this would not have any impact on access to private financing, it could unlock CMHC grant funding.
3. Depreciation and capital reserve requirements
Under the Housing Services Act, non-profit housing providers must record depreciation based on mortgage principal repayment (versus wear and tear) and they must contribute annually to capital reserve funds for major repairs, recording these contributions as operating expenses.
Issue:
These two requirements address the same underlying reality, accounting for asset aging, but do so separately. The result is double recognition of obsolescence, placing unnecessary pressure on operating statements and reducing financial flexibility.
Potential solutions:
- Amend the Housing Services Act to avoid double counting. Capital reserve contributions could be designated as the primary mechanism for recognizing asset obsolescence. Depreciation would then be recorded only to the extent that reserve contributions fall below an approved benchmark.
Conclusion
With renewed national attention on housing and the launch of Build Canada Homes, a new federal agency dedicated to building affordable housing at scale, the unique challenges facing non-profit providers can no longer be treated as secondary concerns. Build Canada Homes has committed to “utilizing flexible financing tools and focusing on large, multi-year portfolio deals with trusted non-market developers,”[3] but that ambition is only achievable if all levels of government take the steps necessary to clear administrative hurdles that constrain the nonprofit sector. Non-profits can only come to the table with portfolio-scale deals if the policy, legislative and accounting environment does not constrain their ability to leverage their assets for more ambitious affordable housing projects.
By optimizing grant structures, rethinking leasehold arrangements and aligning accounting rules with asset stewardship realities, we believe governments can unlock significantly greater impact from existing public investments, without compromising affordability or accountability.
The ideas presented here are a starting point. We know there are many additional levers for enhancing the impact and scale of non-profit housing providers and have flagged several areas warranting further research in the Appendix.
Non-profit housing providers are essential to achieving durable housing affordability in Canada. Although they provide a relatively small share of Canada’s overall housing stock, this is, in part, because current accountability and financing structures constrain their ability to leverage their existing assets to scale and deploy capital effectively. Non-profits could do more to build resilient, diverse and affordable housing if the enabling conditions outlined in this paper were achieved.
Acknowledgements
This paper was informed by the expertise and experience of a number of stakeholders. We’re incredibly grateful for their feedback, guidance and input.
Reviewers
Joshua Barndt (Parkdale Neighbourhood Community Land Trust), Sean Campbell (Union Co-op), George Claydon (Canadian Urban Institute), Michael Fenn (Good Shepherd Non-Profit Homes Inc.), Andrea Nemtin (Social Innovation Canada), Nick van der Velde (Indwell), Aleeya Velji (Enfin Impact), Peter Wallace and Dr. Carolyn Whitzman (School of Cities, University of Toronto).
Appendix A: Potential areas for future research
In our work in putting together this short paper, a number of high potential avenues for further research and discussion emerged. We wanted to document a few of them here in the hope that other organizations will pursue them further.
- Opportunities for other non-commercial actors, such as hospitals and faith-based organizations, to partner with non-profit housing providers through leasing and/or shared ownership opportunities.
- An analysis of existing loan guarantee programs related to housing and community infrastructure that highlights what works and could be replicated.
- An analysis of housing assets in National Parks and whether that model could be applied more broadly to public lands.
- Recommendations for how a First Right of Refusal might be practically operationalized, depending on the partners involved (e.g. level of government, non-profit partners, etc.).
- An assessment of the potential impact that MURBs and Limited Dividend Housing Corporations could have in the current context.
- An analysis of how and when land transfer taxes are appropriate to support affordable housing.
- How the Public Sector Accounting Board and other non-profit accounting standards should account for the capitalization and amortization of tangible capital assets in a manner that accurately reflects the strength of balance sheet positions and long-term fiscal sustainability.
References
[1] Evidence from around the world indicates that housing stock, including social and affordable housing, is a stable asset class. In Canada, the real estate and rental and leasing sector posts an insolvency rate of roughly 0.2 per 1,000 firms, far below the all-industry average of ~1.3. The best approximation of the insolvency rates for affordable housing comes from CMHC’s data, which shows CMHC-insured multi-unit mortgages (which covers a large share of Canada’s non-market and affordable housing stock) had just 0.35% arrears in 2024. The U.S. offers a long, independent benchmark. Properties financed with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC)—a mix of nonprofit and for-profit owners in a heavily regulated program—show a cumulative foreclosure rate of ~0.5%, with no new foreclosures reported in 2021–2022 in the latest comprehensive review. The underlying reason is that demand is deep and sticky. LIHTC housing stock had a 98.6% occupancy in 2021, meaning only 1.4% were vacant at any given time, mostly during routine turnover. Tenants stay longer; cash flow is predictable. Australia’s regulated sector lands in the same place: community housing providers run at ~99% occupancy with just 1.83% of rent outstanding.
[2] https://nhc-cnl.ca/publications/post/scaling-up-the-non-market-housing-sector-
[3] https://housing-infrastructure.canada.ca/bch-mc/framework-agreement-entente-cadre-eng.html
Authors
Michelle Arnold, Policy Manager, Social Capital Partners
Savraj Syan, Fellow, Social Capital Partners
Unlocking non-profit assets: The low-cost fixes Canada's housing sector desperately needs
By Michelle Arnold and Savraj Syan | Read the related report
Currently, Canada’s non-market housing sector makes up 3.5% of the housing system, which is only half the size of those of our OECD peers.
Growing the non-market sector is now a national priority and building the capacity of non-profits to deliver more of it is one of the most important levers available.
Unfortunately, at the very moment governments are counting on non-profit housing providers to deliver more affordable housing, a set of overlooked technical barriers is preventing those same providers from leveraging their own assets—which is key to increasing their borrowing power—to do exactly that.
The barriers are not the result of bad faith.
Rather, they are the unintended consequence of well-meaning accountability measures designed to protect public investment. But what may have made good sense as standard grant-making practice has calcified into a set of legacy constraints that actively work against the goals they were meant to serve. In a housing crisis, that kind of misaligned risk aversion has a real public cost.
Although we know this is not an exhaustive list, we want to highlight a few specific barriers that, according to our consultations in the sector, are constraining non-profit housing providers:
- Grants structured as forgivable loans — which encumber title and lock up asset value that nonprofits could otherwise use to finance new housing
- Long-term leaseholds on public land — which prevent nonprofits from recognizing land value on their balance sheets or using it to access financing and federal grants
- How depreciation and capital reserves are treated — current rules require non-profits to account for asset aging twice, placing unnecessary pressure on operating budgets
While these may seem minor, or even obscure, individually and together they create meaningful restrictions on non-profits’ ability to leverage their assets. When a non-profit is prevented, through these intricacies, from using their land, property or assets to secure potential loans, this prevents them from being able to purchase or finance land or housing that they could otherwise not afford.
We’ve outlined potential solutions to address these unintended consequences in a short paper. We believe they are relatively simple, low-cost ways to enable more non-profits to construct and expand affordable housing, while still protecting the public interest. They include:
- Converting forgivable loans to outright grants, with affordability protected through covenants registered on title
- Facilitating public guarantees that allow nonprofits to leverage the value of land they operate on
- Amending the Housing Services Act to enable alternative accounting practices that strengthen nonprofit balance sheets
- Working with CMHC to allow the value of leased land to be recognized as part of total project value
We know these are not the only barriers or the only solutions to Canada’s complex and evolving affordable housing crunch.
Based on our consultations with experts and frontline providers in the field, we urge municipal, provincial, housing and finance officials, alongside elected representatives, to consider these suggestions. We also encourage them to canvass for additional challenges and work together to standardize solutions across jurisdictions.
There are so many barriers to fixing the housing crisis. But in this case, the assets are there. The will is there. The fixes are within reach.
Toronto is piloting a city-owned grocery store. Could it help fight high food prices?
By Matthew Mendelsohn | Part of our Special Series: The Ownership Solution
Food is too expensive in Canada. There are many reasons, but one is certainly the oligopolistic control of our food markets—in retail groceries, but elsewhere in the food supply chain as well.
Governments at all levels are aware of this and have indeed tried various approaches to deal with the cost of essentials.
The Canada Grocery Code, a set of written but voluntary rules designed to bring greater fairness, transparency and predictability to the Canadian grocery supply chain, may have some impact. Investments in the security of the supply chain may help Canada withstand shocks. And the National School Food Program, which has a target of providing school meals to 400,000 more kids per year, should deliver real results.
A variety of general income support measures have been introduced or increased to help support modest income Canadians deal with rising costs, including for food.
The most important initiative is reform to competition law and create a more empowered Competition Bureau.
We will have to wait to say what the real-world impacts of all these efforts are.
But the federal government hasn’t confronted some of the structural forces within their control that lead to higher food prices. A big one is excess profit taking by our grocery giants and their use of their market power to overcharge Canadians for essentials.
The evidence is very clear that we experienced “sellers’ inflation” during COVID—large grocery chains and others taking advantage of the disruption and confusion in the market to raise prices out of proportion with their increased costs. This same kind of inflation-of-choice is likely to take place again during the current energy crisis.
Canada’s grocery chains make profits way out of line with their global peers. The international evidence for this is clear.
And Canadians feel it—the data are clear that, since COVID, food inflation has spiked.
So, I’m really excited about the City of Toronto moving forward to pilot public grocery stores and investigate algorithmic pricing. As City of Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said on March 27th, “this could go a long way to making life more affordable withy more competition to drive down costs, helping households save more and eat better.”
A case could be made to move more aggressively, but a pilot is a good way to gather information and experiment with small changes first and then adjust and scale as we learn what works.
How will they be designed? Can they be delivered effectively? Would it be better if it was city run or run by some other community ownership structure? How will they integrate with local supply chains? Will they focus on a basket of core staples? I’m not sure.
But there are things I am sure about. I know that what we have been doing is not working. Too many people in Canada—a wealthy, food-producing country—go hungry. It’s simply not acceptable.
I know that the neoliberal economic solutions—let capital set the rules, reduce the role of government in shaping markets and allow big players to consolidate—have delivered us to where we are: many working people in Canada can’t afford an apartment or food.
I also know that publicly owned stores won’t use a crisis and market confusion to raise prices out of line with their increase in input costs in order to deliver high returns to investors.
And I know that governments should try different things to solve public problems. We really are in a moment of geopolitical and economic rupture. The solutions we’ve tried for the past 50 years are unlikely to be the ones that are best moving forward—some of them actually have exacerbated the inequality and affordability crises we’re experiencing.
There is lots of evidence that more public and community ownership of the economy is one part of the solution to the crises we face. We should be open to trying more solutions that don’t come from the neoliberal handbook.
Why Canada should back employee ownership trusts for the long term | TheFutureEconomy.ca
By Jon Shell | Part of our Special Series: The Ownership Solution | This piece first appeared in TheFutureEconomy.ca
Canada is getting used to standing more proudly on its own two feet since our longest-standing ally launched an economic war against us. At this trying moment, Canadians are asking how we protect our sovereignty, make life more affordable for workers and families and build a stronger, more resilient economy for the long term.
One practical answer is already on the books: the Employee Ownership Trust.
Right now is the right moment for Canada to rethink who owns and benefits from our country’s most productive assets. Because if we don’t, we will continue to see viable Canadian companies sold to foreign buyers looking to control our resources—like a conveyor belt moving local success stories out of Canadian hands.
Employee Ownership Trusts, or EOTs, offer a different business succession option that keeps companies rooted in the communities in which they were built. Established in 2024, the EOT allows business owners to sell to a trust that holds shares on behalf of employees. Owners receive full market value paid out of future profits, while workers become employee-owners, without having to invest their own savings.
This model protects Canadian sovereignty by anchoring firms at home. Every EOT sale keeps ownership rooted in Canada, with that firm’s long-term success becoming directly tied to the well-being of its workforce and the community where it operates. It makes life more affordable for workers by helping them build real wealth—in some cases, the first meaningful ownership stake they’ve ever had. And it strengthens the broader economy: research shows employee-owned firms deliver an 8-12% productivity boost, are more likely to survive economic downturns and less likely to lay off workers during recessions.
These outcomes have been proven over decades in the United States and the United Kingdom. Both countries encourage employee ownership with all-party political support and substantial government incentives that spur on their success.
The US now has more than 6,000 employee-owned companies generating over $2 billion in worker wealth, while the UK’s EOT has created new income streams for more than 335,000 workers across nearly 2,500 firms. While it will take some time for Canada to get to that level of adoption, economist Brett House has projected that Canada could eventually see more than 100 new EOTs per year, if the right policy conditions are in place.
How Employee Ownership Trusts keep wealth in Canada | Canadian Business
By Jon Shell | Part of our Special Series: The Ownership Solution | This post first appeared in Canadian Business
Canada is entering one of the largest waves of business succession in its history, with thousands of founders preparing to retire. A 2023 report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) report found that about three-quarters of Canadian small and medium-sized business owners, controlling more than $2 trillion in business assets, plan to leave their companies within the next decade. The question isn’t whether these companies will be sold, but who will own them and where the benefits will flow.
For decades, many retiring business owners sold their companies to private equity or foreign buyers. Today, however, the shifting political and economic climate in the United States is prompting some Canadian owners to rethink the implications of such sales. In a period of volatility and rising economic nationalism at home, ownership is critical in shaping company decisions, directing capital and determining whose interests drive a business’s future.
As chair of Social Capital Partners (SCP), a non-profit organization focused on broadening access to wealth and ownership, I have advocated for solutions that keep ownership in Canadian hands while benefiting employees. One of the most practical tools to achieve this is Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs), which lets business owners sell a majority stake to a trust holding shares on behalf of employees, without requiring them to invest their own money. The trust typically finances the purchase through a mix of bank and owner loans, repaid over time from the company’s future profits. As the business grows, employees share in the financial success, gaining ownership without taking on personal risk.
EOTs were established in the United Kingdom in 2014, providing business owners a practical way to transfer ownership to employees while protecting jobs, company culture and local roots. The model was designed to support business succession and keep companies within their communities. In Canada, federal legislation for EOTs arrived in June 2024, offering a similar solution to succession challenges and a path to strengthen communities through local employment.
Early signs show they are already having a positive impact. Grantbook, a Toronto-based strategic technology consultancy, became the first Canadian company to transition to an EOT last year. Another example is Taproot, a social services organization with 750 employees serving individuals, families and youth across British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario. Its leadership chose to transfer ownership to employees rather than sell to an outside buyer, preserving the organization’s mission, keeping it under Canadian control, and giving frontline workers a stake in its long-term success. One employee described it as the first time she had truly owned anything in Canada–an immigrant who built her career here, she suddenly held a stake in the company she helped grow. This isn’t purely symbolic–it’s real wealth creation.
Research shows that EOTs are also a sound business strategy. Research by Harvard Business School shows employee-owned firms often see higher productivity, stronger retention and greater resilience during downturns. When employees have a vested interest in the company’s success, they are more engaged and productive. These firms also default less on loans and lay off fewer workers during recessions. EOTs can work for many industries, but they are best suited to mature, cash-flowing sectors, such as professional services, manufacturing, wholesale and construction, where stable profits make it easier for the trust to finance the purchase and repay the seller over time.
In June 2024, the federal government took a step forward by introducing a temporary $10 million capital gains exemption for qualifying sales to EOTs, available through 2026. But for the policy to drive growth, the market needs certainty. Its imminent expiry, after being in effect for less than three years, is preventing the expansion seen elsewhere. The government must act quickly to make the incentive permanent, providing a clear path for employee ownership to contribute to a stronger, more productive economy.
Experience abroad shows that stable, predictable incentives are key to growing employee ownership over the long term.
In the United Kingdom, significant tax incentives have helped employee ownership grow steadily since 2014, with around 2,470 companies now using EOTs. In the U.S., long-standing government support for employee ownership has led to more than 6,400 companies with Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), where employees gradually acquire shares, often funded by profits or loans. These examples show how sustained policy can grow employee ownership.
EOTs may not be suitable for every company. Transitions typically take a year or more and require careful financial planning, including financing the trust. Policy uncertainty compounds the challenge–many owners hesitate to begin a transition with the capital gains exemption set to expire at year’s end. Alongside some of Canada’s top business leaders and CEOs, we’re actively advocating for Ottawa to create a solid runway for EOTs to take off in Canada by making this vital tax incentive permanent.
As uncertainty in the U.S. continues to shape capital markets and political debate, Canadian business owners are increasingly aware of the consequences of foreign ownership. When companies are sold abroad, key decisions about investment, hiring and growth are often made elsewhere, weakening local control and community ties. Employee ownership provides a distinctly Canadian alternative.
The coming wave of succession will shape Canada’s economy for generations. Employee ownership safeguards economic sovereignty, while boosting growth and productivity and giving employees struggling with affordability a new source of income. As owners seek alternatives to selling abroad, the EOT provides a practical answer. Instead of letting support lapse, now is the time for the government to double down on employee ownership.
A housing boom isn't a win for wealth equality and here's why
I published Billionaire Blindspot in 2024 to draw attention to the poor state of wealth inequality data in Canada and to dispel the intuition Canadians have that we are a much more egalitarian society than our U.S. neighbours. In putting it together, I couldn’t draw on a lot of recent research in the Canadian wealth inequality space because, well, it didn’t exist.
Since then, we’ve witnessed something of a renaissance in the wealth inequality discourse, with great contributions by Alex Hempel, Silas Xuereb and Alex Hemingway, updates from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) and an exciting attempt at a new methodology by StatsCan to ascertain how much of our nation’s wealth is held by the very richest families.
These reports are often in conversation with one another, debating methodology and assumptions. I don’t always have much to contribute to those debates; I am mostly just glad to see they’re taking place.
But there’s one finding that’s stuck with me I’ve been wanting to explore in more in depth: the reported decline in wealth concentration of the richest families between 2016-2023, observed by Silas and Alex in The new robber barons: A quarter century of wealth concentration in Canada.
As you can see in their graph, there’s a noticeable dip in the last two data points correlating to 2019 and 2023. On first glance, it looks like the rich got a bit less rich, but that doesn’t really make sense when taken against other trends and measures in our economy. So, what’s going on here? Silas and Alex have a theory, and I think they’re on to something:
“… Another indicator is the trajectory of housing prices. During the pandemic, housing prices increased drastically, inflating wealth for many homeowners. Housing prices began to flatten in 2022 and were actually lower in July 2025 than they were in July 2023, suggesting that the wealth of most households has increased little over this period compared to the rising wealth of billionaires, which is mostly financial wealth,” they write.
To understand what’s actually driving the dip, you need to start with what each group holds. As they point out, typical Canadian families hold the vast majority of their wealth in one asset: their home. The ultra-wealthy hold most of theirs in financial assets like equity in private and public companies. Typically, the financial assets of the wealthy significantly outperform those of ordinary Canadians – which is how we get runaway inequality. During the pandemic years, we witnessed something very unusual instead.
During the pandemic housing boom, national average home prices surged from roughly $504,000 in early 2020 to a record $816,720 in February 2022, according to CREA — a gain of approximately 62% in under two years. Over roughly the same period, Canadian billionaire wealth grew by about 57%, according to Oxfam Canada. For a brief and unusual window, ordinary Canadian homeowners roughly kept pace with — and by some measures outpaced — billionaires!
That role reversal, very rare by any historical measure, is almost certainly what drove the richest families’ share of total wealth temporarily downward. Again, their total wealth didn’t go down, but their proportion of all the wealth in Canada, compared to other groups, did.
Here is where the story gets more complicated. The underlying data for Silas and Alex’s chart comes from Statistics Canada’s Survey of Financial Security (SFS), which runs periodically. According to Statistics Canada’s documentation, the 2019 survey ran September to December under the standard collection window, while the 2023 survey ran April 21 to August 31—an earlier-than-usual window adopted following changes made during the pandemic. This means the height of the housing boom—the surge to $816,720 and subsequent softening—happened entirely in between the two survey periods. No SFS survey captured the peak at all. The dip Silas and Alex observe is therefore real, but it’s measuring the echoes of the boom rather than the boom itself, and it almost certainly understates how dramatically the richest families’ share of total wealth shrank at the actual peak.
There’s a second methodological wrinkle worth flagging that mitigates the significance of the first. The SFS doesn’t use assessed or appraised values for housing. Rather, it asks respondents a single question: “How much would this property sell for today?” StatsCan itself acknowledges that this self-assessment is “subject to a large variance.” Research consistently finds that homeowners overestimate their home values on average, and that price volatility makes accuracy worse, with homeowners specifically tending to overestimate when local prices have recently fallen. The spring and summer of 2023, when the survey was in the field, was exactly that environment: a market that had dropped sharply from its 2022 peak, but with respondents who had spent two years watching neighbours sell for outrageous sums. The anchoring effect of those boom-era prices on self-reported valuations was likely substantial, meaning the 2023 SFS housing wealth figures are probably somewhat overstated relative to where the market had actually settled. The dip in Silas and Alex’s chart may be partly a measurement artifact as much as a real economic phenomenon.
None of this invalidates their finding—the PBO independently confirmed the drop in the richest families’ share of total wealth from 2019 to 2023 is statistically significant but they were using the same SFS data as Silas and Alex did as their baseline. What this does suggest is that the magnitude of the dip, even measured after house prices had already fallen significantly from their 2022 highs, is smaller than the chart implies—and the wealthy are already pulling ahead again. As Silas and Alex themselves note, between July 2023 and July 2025, Canadian billionaire wealth grew 37.2% while total household wealth grew only 9.3%.
Normally, a dip in the richest families’ share of total wealth would be welcome news. But when I look under the hood at what drove this one, I find it hard to celebrate. It was built on a housing boom that temporarily inflated the one asset ordinary Canadians hold. More importantly, the same price surge that temporarily gave ordinary homeowners a larger slice of the pie was a central driver of the housing affordability crisis that has structurally reshaped who can and can’t build wealth in Canada.
For younger Canadians already squeezed by the cost of living, the pandemic housing boom wasn’t a wealth transfer in their direction. It priced them out of the primary vehicle through which most ordinary Canadians accumulate wealth, not to mention a key ingredient most of them seek to feel economically secure and start a family.
A temporary blip in wealth concentration driven by a housing boom that comes at the cost of the next generation’s economic future isn’t progress.
A Conservative case for Community Benefits Agreements?
When a developer builds a new transit line, bridge or hospital, a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) ensures that the money spent on a large project doesn’t just produce a building, but also provides social and economic advantages to the people living nearby. In Canadian policy circles, CBAs are a file that comes across as relatively left-coded.
I interacted with the file during my time in government and took for granted that the mix of stakeholders involved were relatively progressive, and so were their proposals. Labour unions, local community groups and organizations representing historically marginalized groups all had prominent seats at the table.
And the community benefits they championed reflected that: hiring commitments targeting local workers and underrepresented groups, apprenticeship and training requirements tied to unionized trades and procurement conditions designed to steer contracts toward local and Indigenous-owned businesses. All legitimate goals, but ones that tend to load up a project with conditions before a single shovel hits the ground.
My mental model on the fate of CBAs was simple: a pendulum swinging back and forth. More activity and levers being pulled during NDP/Liberal governments, and a retrenchment or standstill when Conservatives took the helm.
A recent Substack post by Mitch Davidson, Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s former Executive Director of Policy, has me second-guessing that thinking entirely. Could there be an alternate vision for CBAs that aligns with Conservative governments? What if, instead of retrenchment, Conservative governments aggressively pushed forward their own CBA policies with different objectives and criteria? It’s an idea from an unexpected source, but one the traditional CBA stakeholder universe should spend more time thinking about.
Using the backdrop of a specific project, Newfoundland’s Bay du Nord deep-sea offshore oil project, Davidson sketches out a CBA framework that sidesteps what often aggravates the right: additional time delays and cost, unionization requirements and the picking of winners.
Two criteria seem to emerge from this approach. The first is that community benefits can’t seriously impede project delivery, a condition that cuts against some of the more process-heavy CBA frameworks progressives have championed. The second is a preference for long-term economic gains over short-term ones—durable industrial capacity rather than just construction-phase jobs.
In Davidson’s example, the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador opted to abandon previous CBA requirements focused on domestic manufacturing, instead conditioning support on helping the province acquire a floating dry dock facility, something with the potential to bolster the province’s economic fortunes well beyond the life of the project.
That first criteria should give Liberal and NDP wonks pause, because the CBA features they tend to care most about (local hiring commitments, unionization requirements and targeted procurement) are precisely the ones most likely to run afoul of it.
Canadians are losing faith in their governments. They don’t trust that there’s state capacity to deliver ambitious projects on time or on budget—and for good reason. CBAs aren’t the cause of this decline, but it’s difficult to argue with a straight face that poorly designed ones don’t contribute, at least on the margins.
That presents a real opportunity.
With Conservative governments in power across much of the country right now, CBA stakeholders who are willing to engage on these terms have more potential partners than the traditional pendulum model would suggest.
But there’s also a broader lesson here for those of us on the centre-left. Designing CBAs that prioritize delivery isn’t necessarily a concession to the right—it’s how you build the kind of track record that earns the public trust needed to do ambitious things in the first place.
Watch the video: EOTs in Canada - a new succession option for business owners with Jon Shell
What if employees could own the company they work for?
A growing model called employee ownership is gaining attention in Canada, and new research aims to better understand its impact. The Smith School of Business at Queen’s University has launched the Employee Ownership Research Initiative to study how this model works and how it could expand across the country.
In this episode of Moolala: Money Made Simple, Jon Shell, Chair of Social Capital Partners and board member at Employee Ownership Canada, joins Bruce Sellery to explain how employee ownership trusts (EOTs) work and why they could reshape business ownership in Canada.
They discuss:
➡️What employee ownership means and how it works
➡️The purpose of the new Employee Ownership Research Initiative
➡️Current research gaps around employee-owned businesses
➡️Plans to build a national database of employee-owned companies
➡️How employee ownership has evolved in Canada in recent years
This conversation explores how employee ownership could support business succession, strengthen workplaces and create new pathways for shared prosperity.
Speakers
Jon Shell
Chair, Social Capital Partners
Watch the video: The risks and benefits of opening up private markets to everyday investors
The Ontario Securities Commission wants to give retail investors access to private markets. But as SCP Fellow Rachel Wasserman, founder of Wasserman Business Law, tells BNN Bloomberg’s Andrew Bell, when you look closely, it starts to look less like democratization and more like offloading risk onto people with the least power to absorb it.
Private equity is already underperforming S&P index funds over 1, 5 and 10-year periods and PE’s biggest historical champions are quietly reducing their exposure. So, why would regulators suddenly be so eager to open the door for retail investors? This proposal to offer retail investors access to PE stands to benefit the asset managers and intermediaries, with everyday investors bearing the costs and risks. Financial inclusion does not mean broadening access to financial products that sophisticated players are already walking away from.
Speakers
Rachel Wasserman
Founder, Wasserman Business Law
Fellow, Social Capital Partners