June 7, 2017 by admin

OECD: Canada should do more about addressing risk from expensive housing markets

PARIS – A Paris-based economic think-tank is calling on Canada to do more to address risks associated with high-priced housing markets in cities such as Toronto and Vancouver.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development suggests that there should be further tightening of macro-prudential measures undertaken last year.
Those measures included new standards for federally regulated lenders and mortgage insurers, among other things.
For the broader economy, the OECD estimates Canada’s gross domestic product will grow by 2.8 per cent this year, double last year’s 1.4 per cent growth in GDP.
The new estimate would put Canada’s economic growth this year ahead of the United States, which the OECD estimates will have GDP growth of 2.1 per cent this year.
The new OECD estimate is also above the Bank of Canada’s most recent forecast of 2.6 per cent growth in 2017.