Canada’s housing crisis. Youth unemployment. Immigration debates. A broken healthcare system.
What if we told you a book published in 1996 predicted almost all of it?
In this episode of The Missing Middle, Cara Stern and Mike Moffatt revisit the Canadian classic Boom, Bust & Echo to explore how demographics, especially the aging of the baby boomers, reshaped Canada’s economy, housing market, job prospects, and public policy.
We break down:
• Why youth unemployment was a policy choice
• How demographics quietly drive housing prices
• What governments got right — and very wrong
• Why immigration policy, real estate, and healthcare are deeply connected
• And how Canada ended up with a generational economic imbalance
This isn’t just history. It explains why life is harder for young Canadians today and what choices led us here.
If you care about housing affordability, jobs, immigration, public policy, and Canada’s economic future, this episode is for you.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:49 Why Boom, Bust, and Echo (BBE) still matters
03:00 What the book got right and wrong
04:25 Prediction about the rise of home health care
06: 06 Policy dilemma: high demand for PSWs & balancing budgets
08:12 Immigration policy advice from Boom, Bust and Echo
09:03 Governments didn’t take the advice
10:55 BBE real estate prediction
11:45 Housing market predictions: what went wrong
15:10 Boomers, Millennials & real estate
16:40 BBE prediction on future changes to taxation policy
17:13 The politics of moving taxation from income to capital
19:50 Real estate prediction for aging boomers
20:34 Naturally occurring retirement communities
23:40 Following where people actually live
24:47 Demographics are facts that help us understand the future
Research/links:
Boom, Bust & Echo: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift
https://www.amazon.ca/Boom-bust-echo-profit-demographic/dp/0921912978
David Foot on Aging Society & Youth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy7y2w9i_aA
What David Foot didn't tell us
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/what-david-foot-didnt-tell-us/article784233/
Finding Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities - Agenda segment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ynlwpsye2c0
Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux
Produced by Meredith Martin
This podcast is funded by the Neptis Foundation and brought to you by the Smart Prosperity Institute.
