Because canadians are risk-averse. Hence why only the banks have been continuing to make money; they even invest in each other to keep the risk-averse cycle going.
> Investors in Canada just don't have that kind of money to play with.
The ecosystem [1] that provides dollars to high-risk investments (like tech startups) just doesn't exist on the same scale in Canada. The only players with that kind of money are the federal and provincial governments, which are by nature very conservative.
[1] For example, one source of funding is large pensions and endowments, who take a tiny percentage of their overall portfolio and put it into "high-risk" investments. The funds are so large that the tiny percentage amounts to millions and millions of dollars.
Maybe, but it’s also remarkable Canada hasn’t had a bank failure in >100 years. It’s a safe, peaceful and prosperous developed country. Hard to argue that Canada hasn’t done fairly well. I still agree it’s perhaps too risk averse, but I disagree it’s the worst performing of all developed countries in that regard.
I am Canadian and am wary of investing in the stock market in Canada because the behaviour of our government is simply to follow in the footsteps of the previous Bush administration in the United States. The government deficit has recently gone back up to levels it was at in the 80's and 90's. The domestic economy is skewed toward scamming investors into buying resources that may or may not be accessible. Following the US lead, housing prices somewhat collapsed and are mostly flat now. Unemployment numbers are unreliable as the numbers do not really reflect the numbers of people out of work. The city of Vancouver for instance has about 1200 homeless people but homeless people are not counted amongst the unemployed.
Our banking system is similar to the United States where the government borrows money as debt. In Canada, the government borrows debt money from private Canadian chartered banks that create the money virtually out of thin air. With the beauty of compound interest the government has paid out over $1.5 trillion dollars in interest alone. Most of our deficit and spending goes towards merely making payments on the interest to the private banks. Every government in the world could pay off their debt in an instant by creating debt free money out of thin air. The Bank of Canada has this power, but the Canadian government chooses to create money as debt.
Canada has a huge money laundering problem (source: my company makes anti money laundering tech).
Interesting how the article shows how this translates to destruction of capital assets and, eventually, people. That’s not necessarily clear otherwise.
The Canadian risk/reward curve is weird. They won't look at anything barely promising but will go "all in" once it hits a bit of traction (even if the business model is wonky)
Canada is receiving so much money for investment because it is perceived as the most stable country in the Americas.
But Canada just doesn't have enough assets to soak all that money up. So that money chases the few assets such as residential property stock.
Canada could legally allow all this money to be invested in startups or companies that need funding instead of passive assets. That way, the same money would be funneled to actual companies and workers, while at the same time, providing assets to all this foreign money.
Canadian banks are incredibly risk averse, and programs like CSBFP have so many strings attached that make it almost useless for certain sectors. Trying to fund infrastructure (rural FTTH) has been an exercise in futility with most Canadian banks. 75-85% loan to value ratio on fibre builds makes no sense considering the assets have 30+ years of life after being paid off in 3-4 years. But hey, we love real estate!
Originally from Calgary and I concur with the poster above. Canadians tend to think small. For venture the culture has been so burned by pump and dump penny stocks that there is no patient capital. Canada needs an enormous influx of venture capital. The problem is, is that the crown corporations who can make those bets are limited to investing in Canadian funds. If they could invest 10% into a US fund and the US fund agreed to invest 10% of the portfolio into Canada it could really open up the market.
Like many other things affecting western countries though, it's worse in Canada since we have lower investment rates, spend less on R&D, have an ultra-risk averse culture, extremely high costs, etc...
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