The answer is Canada’s missing acceleration
No. In remarks on August 25, 2015, Lawrence L. Schembri did not treat faster population growth after 1995 as the reason Canadian house prices rose faster than income. Comparing Canada with Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden, he said population growth rates increased after 1995 in every country except Canada. Population growth could, in his words, help explain the rise in house prices relative to income for most countries later in the sample. Canada is the exception that claim leaves out.
The speech to the Canadian Association for Business Economics in Kingston, Ontario, looks back about 40 years from 2015. It is not a 2026 mortgage quote. The fetched page stops mid-sentence at “In Canada, it is noteworthy th”. That clause is not filled in here.
Real prices turned up, then outran income
Schembri contrasted the talk with the Bank’s usual “here and now” view in the Monetary Policy Report and the Financial System Review. Chart 1 shows real house prices since 1975. Chart 1a places Canada with Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden: small, open economies with similar macro policy frameworks and, he said, similar crisis and post-crisis experiences. In particular, they did not have sizable post-crisis house-price corrections. Chart 1b covers advanced economies that did have significant, persistent post-crisis declines. Those countries are not named in the fetch.
From 1975 to 1995, he said, real prices showed no material upward trend. A generalized rise began in the second half of the 1990s and was continuing in August 2015, even after corrections. Real prices stayed well above 1995 levels for almost all countries. He treated the shared post-1995 lift as evidence of common factors over the previous 20 years. No index level is printed, and none is estimated.
A house, as he defined it, provides housing services and stores wealth. Price is set by demand for those services and the stock of houses; user cost nets depreciation, maintenance and interest against expected appreciation. He focused on national prices for existing owner-occupied houses, singles and multiples together.
Since 1995, prices in Canada and the peers rose faster than nominal personal disposable income. All five had solid income growth, strongest in Norway and Sweden. Crisis corrections pulled price-to-income ratios down temporarily; then the ratios climbed again. The speech does not say Canadian incomes fell. The comparison is nominal personal disposable income, not a real paycheque built for this article.
High growth is not the same as faster growth
Chart 3a compares population growth in 1975–1994 and 1995–2015. Over the full sample, rates were highest in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Rates then increased in every country except Canada. Canada was not described as a slow-growth outlier. It was the country whose growth rate did not step up.
That inference is analysis, not a printed gap. Population growth could help explain prices rising faster than income for most countries in the later period, because their growth rates had increased. The Canadian rates are not on the page, so the size of the exception cannot be calculated. Where the rate did not increase, this is not the explanation he offers.
The puzzle is why prices outran income after a flat real-price stretch. A population speedup matches the other four countries on his statement and does not match Canada. Other demand forces stay open in the extract: lower long-term interest rates; broader, more efficient mortgage credit after liberalization and innovation; and the policy framework, international investment, preferences, and regulatory and tax changes. He calls these groups, demographics included, likely contributors to rising real prices since 1995. He does not say which one carried Canada.
Migration rose in Canada too
Net migration was highest in Australia and Canada over the whole sample, and it increased importantly in all five countries in the second half. A rise in net migration can therefore sit beside an overall population growth rate that did not rise, if other components offset it. The speech does not split births, deaths and migration, and it prints no rates.
In Australia, Canada and New Zealand, growth in the approximate house-owning ages, 25 to 75, declined later in the sample. Schembri said this likely reflects the postwar baby boom moving from youth into middle age. That cohort’s growth still remained well above 1 percent in the three countries. Norway and Sweden are outside the statement, and no exact rate is given. The next words—“In Canada, it is noteworthy th”—end the fetch and are not a price finding.
A 2015 speech is not a current bill
He also promised remarks on supply, financial stability and macroprudential policy, including how that policy interacts with monetary policy. Those passages were not in the fetch and are not reported. The case date is August 25, 2015; the periods ending in 2015, and the phrase “continuing today,” belong to that day. Reviewed on November 1, 2026, the page is still the truncated address. It states no 2026 mortgage payment, rent or wage.
This hypothetical uses no chart data. Assume two countries where prices rise faster than nominal disposable income after 1995. Country A’s population growth rate is higher in the later window; Country B’s is not. The “could help explain” line fits A and, by the stated exception, not B. Canada is B on acceleration and still one of the three highest-growth countries over the full sample.
What would move that reading is the rest of the August 25, 2015 speech, especially the broken Canada sentence and the supply and credit passages, plus later statistics on population growth, net migration, the 25-to-75 cohort and price-to-income ratios after 2015. Inside this text, the result stays narrow: Canadian real prices joined the post-1995 rise and beat nominal disposable income, but faster population growth was an explanation Schembri offered for most of the group, not for Canada.