Canada did not have a financial bubble in 2008, so we did not become

[applegrove]

Xenophobic. Harper's Conservatives tried to play the xenophobic card during last fall's election saying that the conservatives would start a barbaric cultural practices hotline to the RCMP if elected. Canadians were disgusted. Trudeau's Liberals and their 'sunny ways' won the election. True we have much greater control over immigration than most other countries but we also had a mild recession only after the Financial bubble burst elsewhere and, to their credit, the conservatives did Keynesian spending during it. Not one Canadian bank went under. Previous Liberal government refused to deregulated banking completely. So yes. Neoliberalism has destabilize the world's economies when the deregulation goes too far. And yes that results in political destabilization when the resulting recessions go on too long. Things fall apart including democracy. People need economic and political equality for democracy to work. First Trump and now the Brexit. The moral to the story is that the right and neoliberals should not have carte blanch to deregulate to the nth degree and the left needs to be a part of trade discussions.

[kcjohn1]

1. Canada/Australia/US are countries with migrant history

You can't really compare their situation UK/Europe.

UK immigration issue was tied to lots of xenophobia. However, from policy perspective it is questionable. UK has no capability to control migration. Due to austerity, and low wages in eastern europe (also 50% youth unemployment in Spain/Italy), UK is getting lots of migrant workers who are displacing and forcing down wages in UK.

This is the problem with neoliberals. They don't give a shit about the low class workers. I'm pretty sure cheap polish workers in Bristol is good thing for them, but the local chap in Bristol is not going to be better off.

[applegrove]

2. Well if there was not massive speculation in Europe that caused a decade

long austerity, thus less migration to england, and no invasion of Iraq which, which destabilize the whole middle east, and results in refugees, great Britain may have kept the faith in the EU. Neocons and neoliberals have a lot to answer for.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

3. Canada's financial bubble is still ongoing

When the housing bubble in Canada bursts the Canadian banks are going to be even more vulnerable than the American ones because the Canadian banks kept all their shitty mortgages in-house.

[applegrove]

4. Two markets are hot right now. People are being warned. In Vancouver

it is partly due to foreign buyers of houses as an investment. Our banking laws were way stricken here and we didn't have a home grown subprimemortgage burst. We only went into recession the tiny bit that we did because the world markets went down. Vancouver and Toronto are both considered really nice places to live and it is very doubtful that those two markets would completely collapse. A correction sure. But not a bust.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

5. The whole country is affected, Toronto and Vancouver are merely the worst

Canada would be a lot better off today if they crashed along with the rest of the world in 2008.

The Canadian mortgage situation is in many ways worse than the US one was. In effect everyone in Canada has a "teaser" mortgage and if interest rates rise many people won't be able to afford their mortgage when it renews.

On the flip side if the market crashes and people are underwater by hundreds of thousands of dollars they will just file for bankruptcy. No sane person is going to carry their million dollar mortgage on a property they won't live long enough to see rebound by even half.

[applegrove]

7. Oh good gosh no. The country would not be better off if the middle class

lost half their wealth. Get off the Kool aid. In fact canada surpassed the usa in median wealth of the middle class just because the usa had the housing crash and Canada did not. You imply that a country is better off if the middle class is very much worse off. That is a right wing wet dream where the middle class is so weak wages fall and power transfer to the 1% and to ***holes who support them.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

8. There is no soft landing or happy ending to be had here

There has been nothing positive about letting the Canadian housing market fester as it has. The middle class Canadian just has all the further to fall now and Canadian banks have huge portfolios of loans with worthless collateral but backed by CMHC mortgage insurance. The Canadian housing market is more an abscessed tooth than a bubble.

Everyone exposed to this is fucked.

[pampango]

6. Immigration is much higher in Canada (and the US and Ireland) than in the UK but xenophobia

seems to run much higher in the UK. The US and Canada have a history of immigration (although have gone through waves of nativist anti-immigrant movements throughout our history). But Ireland? It has about 50% more foreign-born residents (percentage-wise) than the UK yet seems to have little xenophobia or anti-EU sentiment.