January 25 Episode
01:14:26 Share

Welcome to Money Talks. My name is Mike Campbell. Man, what a show. You got to hear this guy, Dave Yeager, you know, very prominent oil analyst or energy analyst, author, etc. Well, I want to ask him straightforward question. I've been puzzled by our at least willingness to cut off oil exports to the U.S.,

Well, I'm not sure too many people have done the cost of that. I'm going to ask him, is it a good idea or not? He's got lots to say. I think you're going to find it fascinating. We also got lots of stuff to talk about when it comes to cybersecurity. Ian Patterson is going to be with me from Pluralock. Plus, one of my favorite people when you look at real estate investing, Jeff Olin from Vision Capital is with us telling what the state of affairs is there. Now, keep in mind, they do all of their investing in the stock market.

You know, when you go out and you buy a piece of property in what we, I guess, would consider the normal way, well, presto, you don't get discounts there. But sometimes the market mispriced both on direction, you know, too high, too low.

Vision Capital has done a fantastic job with that, averaging 10.2% since they started the Vision Capital funds in 2008. So as you can tell, lots to come. I've got Michael Levy. I've got talking, of course, a big-time goofy. I've got Ozzy Jurek. So much to talk about on the other side of real estate. But first...

Maybe it's just recency bias, but I can't think of anything like this in the past, well, I think decades, when you talk about the Liberal Party's retreat from the carbon tax once the leadership contest began after Justin Trudeau's resignation.

I mean, come on, it's arguably been the most contentious, dominant issue in Canadian politics for the last several years. One that has severely divided Canadians, with the Liberal Party, NDP, Greens fully supporting a carbon tax versus the Conservatives, which have aggressively campaigned against one. Yet within days, moments of announcing their bid to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader, you got...

you know, prospective candidates like Chandra Arya announcing he'd get rid of it if he was elected. You've got leading contenders, Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland, not far behind, suggesting they'd also do away with it. And you've got Katrina Gould saying she's immediately stop any increases. Now,

Now, granted, some backtracking has taken place. Once I think it was a shocked reaction from the Liberal partisan supporters who spent the last six years defending the carbon tax, even in the face of bungled implementation, even in the face of that horrendous decision to suspend the carbon tax on home heating oil in Canada, which effectively obliterated the Liberals' main rationale that everybody's better off under a carbon tax.

I mean, what, we're supposed to believe that Justin Trudeau had decided to make everybody in Atlanta, Canada worse off? But still, liberals defended the carbon tax and attacked the Conservatives for not supporting it. And yet here we are, early days of the leadership race, and hopefuls can't distance themselves fast enough from it. And now...

were much closer to the position of Pierre Polyev of the Conservatives than they were of the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau. As I said, I don't think I've ever seen such an abrupt about-face on such a major policy due to nothing more than the dismal electoral prospects. Although I'm not surprised. I mean, the Liberals have bungled the carbon tax file right from the beginning. If you're not clear, let me remind you, that tax was introduced in B.C.,

And when it was, it had widespread support from everyone other than the BC NDP who opposed it. But the key was this. The governments put up front and emphasized the tax was revenue neutral. In other words, government legislated that the revenues would stay flat and that any money collected from the carbon tax would be offset by a reduction in personal and corporate income tax.

Well, and the government spent an awful lot of time explaining that it would not cost individuals or businesses anyway. That's what revenue neutral means.

Well, what's noteworthy is that the tax was first introduced in BC. It was applauded around the Western world. For example, 3,649 economists in the US, including 28 Nobel Prize economists, four former chairs of the Federal Reserve, they signed something called the Economist Statement on Carbon Dividends, which stated that the carbon tax must be in quotes, revenue neutral to avoid debates over the size of government and maximize political viability. Well, you

Well, you know what? The NDP governments in both Alberta and BC chose to ignore the advice of Nobel Prize winners, federal chairpersons and thousands of economists. And the federal government did the same thing. They did away with revenue neutrality. And now somehow we're surprised that people are against it. I mean, it's unbelievable. People feel taxed to death. They don't seem to understand that millions are saying not a penny more.

Now, the feds had a working model, thanks to BC, that avoided the political rancor, but said no thanks to the original. Why? The original deadly sin, greed. Right out of the gate, the federal carbon tax was never designed to be revenue neutral. Are they really surprised that small business, for example, opposed the tax? You know what? After five years and the government taking $2.5 billion from them, they finally got a rebate check in December.

Well, the head of the Canadian Federation of Small Business, Dan Kelly, sums it up well. He says in quotes, I've been working in public policy for over 30 years. I've seldom seen a tax or fiscal policy bungled so badly as the federal carbon tax. And by the way, in BC, under the NDP, any individual making over $60,000 gets zero in rebates. Billions collected for a country responsible for 1.5% of global emissions.

And now candidates for the Liberal leadership can't back away fast enough. Now, Mark Carney is now talking about a replacement. He didn't say that up front, by the way, but he's talking about a replacement. But I'd be surprised if the Liberals have any credibility on this file. But it remains to be seen if the voters will buy it. But that's not the only flip-flop of a major tax initiative. But you're going to have to wait for the goofy for more.

Hey, just a reminder, well, we're counting it down. Two weeks today, we'll have been in the World Outlook Conference. It starts February 7th, February 8th. I think we've got maybe three VIP passes left or some small number, but there's still time to get your ticket. And I would just say, go to mikesmoneytalks.ca, mikesmoneytalks.ca, click on the events, and there you go. The tickets are right there on the front page.

I'm looking forward to seeing everybody and getting excited because the list of analysts is so terrific. You know, whether we're talking about Tony Greer or Martin Armstrong, Lance Roberts, Joseph Schachter, of course, Ozzy's going to be there. I'll chat with him about that in a minute. And Victor will be there. I mean, it's absolutely been fantastic, but my definition of fantastic is how good the track record's been. You just can't hide the fact that our small cap portfolio has returned every single year

Now, I can't promise it can do that in the future, but every single year, 13 years, it's been more than double digits, sometimes exceedingly more than double digits, including our portfolio from last year. So many winners in that. But I think it's a great opportunity to come and really immerse yourself for just a couple of days in what's going on in the world economically, domestically, financially, but how you can take advantage of it.

how you can protect yourself and your family through the proper kinds of investment focus. We've done that successfully. I intend to continue to do that, but I'd love to do it with you in person. I'll see you there.

Hi, everyone. This is Ralph VanderWaal, the founder of the Western Canada Monthly Income Fund. We are excited for 2025 and beyond. After the great success of our recent project, the Beach House at Saratoga, we are now in pre-sales for the next project, 36 units called Portal in Maple Ridge. The website is portalmapleridge.com.

Now that interest rates have seen a significant decrease and mortgages may be had for just above 4%, the prospect of change in the federal government that will have a mandate to cut taxes and speed up construction, we are seeing a big increase in interest. West Canada Monthly Income Fund is also preparing to buy several projects under Vancouver's Bill 44 and 47 to build six-plex townhouse developments.

So the fundamentals haven't changed, folks. There's a huge deficit in the homes Canada will need over the next five short years, some 2.5 million homes, according to CMHC.

So West Canada Monthly Income Fund marries your savings with this need for homes to provide you with a solid return. We call it common sense investing. So during the conference, we will be explaining the fundamentals, how we manage our projects to protect our capital and apply every tool we have to provide you with strong returns. We will be presenting at the World Outlook Financial Conference, February 7th and 8th. Our website, wcmif.ca. We hope to see you there. ♪

Oil and gas, of course, or oil especially, has been top of mind when we're talking about the Trump tariffs. Will we use it as a weapon? What is our response going to be? So I thought I'd call on Dave Yeager. He's an energy policy analyst. He's authored the book From Miracle to Menace. I've always enjoyed his work. Dave, look, a busy time for you. I'm sure you're getting a lot of questions, but I appreciate you finding time for us. That's great. Thanks.

And I guess, you know, as I say, it's interesting for me, I'll just say this, is that, you know, many of the people who fought hard against oil and gas development have now discovered it's our primary asset in the trade negotiations with the U.S. I can't avoid mentioning that irony there. But let's talk about that. I mean, obviously, we've got some people saying we should just cut off oil exports and

You got people like me saying, I need a lot more explanation before I'm going to lose that kind of money that we're taking in in revenue, companies, government tax revenue, the whole work. So I'm hoping you can sort of put us straight on that one. Well, if you look at energy policy, pipeline policy, climate policy in Canada in the last 15 years, there's no evidence that they

have ever understood the economic value of oil and gas. I mean, when people come and say they want to buy LNG and there's no economic case or that this is our largest source of exports or this is the largest contributor to the taxes. So the economic ignorance, I guess, of the value of this specific resource to this country has long been misunderstood. So this is actually, in a perverse way, Mike, this is just more of the same.

They said, well, we'll fix their ass. We didn't want it anyway. But they, you know, they don't have much in the, as they, you know, they defend themselves or fight back. They don't have that many tools in the toolbox. So throwing oil and gas under the bus yet again is in many ways just a continuation of policies that have been in that place for quite some time in various ways on multiple fronts.

What I've welcomed, though, is that the focus on how important it is, you know, not just obviously for the U.S. economy as we ship what the estimates are 4.3 million barrels a day, but it's for the Canadian that we really don't have a lot of other weapons. It's so dominant compared to any other suggestion in terms of how we can hurt them in terms. And of course, then the other side is how much it would cost us.

If you go back, it took a long time to take fossil fuels. And that's the title of my book, Miracle to Manus. I mean, I had to write a book about it. I was so confused by the policy. So it took a long time to figure that the world could live without this. But the events of the peak woke was of 2020. That's the way I look at it. And that's when Shell and BP told the world they were going to exit the oil business and

You know, when Larry Fink at BlackRock was talking about this and his own incredible outbreak of amnesia among those who in 2020 said we could build back better resilient recovery and all that stuff out of oil and gas. So the economic reality has really been hitting home, as have all matters of economics, as people understand they have to pay for this stuff.

So the perverse good news of this is all of a sudden, for those that do understand that oil and gas is valuable, they do understand that we have a single market because they blocked access to all the other markets.

And so those who do understand the value of oil and gas, all of a sudden we're seeing more interest in pipelines that we spent the last 10 years blocking in the last 10 days than the last 10 years. And I'm talking about, you know, there was the First Nations leader, Indigenous leader in B.C. that thought Northern Gateways was not so bad. Then he got his hand slapped, but we know what he's thinking.

They said, holy cow, we can make some money on this. And then Energy East was back in the news just the other day. Why wouldn't we do that? So it's actually in many ways, it's...

And sometimes it takes a crisis to get everybody's attention or something like that. But the good news is, and the other thing that's happened is there's been a lot of education, pushback by the industry, a lot of advertising, social media work, that you can't live without oil, that pretty well everything you own is a derivative of oil. So there's been an educational process that was previously not thought to be required. And they're starting to bear some fruit. People are starting to understand these things. Same thing as a carbon tax.

Carbon tax was a great idea until people had to start paying it. And now that it's, you know, at the levels it is, and it's a material contributor to your loss of disposable income. So the great rethink, the post-woke, the rethinking of the entire economy. And then, of course, Trump is really on the Canadian side with all the gas has really exacerbated things. But let's just understand, Trump just told Davos yesterday,

that we don't need Canadian oil and gas. So he's not, you know, he's, I think sometimes he has to read the news, see the news at the end of the day to see what he said. That's not entirely, no, that's not true. They still import a lot of oil, 7 million barrels a day of oil in the United States. Most of that comes from Canada. So he's not, you know, a little footloose with the facts on that. He does need Canadian oil and gas and will for the foreseeable future.

Well, let me ask, you know, of course, Alberta, heavy crude goes down into the U.S. refineries and the Gulf. But I don't see them having any alternative because they've also announced at the same time, we're not taking any Venezuelan oil. So I just, as I say, I think we've got the cards in terms of why don't we let them pay more? Just let them pay more. Yeah, the concept of a terrorist is,

A tariff is to protect local industries, meaning that your local industry is suffering from unfair competition from outside your borders, right? The trouble is, is tariffs on imported oil into PAD 2, this West Central Midwest U.S. that runs entirely on American crude. There are no alternatives.

I mean, even if you were to accept heavy oil from Mexico and Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, the plumbing from the Gulf of Mexico to where it needs to be doesn't exist either. So the use of the word tariff on this particular product is disingenuous. They can't replace it. Now, the auto business is different. You can say if we make offshore autos more expensive, they'll buy more locally made ones.

But when you're a net oil importer, to put tariffs on oil coming in, thinking that that's going to spur development of oil and gas when you don't have the oil and gas to develop is misapplied. And so I think those of us that study the industry and study tariffs, I mean, the idea that they're actually going to put tariffs on oil and gas is unlikely. So the problem actually for Alberta and the oil industry is not in D.C. The problem is in central Canada.

And it's the muscle flexing, if you will, that, you know, we'll show you, you know, if you do this, we'll do this. And that the Canadian way or the current Canadian government, if we have economic difficulties, well, let's exacerbate them to the greatest degree possible. Yeah, let's make it worse. And so I just find it hilarious that as the national interest for oil and gas has been in my lifetime, has been defined multiple times.

And now the national interest is to use it as a bargaining chip to protect the audio industry. When in the old days, they built pipelines to Eastern Canada so that we could provide fuel for the auto industry. So here we go again. So it's a tragedy we got into this mess, but it looks like there's the initial reaction. It's really regrettable.

that we have this particular government, we're particularly vulnerable at this time. We've got the government, the prime minister is resigning because of unpopularity, the finance minister's leadership race. We have all the time for the Liberal Party to confess that it's not that popular and got its own issues. This is a really bad timing and everybody's scrambling and there's no true leadership coming from the PMO, regrettably.

And the central Canadian view is, well, you know, if we're hurting, what can the West do? So nothing's changed there. They did this before. But at the end of the day, I think common sense is going to prevail. I think we're going to continue to sell them oil and gas. I'd be surprised. I'm not so sure that Trump is necessarily going to do everything he said he's done. Certainly, he misquoted himself yesterday. Maybe he's done that more than we think, hopefully. Yeah, well, I'd say, I mean, the other side is for

for those reasons, I don't think the U S will put tariffs on Canadian oil and gas, but I, I'm not as confident, uh, of that understanding. I mean, there's some signs they say, I'm going to back off till I hear the details. That's a good sign, but I just think Canadians have to be very clear how damaging, uh,

Not their tariff, but anything we did to restrict our exports would be when it's so important, you know, biggest export to the U.S., all the lists that we know, how many jobs, you know, depending on your numbers, it's 228,000 to 500,000, depending, you know, how many direct, indirect jobs. You know, we can't afford to do that.

There's a few other tools in the toolbox. You could do the same thing if we were going to put an export tax on Canadian oil and gas to make it more expensive. We could do the same thing with Quebec electricity. The other thing we could do is we could put an import tariff

on American natural gas. One of the little things that's not very well understood is, you know, back in the mid-80s, although Ontario natural gas consumption has not increased, it's up about 50% in the last 40 years, the imports of natural gas have gone from almost zero, this used to be a completely a Western Canadian market, in 2023 it was almost a trillion cubic feet

980,000,000 BCF came in from the States. So why wouldn't we put an import tariff on American natural gas? That would be the equivalent policy. Nobody's mentioned that yet. So we do have an opportunity. We are importing almost a trillion cubic feet a year

natural gas from the United States because it's cheaper same reason they buy oil from us so we could fix their butts there as well but that would of course increase the price of natural gas to Ontario consumers that would be the same impact that the Trump administration is likely to do we don't see those other options on the table of

of using energy as this, you know, as this fight back bargaining chip. If you're going to do it with energy, do it with all energy and do it across the board. And that's, you know, funnily enough, that's not the current plan.

Well, great stuff as usual, Dave, and I appreciate you. I know you were in a meeting. You've come out to join us here, and that is much appreciated. Get your clarity on this. Well, I hope so. At the end of the day, these things always work out better than they look. That's the problem with this. We've had a couple of weeks, and the media churns, and what are you going to do? What are you going to do?

And I think Trump's learning already in his first week in office. He can't do exactly everything he says. And we're, I think, going to see more of that. Thanks for your interest, Mike. Have a great day. Well, great stuff. Thanks, Dave. Bye-bye. Andrew Ruland here from Integrated Wealth Management. As Mike has said, elections have consequences. And whether you like them or not, Donald Trump's America First agenda will have both predictable and unpredictable consequences for years to come.

Trump's bombast and strong-arm negotiation style have turned the spotlight on weak and incompetent political leadership, including here in Canada, and it's already triggering major changes.

We look forward to presenting at the upcoming World Outlook Financial Conference in Vancouver on February 7th and 8th. And we're going to focus on two key topics. First, we'll show you exactly how our portfolio managers actively navigate bumpy markets to deliver excellent risk-adjusted returns. And we'll also show you how we help individual clients achieve their unique financial life goals using our integrated wealth process. We look forward to seeing you there and chatting with you at our booth.

And if you're not attending the conference, you can learn more about how we serve our clients by visiting i-wealth.ca. That's i-wealth.ca. Time now for the quote of the week. And it's been an interesting week, thanks to President Trump. Dozens of executive orders along with many provocative statements. But I chose this one for my quote of the week. In quotes, I'm going to do Russia, whose economy is failing, and President Putin a very big favor.

Settle now and stop this ridiculous war. It's only going to get worse. If we don't make a deal, and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of taxes, tariffs, and sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States and various other participating countries. Let's get this war, which never should have been started if I were president, over with.

We can do it the easy way or the hard way. And the easy way is always better. It's time to make a deal. No more lives should be lost. Well, that's typical of this week. Lots to discuss coming out of Washington at this time. But that one has a lot of people thinking seriously.

You know, one of the most fascinating people I've ever met in the field of investment real estate is Jeff Olin, Vision Capital. He and his partners there and his team have had an exceptional track record. I mean, it's incredible. I think they've never failed to not make on average 10.5%. They're up 420%.

you know, since inception. Jeff joins me now. Jeff, I've got to start with, you know, you being able to maintain that average, you know, for 2024. And the reason I'm saying that is, I mean, it was a brutal time in the last several months, especially in the real estate investment trust sector. Now, you guys invest in the market. I should have said that up front. You buy undervalued stocks in the real estate sector, of course.

You know, obviously seldom when they've come back, you look for takeover candidates and all that in the market. Well, the market punished REITs. So to be honest, I was surprised you guys were able to maintain a positive return in that period, let alone maintaining that average of 10.5%. Yeah, it certainly was a challenging context. I mean, things look pretty good in REIT land coming into the third quarter.

you know, beginning of 2024, we had no idea whether the Fed was going to cut rates twice, three times. Was it going to be 24 or 25? But we were confident that the Fed wasn't going to increase the rates. And historically, when you've seen Fed tightening peak,

The following two years, REITs were up 19.7%, and the following three years up 30%. So third quarter looked pretty good. Fed tightening peak. They started to cut rates.

And then we had a confluence of events. In the U.S., of course, you had Donald Trump elected decisively tariffs to concerns about inflation. So the yield in the 10 U.S. bonds spiked up significantly. In Canada in October, you had the announcement from the Trudeau government about the cuts of immigration challenging our population growth, the concerns over those U.S. tariffs, the decline in the Canadian dollar.

And then in Europe, you had the budget deficits in the UK, which led to the 10-year gilt, the equivalent of the bond, a treasury bond, going to the highest yield since 2008. So in that context, REITs were down 15% in Canada. So, you know, this comes back to our strategy. How did we maintain the ability to protect capital? And the answer to your question is, one,

We don't buy indices. We're not long only. And our mantra is we seek to buy real estate cheaper in the stock market than one can in the property market. So we look at the underlying net asset value of what that property is worth and to compare it with what it's trading at. You know, one of my former clients used to say,

He was from Newfoundland, so pardon my twang. It's hard to fall into bed when you're sleeping on the floor by. And so, you know, that's, you know, so price is correct and you're trading at bigger discounts. And we have that compelling situation today. The other factor, of course, is we can be short.

So one of the investing theses is buy low, sell high. Well, being short is the opposite. If you can sell overvalued or sectors where the fundamentals are more challenging, that helps to hedge your risk. And clearly in the fourth quarter, our short positions contribute significantly to help protect capital.

And that's, again, alluding to my question is such an important key component. I've always liked that about vision capital. I think you need to go long short, you know, in the market because and look at the volatility. I mean, my goodness, you can make a lot of money in both directions. But let me come to the I love that analogy, by the way. I'll give credit to the Newfoundlander for that one. But come on.

Doesn't it sort of make you sort of rub your hands together thinking there's some opportunity out there, you know, because we've had this big decline in REITs? Yeah, exactly. I mean, what is very interesting and what makes the opportunity compelling today is

is in the fourth quarter, real estate fundamentals improved. Vacancy rates came down. Demand was still strong. Because of the big spike in interest rates in the prior three years, supply, new supply, new construction has fallen off a cliff.

So you have improving fundamentals. And even though the yield in 10 years bond went up, you actually had sectors where cap rates, the unlevered return, which has some short term. And I want to come back to this short term correlation to bond yields. They actually declined, notwithstanding yields went up and credit spreads came in significantly. And so the real estate fundamentals improved.

And the context is global concerns. And so now we have, you know, in Canada, I think the number is 24% discount of the implied valuation of REITs relative to the valuation of their properties. Well, and again, that's what makes your approach, I think, very unique. The way you, I mean, really, I mean, you know, since 2008, I think off the top of my head, you guys have been looking in the market and

looking for stuff because the market makes pricing mistakes. That's the opportunity in the market. That's why it's important also to go short sometimes because we way overvalue stuff or we way undervalue stuff. And you've done that, obviously, very successfully. I like people know because people know, I always say this, Jeff, I like results.

Do you know what I mean? This is a business of results. And I wish our politicians would understand that. I could sit them all down and explain. When GDP per capita goes down 97 quarters in a row, that's not a good result. But you guys have had that result. You're up 420% since inception there, but it's the consistency too. And again, because you're allowed to go short and long. So

When you look at this kind of an environment, give me one example and we'll come back to some others. But give me one example of something that has interested you right now, you know, with Vision Capital.

Yeah, I mean, we like the grocery-anchored, necessity-based retail space. We do like it in both the United States and Canada. We like it a lot better in Canada because there's less retail square footage per capita in Canada. Vacancy rates are lower. We've had very, very little supply. So that's – it's necessity-based retail.

It's grocery anchored and the other tenants are, you know, they're shoe repair, they're nail salons. You can't get your teeth cleaned online.

You know, you can't get your shoes repaired online. So they're not as susceptible to e-commerce. Rent growth is compelling. It's stable, it's defensive, and yet there's growth. And some of the names we like actually have significant upside because of the location of their properties and they have significant density to build apartments in the middle of these urban locations in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton.

So that's one area where it looks more compelling now. It looked pretty good at the end of the third quarter, but because valuations have come down. I mean, the other thing to your first question and tying your first and second question together, you know, our biggest attribution to our fund on the long side last year was in the data center space. You can't be in that business alone.

as a individual, even large corporation, it's interesting, you pick up the newspaper every morning, there's another pension fund institution says, we got to be in AI. We got to be in data centers. And we say, how? How exactly are you planning to do that? You don't have any development capability. You don't have the global technology relationships. And

And the only way you're going to be able to do that is to joint venture with one of the incumbent, very large, high quality, publicly traded. There's a couple of large Blackstone has a private platform, but it's primarily the public platforms that are benefiting from this space. So that's something that's really misunderstood is the breadth and depth of diversity of opportunities in public markets in this space.

But it's also a reflection, again, you guys do a lot of things, but you look different geographics, obviously you look different sectors, industrial, residential, the list is a long one. But that's, you see, this is where it's so challenging for an individual to do it themselves. You need a level of expertise to

And I love your thought process and how you've explained that when you look at something like a grocery anchor there. I mean, that's one thing I think we're going to still be eating no matter how odd other changes come. And as you say, other businesses that aren't subject to getting destroyed by e-commerce or internationally or what have you, the competitive space is much more controllable.

So I love the thought process, but I want to make sure people know you're looking across the board, across North America, different sectors. You know, you've been in, you know, one of the things you've done very well for VisionCap and people who've been listening to you through money talks is when you went and got into warehousing early, looking at the e-commerce explosions.

So I just want to make sure people know it's not just residential or as you've just explained, you know, looking at sort of a shopping center space, you know, with the grocery anchor. Yeah, this is why you need people with expertise, I guess, is that long-winded way of saying that, Jeff. But yeah, you need people who are spending a whole lot of space. We've shifted around, but we continue to like the industrial space. The sector got completely crushed last year.

You know, there was a lot of new supply, but we've shifted. What we like today is the small bay industrial, not the big box regional distribution centers. There was a lot of new supply in that area. People, that's what the developers have been building. Nobody builds new.

The 24 foot clear height inner city, a real estate that's so-called obsolete. But that's the stuff that's getting the highest rent growth because it's close to consumers benefiting from the last mile distribution in e-commerce. And there's no supply in the vacancy rate. You know, it's insane.

de minimis really in terms of that space so we focused on reits in canada a dream industrial read is one name um even in the us where we reduced our exposure uh a name like east group which is is in small bay sunbelt having growth so we still like the space we like it in europe as well which is really like a really hit when that uk gilt the bond uh went up um

So that continues to be an area of favor for us. Let's finish with a couple of recommendations here that you're looking at. I mean, people's got their own circumstances, but, you know, this is just such a fabulous way to get a broad diversification, you know, in the broad real estate sector up and down. Let's give you an example of something that has really caught your eye now. It may be a little easier to purchase, you know, after the kinds of,

sort of declines we've seen in the markets for this space? You know, let's go over what we said. I mean, we said we like grocery store anchored. We like first capital REIT. It is, tend to be the largest holding in our fund. We said publicly at an investment conference just over a year ago, it was the highest quality.

Gross re-anchored portfolio in the world. That's a bold statement, even for Vision. It's like a $3.5 billion market cap. It has a nice 5% yield, and we think it's trading at a 25% discount to the value of the real estate.

Industrial, I mentioned Dream Industrial REIT. That has also almost a 6% yield, $3.5 billion. We think it's trading at a 30% discount to the value of the real estate. In the UK, we like Tritex, big box, listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Again, 5% yield for European REIT, 30% discount to value, really well positioned. You mentioned residential. We are avoiding apartments except for Boardwalk REIT, which has focus in Alberta and Saskatchewan where there's no rent controls. It has enjoying the biggest population growth in Canada. That stopped with $91.00.

Earlier last year, you can buy that stock today, $60, and the value of property transactions are actually going up. If you look at the price per square foot of where trades are happening in Calgary and Edmonton apartments, they're actually gone up. Boardwalk's on sale.

And we like Sun Communities. Sun Communities is a manufactured housing community. Probably the best property class in the last 40 years. Very stable, very defensive. They have 116,000 manufactured housing community sites, 59,000 RV sites, 48,000 marina slips. That stock traded for 10 years between 2011 and 2021 at a 24% premium.

to net asset value. We love the fundamentals, but we didn't own it because we want to buy at a discount. We bought that stock over the last year at a 10% to 20% discount to net asset value. They've never had 12 months of declining NOI. So those are some good names. Sun is SUI is their symbol for your audience. And I guess the last area is seniors housing. Everybody understands the demographics here.

but there's some great operators in public markets. Chartwell in Canada, biggest name in the space, is a great name. CSH is its symbol. 4% yield.

Less discount to NAV because it's a high growth name. And Siena REIT, which has a nice 6% yield to it. SIA is its symbol, trading at probably a 16% to 20% discount to the value of the underlying real estate. So good smattering, different sectors, diversified approach. That's sort of what we're doing on the long side. Well, and as I say, the record speaks for itself. But I'm talking about the Vision Alternative Income Fund.

which you can just buy, you know, no documentation, none of that. I mean, you just click, you buy it. You know, there's no subscription documents when you do that. But, you know, what I think is fascinating is the way you guys have done proven track record, but so much work. I love to hear that discount value. You know, I mean, you can't do that in the market. If I've got my house for sale, I'm not all of a sudden saying, how about I give it to you at a 30% discount?

That's why the stock market approach is it's both unique, but it's fascinating because you get the kind of discounts you just alluded to there.

Yeah, I mean, you could skip a half hour pitch on vision if you understand why one category of our investors invest with us. And no disrespect to our pension funds and institutions, but if you look at real estate families that have made all their money from multi-generations investing in properties, and we have over 45 of these iconic families, why are they investing in a real estate fund? If you ask them why, because we do, we're curious, you get one or two or four answers that explain what we do. The

The first you touched on, these guys love the asset class, but it gives diversification to the family by property type and by geographic region. Secondly, they like buying anything at a discount. But real estate at a discount, this is compelling. They can't do that in the property market in a bidding war that Collier's or CBRE is hosting.

Number three, these guys are smart. When the fundamentals are negative or deteriorating or valuations are too high, they can't do anything about that in the property market. They like to use their expertise to make money in declining market by being able to be short. And lastly, of course, and this has been a huge issue globally in all asset class of the last two years, liquidity.

You don't have much liquidity in your property portfolio. So to create diversification for their family by property type and geographic region and have liquidity is something they don't have in the property portfolio. And we love them because they're strategic.

We want to know what's going on in a property type or geographic region of this continent. We know who to call. They're friendly, aligned, and constructive. Yeah. Great stuff as usual, Jeff. And, again, go to VisionCap. We're talking about, again, for individuals, it's very easy, you know, the Vision Alternative Income Fund. But, as usual, what a pleasure to get a chance to chat, Jeff. Nice to see you. Be well and enjoy your show.

Of course, terrorists dominated the news this week. On Monday, we were sort of hopeful in his inauguration, President Trump was going to have study sessions and research and all this behind any thought of terrorists. He comes out a couple of days later and says, no, we're slapping him on February 1st. So much to talk about in that regard. Mike Levy joins me now. Mike, first of all, I've got to acknowledge this is a very complicated, sophisticated subject.

And we can't do it justice in such a short period of time. But obviously, if they did put tariffs on, the first thing I want people to understand is that it's an import tax. So if we put them on, we're taxing imports. If they put them on in the U.S., they're taxing imports. So it raises the cost to businesses and consumers.

And that has to be the starting point for any understanding of whether we retaliate, whether they do it, what specifically they do. And let me, sorry, one more time, one more thing. I'm pleased the government says we're not going to specifically say what we're going to do until we hear the details of what the U.S. is going to do. Although I have my doubts that their whole approach is you just wait. We're going to issue a trade war like the likes of you've never seen. I don't think that's constructive either. But...

So, yeah, it's sophisticated. Lots to talk about. I mean, that just begs one question. And this is the way we were talking last week is domestic tariffs on U.S. goods are restricting Canadian exports to the U.S. As one really important question, how much pain are we willing to inflict on ourselves? Because that's not going to be the answer to how we solve the trade situation with the U.S., I think.

I think there's got to be something else in mind here. Well, I have been very critical, Mike, just so you know, of the communication strategy and whether it's, I appreciate some of the provincial leaders sort of stepping up. I do like Doug Ford saying we could have a North American energy pact. You know, we could explore that. But I think the instant we're going to go to trade war is a bad one. But let me just share one other thing. And that is, I think we're going about it the wrong way communication-wise.

I don't think there's an American sitting there going, gee, I care about Canada's economy. I care about Canada's trade. What they care about is price increases. And just allow me for one moment here. If I was doing the communication strategy, I'd be sitting there going, do you realize if President Trump does this, your gas prices are going up 30 cents, maybe 40 cents, maybe 50 cents.

You know, if we have tariffs on Canadian oil and gas, I would be telling them fruits and vegetables are going up in costs. I would telling them that side, what's in it for them to pressure President Trump. And where I'm getting that from is the Angus Reid poll last week that made it very clear that the majority of U.S. citizens do not want tariffs put on Canada. But here was the interesting thing. Only 53% of Trump voters voted.

supported tariffs on Canada. Here's the thing. It dropped in half when they said to them, you know, it's going to increase costs. Well, they don't want gasoline to go up. No, they should. I think that's what, you know, if I'm Premier Smith or I'm Premier Ford or if I'm, God knows who's talking federally, but I would be emphasizing that. This is what tariffs mean to you. Your price of goods. That'd be the first thing out of my mouth.

And, you know, when I went and did these talk shows or whatever they're doing, I'd be saying, yeah, what are tariffs about? You guys paying more. And I'd go from there. Well, Mike, absolutely. I mean, what about a 25 percent U.S. tariff on steel that Quebec or that Ontario sends into the U.S., which is used in their manufacturing base? Look at groceries. We export potatoes and berries everywhere.

Twenty five percent tariff grocery prices go up. You've got Saskatchewan producer of canola and you start adding a twenty five percent tariff on canola hits the U.S. consumer. Mike, you can go all the way down the line. Steel out of Ontario.

So let's just look at some numbers here. BC exports $15 billion in wood products annually. That's for home building in the U.S. 15% tariff, the cost of building homes goes up. Alberta, $113 billion worth of crude goes cross-border. Cost of gasoline goes up if there's a 15% tariff. Heating oil, petroleum products.

Ontario, $64 billion in steel products, and that doesn't include the movement back and forth of automobiles. Trump wants to get the manufacturing sector in the U.S. using U.S. goods to build U.S. products.

Ontario sends $64 billion to steel products just for that at 15%. Look at the amount of money you're adding to the cost to the U.S. consumer. Two more. Saskatchewan sends $13 billion worth of crude oil.

Again, add 15% for the US consumer. - Or 25%, 25% from the US if he goes right through with the big tariff. - Yeah, 25%. - 25%, right. - But your point's such a good one. Look at all those products, it's a great list.

of saying you're about to pay more for this and that's back to my communication strategy you're about to pay more tell me how that works for you and uh and again i think he is not sensitive obviously to what one of our premier says or any of our premiers are certainly not to the federal government but come on we're talking american voters have made it clear they don't want to be paying more

And that's why I think exactly the list you just gave should be emphasized. Hey, guess what? If he does this, you're paying more for fruits and vegetables. You're paying more for canola oil. You're paying, you know, the list is a long one, as you just alluded to. And Mike, then it comes back to, there's no, uh,

stone throwing between Canadian premiers and Danielle Smith doesn't want to do this and Ford doesn't want to do that. That way it's the Americans that are adding the tariff and the American consumers are going to come out screaming because that's going to be almost instantaneous in some cases and over a month or two in other cases as those price increases work their way into the system. And Americans have to know this.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's back to the first thing you said, is that how much pain do we want to inflict if we have retaliatory terrorists? And I'm sure, you know, I don't have a ton of faith in the federal government, but I think they are assessing that. They've got people, you know, trade experts assessing what do we want? Because I'm afraid I'm on that camp that says, boy, if you cut off oil and gas or oil exports to the U.S.,

The amount of money we're talking, that hurts Canada, 4.3 million barrels a day. You know, and let's say the price is $78 a barrel. Like that overall cost of government revenues get hit by about $20 billion, you know, in a year. I mean, there is a lot of pain. And I've been upset or worried about the fact that there's so much knee-jerk reaction, at least publicly, that no one likes to be bullied. We feel we're being bullied, but that doesn't necessarily justify the response.

One more. University of Calgary economist Trevor Toom says, you know what? We don't have to retaliate. And, you know, when it comes to oil, I'm afraid I need some convincing. We're going to talk more. We've been talking more about that in the show. But, yeah, it's all part of that package. How much pain do we want to endure? Do we think it'll be effective, you know, in order to get Trump to back off in some of his terror?

And I think you're right, and I don't know why we haven't heard more of looking at it that way. We're not going to go after Alberta. Alberta will keep exporting oil. The premier doesn't have to worry. It's what the Americans are going to have to pay on the other side for, as you say, gasoline or any petroleum products. And I think that's the direction they should be going. And then we can be Team Canada, Mike.

then we're all coming together and we're going in the same direction. Yeah, and I just want to acknowledge this is a difficult issue, very difficult issue, lots of moving parts to it. Tariffs in general and trade in general is very complicated. But yeah, I'd just like to see the conversation broaden. Thank you for helping us do that today, Mike. Thanks, Mike.

One of the realities of today's world is cybersecurity. Now, we felt it individually. I mean, I've been hacked with my email, right, to global scale of these kinds of things. Ian Patterson is here with me from Plurilock. He's the head of Plurilock, you know, cybersecurity company. But, Ian, let me just start with this. You started, you know, in Canada, but your clientele now reaches around the globe, which is just a reflection of how big a subject this is.

Well, Mike, it's always great to chat. And so we certainly have customers who have operations in places of the world, places like Israel, places like Asia, places like China. And with world events being what they are, a lot of times something that you think might not affect you because it's in a country far away actually does. And

And so we're helping our clients with their ultimately with their cybersecurity needs. But it's interesting how conflict in the Middle East or rising tensions with China or war in the Ukraine can have real impacts to North American based companies.

Well, and individuals, too. I mean, haven't we all got a ransomware attack from somebody in Ukraine in the last five years? You know, I mean, I'm not trying to just single that point them out. But yeah, it's it's just huge as part of our lives. Let me ask you then, you know, we hear about AI powered stuff and AI powered phishing and advanced ransomware. Is that also just another layer that you've had to deal with? Maybe you weren't didn't have to deal anywhere near as much, say, five years ago.

Well, it's interesting, Mike. I mean, I can remember a year or two ago, you and I were talking about ChatGPT and what an interesting technology was, and this was going to be a huge change to the industry.

Well, what we have seen is that the bad guys were one of the first to adopt chat GPT. And so you might not have stopped to ask the question, but think about the last spam email you got. Think about the last phishing email you got. Chances are the English was pretty good. A few years ago, it was really easy to spot because the English was terrible. The grammar was terrible. The punctuation was terrible. Well, guess what? The bad guys don't have a compliance department. Me

meaning there's nobody stopping them from using these gen AI tools to write better phishing emails, to write better spam emails. And so we're seeing a huge increase in, in these types of attacks because they're,

Gen AI is making it really easy. Now, of course, the good guys are also adopting AI technologies, Gen AI technologies. One of those common requests that we hear from our customers is, hey, I need to upgrade my cybersecurity tools. Which AI cybersecurity tool should I use? So, I mean, it's a common conversation. But this is just endemic that we're seeing more and more attacks by bad guys leveraging these emerging technologies.

I think I'm sort of smiling, thinking all this bad news is good news for Plurilock. I mean, you know, so many different things to handle and so many needs continue to grow. Let me just throw another one at you, because I've seen one recently, you know, what we're calling deep fakes, you know, which, again, helps in misinformation, helps in fraud. Tell me a little bit about that.

Well, deepfakes is this idea of impersonating somebody using not just text, but also video and audio. There have been a few prolific examples that have been talked about in the news around deepfake videos being surfaced to...

to try and trick a finance department to wiring millions of dollars or potentially tens of millions of dollars at the bequest of, in theory, the CEO. But in fact, it turned out to be a deep fake of the CEO. Again, because these are new technologies, we're not accustomed to them yet. And so IT teams, finance teams, executives, businesses, and frankly, even consumers are

really need to be on the lookout for making sure that when they get a request, that it is in fact the right person. This is an authentication process.

We're talking with a lot of our customers around certainly implementing technology, but also implementing processes. I mean, for customers, for consumers, I should say, one of the easiest things that you can do is if you get a request from somebody that you think you know, simply reply back, ask them a question. Hey, what did we have for lunch last time we saw each other? That type of contextual challenge or contextual test is,

can very quickly separate what looks and potentially sounds like somebody you know to getting them off script. So these are newer attacks that unfortunately we just have to deal with now in this new age.

Well, how would you rate, I want to give two categories here. How would you rate government in handling the cybersecurity threats? I mean, this is ongoing. To me, I want to make sure there's a department that deals with this and is changing things almost every day because of new ways of scamming, of new ways of fraudulent behavior, whatever we'd call it, you know, a cyber attack. How would you rate governments? I'm especially thinking about our government.

You know, it's challenging. I think governments have a responsibility and authority to protect the nation, whichever nation you're talking about. But they don't necessarily have the authority to protect individual businesses. So in Canada, just as an example, there was actually a bill to try and change some of this, which unfortunately died recently.

uh, because of the current, uh, political situation in Ottawa. So we're, we're left in a bit of a limbo here where the people who have the right skills and tools in government may not have the authority to, to protect a private business. Now there's some nuance there. And in fact, this was, um, part of the conversation that I had with, uh,

with the Director General of Cybercrime at the RCMP on our new podcast called Code and Country. But it was really talking about that separation of authorities between what a private company or a private citizen should and ought to do versus what the government can do. And unfortunately, Mike, we're still new enough in cybersecurity that this is not completely a solved problem in terms of who does what.

Well, how would you rate corporations and businesses? And it may be a very small business because, of course, at an individual level, you can sure get hacked and attacked and all sorts of things. But are you finding a lot more sensitivity to the challenge here? A lot more businesses prioritizing handling this in advance before there's – I mean, every week we seem to hear about another big problem.

problem with security that way. Are you finding, again, we're making big progress that on the individual and corporate level?

It's a great question, Mike. I think pre-COVID, we saw a number of industries that did not prioritize cybersecurity. Certainly financial services, the public sector, defense, they always prioritized cybersecurity. Because if you're a bank, it's pretty easy conceptually to think you have something that somebody wants to steal. If you're a manufacturing company, if you have a factory, you might have told yourself pre-COVID,

I don't have any data that's worth stealing. Who cares? Who's going to attack me? I think now what businesses across the board, across all industries are recognizing is that the business itself can be held for ransom. I mean, this is really what ransomware is designed to do. They take control of either data or systems or both. They

They prevent you from being able to function and they expect to get paid to unlock it. So businesses across the board are taking this seriously now. In fact, one of the fastest growing segments for us is high tech manufacturing. So we've published a number of press releases announcing significant sales wins with high

participants in this industry, large global 2000 size enterprises in the semiconductor space and the high-tech manufacturing space, because they have factories that have to run. If those factories don't run, they lose money. Pretty straightforward a conversation. So how much do you want to invest to make sure your factories are able to run? This ultimately is a key driver for why our revenue is growing, our margins are growing. And there's actually a specific part of our business called critical services where

We're providing very high-end cybersecurity consulting work to global 2,000-sized organizations. It is growing the fastest. And the reason that it's growing the fastest is that businesses and corporations on the whole are now waking up and saying, we have to give an ounce of prevention because it's worth a pound of cure.

Well, I'm thinking, you know, the other side that people are directly related to is any kind of financial stuff. I mean, I know I go over my credit card statements because I've had problems with them in the past. And I know the banks have really upped their game in that way. You know, they flag, they have a fraud department and they flag different things. But it just seems like the attacks are more frequent, more insidious. And I guess my point is, Ian, I don't want people to wait till they've been a victim.

I don't want companies to wait till they're a victim. I certainly don't want our country to wait till they're a victim. So, I mean, obviously, it's a great business for you guys at Plurilock. I mean, it just keeps growing as the attacks keep becoming more, you know, huge variety and more insidious, et cetera. But, yeah, I guess my big goal is that people don't wait to look at this. So let me just finish with asking you about individuals.

What can we do to make sure we're not victims of financial fraud or email related fraud or anything else you see? One of the most common campaigns that bad guys are using right now is gift card scams.

Um, it's very common for individuals to be targeted. If they've recently joined a new company, you publish an update on LinkedIn, you celebrate, hooray, I've got a new job. I've started a new career, et cetera. The bad guys are watching that. Um, they will find the cell phone number typically, or potentially the email address of that individual. They're new to an organization. They're a little bit unsure about things and they'll get either an email, a text message or a voice call saying, Hey, it's the boss. Uh,

I need, I'm in a meeting. It's a very important meeting. I need you to run out. I need you to buy a thousand dollars of gift cards right now. It's super important. Don't worry. I'll pay you back. That employee wants to make a good impression because it's a new job. They want to impress. It's the boss. You got to go do it. So they run out, they get the gift cards, they send it off and,

And by the time they realize, maybe I should check with somebody else, it's too late. The gift cards are gone. We see this time and time and time again. And because the dollar figure is actually pretty low, it's not always reported, number one. Number two, obviously,

Other than training, there's not great ways of identifying this. You have to go out of your way to say, here's what's going to happen. You're likely to get this as an executive, as you know, none of our executives, none of your managers are going to communicate with you in this way. They're not going to send you a message to your personal cell phone. You got to be aware. So awareness, Mike, that's the key here. You got to be aware of what attacks are taking place.

So that when they happen to you, you can spot them and hopefully you can just brush them aside. There's additional things you can do, use different passwords, use password managers, backup your data, etc. But, you know, at the end of the day, Mike, it's really about awareness.

You know, it's funny. I just don't follow up on anything like that. And by the way, I've also taken the thing of phoning people and are emailing them and saying, I will never include an attachment without phoning you first, you know, and letting you know it's coming. I mean, it's just as, again, if you haven't had this problem, uh,

Believe me, you never do want to have it. And yeah, I just think this is an unbelievable business opportunity, unbelievable industry right now as it explodes. And I'm glad Plurilock's doing their part on all sorts of levels of it. But man, it's got to be top of mind for people now. I mean, it's great news for you, as I said. And that's why, by the way, you're doing the new podcast, the Code & Country podcast.

Oh my goodness gracious. You don't have any shortage of topics to hit on. Well, we, or, or, or guests. Uh, so code and country is, is a new podcast that we've launched, uh,

find it on Spotify, iTunes, codeandcountry.fm is the URL. But what we found was we have a phenomenal leadership team. We have a phenomenal ecosystem of experts around us. And we asked the question, well, how can we share some of that insight and wisdom with our broader customer base, shareholder base, et cetera? So Code & Country, we've launched a number of episodes already. So you can, I mentioned one earlier, but

People like the former director of the National Security Agency, the former director of the National Intelligence, the current director general for cybercrime at the RCMP. And we just have a conversation around what does cybersecurity mean? What does cybersecurity mean in the context of national security?

We don't go too deep into the weeds. We try and keep things at an altitude that I think most people can comprehend. And the idea is to educate. We have even people who work in cybersecurity, but they may not be a consultant. They might be somebody who works in the finance department. It's a way of them understanding some of the nuances of how we've arrived at this point in the cybersecurity ecosystem and what are some things that we can do.

Great stuff, Ian, as usual. I really appreciate you finding time. Our go-to guy when we talk about cybersecurity, Plurilocks, Ian Patterson. Ian, thanks for taking the time. Thanks, Mike. Time now for the shocking stat of the week, and this one is karma personified.

British tabloids are notorious for shock journalism with headlines, stories that are meant to offend and titillate. And to say they're not held hostage by the truth is an understatement. I mean, they've been sued many times, but suing a major news organization, media organization is expensive.

and often the victims, to cite being defamed and slandered, are forced to either drop their lawsuit or settle. But not so with Prince Harry and Lord Tom Watson, formerly the deputy leader of the UK Labour Party, who's been an outspoken critic of media malpractice. But in a ruling this week,

that had so many people cheering, the news group newspapers, that's Rupert Murdoch, which includes the Sun and News of the World, settled a lawsuit filed by Prince Harry and Lord Watson

And they reached a settlement that's reported over $15 million, along with paying extensive legal fees while issuing, in words of Prince Harry's lawyer, a full and unequivocal apology. He called it a monumental victory. And it's not over, by the way, for the news group's actions, which have now been fully admitted, will certainly beg some criminal investigations. So let me get to the really shocking part of just some of what they did.

It's now admitted in court that the newspapers unlawfully engaged in more than 100 engaged 100 plus private investigators over at least 16 years on more than 35,000 occasions. In addition, when it came to the trial and it came to the lawsuit, they deleted 30 million emails.

This happened, by the way, as much as the sun as it did of news of the world. With the knowledge, the full knowledge admitted of all the editors and executives going to the very top of the company, according to Prince Harry's lawyer. I mean, what a disgrace. I mean, think about those numbers.

100 plus private investigators over 16 years, 3,500 occasions. And then when they were called out, 30 million emails gets deleted. What a disgrace, but what a victory. Finally, against these egregious people with full credit to Prince Harry and Tom Watson for staying the course, not being intimidated by the power and money of Rupert Murdoch's own news giants.

As his lawyer points out, in quotes, Prince Harry and his immediate family have also had to repeatedly withstand aggressive and vengeful coverage since starting their claim over five years ago. This has created serious concerns for security for him and his family. And my congratulations. He stayed with it.

This is one of the great topics for everybody financially and that's we're talking about mortgages and I want to bring Ozzy Jurek in because I've had lots of questions about this Ozzy. I mean again we've heard the story how many people are renewing their mortgage it looks like

Some of the rate issues have stalled, at least when you're talking about fixed mortgages. Hasn't seen much change there in several months, despite, in quotes, the two jumbo rate cuts we got from the Bank of Canada. But lots of questions about it. So I'm going to fire some at you. And one of the things you said, though, that may be good news for people who are looking to get a mortgage or renew their mortgage. It looks like there's going to be more competition in the mortgage market.

Well, first of all, yeah, so the new mortgages have actually been increased. The availability of you can get actually now a million and a half mortgage. Now, you could argue right, left and center on whether that's a good thing, because it does show that our prices have gone up. But yes, you can get a million and a half mortgage. You can actually get a two million dollar mortgage if you build a suite in the basement. So that's really brand new, because up to this year, you could only get a million.

But the big thing, as you point out, is the fact that we somewhere around $2 billion worth of mortgages are renewing. Now, what we're looking at is that the banks actually look at you that's up for renewal and think, hey, you're a good guy or good girl, right? Because you've been paying for the last three or four years. We Canadians pay our mortgage.

So now the question is, can you afford it, number one, that extra increase? But number two, more importantly,

you can switch without requalifying on the stress test. So I think the banks are dusting off their gloves and punching each other to get you. So you do some shopping. If you have a mortgage coming to you, you might be surprised, particularly if you have a large RRSP or if you have maybe some GICs. And if you do your checking account and do all your other business with the bank, I've even heard that some banks might do you like a loss leader in terms of the rate that you're getting.

Well, and again, back to the point you just made, we're now allowed to transport our mortgage without having to go through the whole rigmarole again. That's a huge change. That creates a wider area of competitive bids for us. Let me come back to something that people are familiar with the name, but has there been any changes like to the stress test? Well, the stress test is still in place. You need to qualify at a rate that's 2% higher than a mortgage rate at the bank level.

or at the Bank of Canada benchmark rate, whichever is higher. So if the benchmark rate comes down, so does the stress test. But it's always 2% higher. And depending on where you sit on the question, it's probably been a good thing if people had to qualify when the official rate was 2%, they had to qualify at 4%. Well, the pain is not going to be as difficult as one might think.

What about the down payments, though? Because I remember you talking to us about this, that we've got an increased minimum down payments now. Yeah, the interesting thing is that you can actually get a mortgage of $1 million with 5% down. That is if you are earning a prime minister's salary. But if you want $1.5 million, you have to put 10% down over the million. And if you want to have a $2 million mortgage, you have to put 20% down, which is kind of logical.

Yeah. And I mean, going through, but it's interesting if you're going to be at the world outlook conference coming up in just two weeks, if you can believe how fast that's coming at us. So give us a little hint, just a hint, Ozzy. So you're looking out at 225. Are you seeing some opportunities there? It seems like the market's been a little stronger than I think people thought say six months ago. And they're looking into this period because some of the things that you're alluding to are you looking for some strength, at least that creates wealth.

for homeowners and investors? - Well, the big thing is, you know, when you look at TerraNet, they just came out and said our prices last year went up 3.3% across the country and it varies. But, you know, if you looked at my last AusBuzz, you know, we still sold only 50% of the number of single family homes than we did in 2020, in 2024. So the market is maybe better. I'm a little concerned about the fact that psychologically,

are we as excited about buying real estate? There's so much uncertainty going on in the world and I don't know. Now, we expect the next week the rate to come down another quarter percent, so it's somewhat better. But as you alluded, it won't really change much, the fixed rate. Biggest question I get, how long should I go? Probably two years, depending on you think the rates are going to keep on going down. Inflation officially seems to be going down. So rate

Rates are going to be better in the future, so don't go too far out anyways. One more quick one for us. There's been a lot of talk about phony documentation, or at least people saying they've got income or assets to back up their borrowing. That's exploded in some areas. Where are we at with that? Are we doing increased disclosure and documentation? Oh, no question. That is such a big point. You need a mortgage broker.

go as soon as possible and get a quality broker. Go see a Jared Dreyer at Verico or Kyle Green, people that have been in a business, particularly on the investment side, and put down your ducks in a row. You have no idea. You will have to have the first born that's not born yet has to be on the title. You know, banks really are concerned about the future. And as easy as they were on home equity loans before, as tight are they now.

Good stuff as usual. And people can get more by going to ozbuzz.ca or just type in Jurok, J-U-R-O-C-K, when you go to YouTube. Lots of extra stuff there, Ozzy, talking to people, professionals in the business. Great stuff when you're interested in real estate and who isn't interested in real estate. Ozzy, thanks for taking the time. Hey, countdown's on. Two weeks, World Economic Conference, Canada's own.

Ozzy Jurek will be with me. Well, thanks, Mike. And I will have things that you should buy and things that you shouldn't. But I also want to leave it with this thought. In my company, we have a lot of meetings and I have decided that I have a new idea on meetings. Let's have a meeting about having fewer meetings.

Actually, you know what that reminds me of? You know, the federal government hired a record amount of consultants, but then they hired a consultant to talk about how to have less consultants. Our tax dollars at work. Ozzy Jurek, ozbuzz.ca. ♪

Time now for this week's Goofy Award. I'm going to stay with the theme that we've been with us on the show. And the award goes to Canada Revenue Agency. And I've got special mention, by the way, to Chrystia Freeland, House Leader Christina Gold, for yet another about-face.

The increase in the capital gains was a featured measure in last spring's federal budget. I mean, come on, there was a lot of controversy over it, including how they made the announcement when they said it would only impact 0.13% of Canadians. When, as University of Calgary's respected economist Jack Mintz points out, it would impact 30 times more over the course of our lifetimes.

Leadership hopeful Katrina Gould summed it up by saying the government didn't get the capital gains increase right. But I'd like to get into that debate again over the increase, other than the quote Christia Freeland, because it's kind of funny, who stated that if the tax increase didn't pass, the rich would live in quotes behind ever higher fences using private health care and airplanes forever.

Because the public sphere is so degraded and the wrath of the majority of their lesser privileged compatriots burns out. Now, come on. At that point, they've been in power eight years. And she's talking about the public sphere has been so degraded. You know, come on. But I guess that's okay now because she opposes it.

Not sure when they'd get rid of it, how they'd get rid of it rather, because you know what? There's been no legislation introduced. We've had nine months. The government didn't produce legislation. So the House of Commons never actually voted on it. So it couldn't pass. But here's the really goofy part. The Canada Revenue Agency has been acting as if the legislation has passed and has been collecting the tax. So I want you to consider this now. You've got the opposition party Conservatives.

who said they will do away with the capital gains increase. And they're way ahead of the polls, and by all indications, they'll form the next government. But now let's throw on the fact that we got the finance minister at the time, Chrystia Freeland, and the house minister, Katrina Gold, suggesting heavily they're going to get rid of that tax. That's never formally passed.

And yet the goofy part is Canada Revenue Agency is still acting like the tax legislation is taxed. I mean, the CRA should drop its highly questionable decision to retroactively implement the tax inclusion rate hike, but stop collecting it and reassess those tax forms it has. I mean, this has been one of the goofiest taxes they've done in their entire tenure.

That's all the time we have. Just a reminder, again, World Outlook Conference. But I want to give you just a tip. We had our small outlook, our small cap.

Outlook portfolio last year. We have recommended Geodrill along with Keystone Financial. Well, it's up something like 92% since. Dynacor is up around 55%. VersaBank up 34%. That's just a sampling. We've got so many other examples of success. And that's the bottom line for me. Our goal is to protect you, protect your families from the kind of turmoil that people are facing, clearly facing, well, throughout the world, but also, of course, in Canada.

So our recommendations are meant to make you more secure financially. And we'll do that with the top analysts, really, in the English-speaking world. So many great analysts coming. You should check it out on Mike'sMoneyTalks.ca. We've got plenty of tickets left. Now, just a couple of VIP, but we've got plenty of general admissions left. Just two weeks. Well, we'll be two weeks from today. We'll be right there, two weeks, Saturday, February 7th and 8th.

there. But just a sampling of why I say track record is everything. The track record's been brilliant. And I really look forward to seeing you there. In the meantime, I hope you go out and have a terrific week.