The US had a somewhat similar situation only a few years back. Since then the private sector has caught on and the mortgage market is very competitive and basically a person with a pulse can buy a home. One upside to credit scoring is you don't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to finance a home if you have good credit.

jsmith, pay your balance BEFORE your STATEMENT date and they will report the account as paid in full.

Example: if your payment is due on the 1st for the period ending on the 26th make you payment in full before the 25th and it will be reported as ) balance you credit score will rise instantly.

rsbiomedical is the man! he explained all this to me...

long winded, go get a cuppa...
 

We're not sure why Canada has not worked harder to create home-ownership oppotunities for it's citizens. Years ago, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) was created to help first time home buyers afford a home. They came up with innovative plans for reducing downpayment requirements and easing credit restrictions. It worked well, and thousands of Canadian families were assisted.

Well, things changed. The way the program worked was CMHC insured the mortgage that you recieved from your local bank. They charged you a premium that would be amortized into the mortgage.

When my wife and I decided to buy our first home about four years ago, we looked at low mortgage rates (6%) and decided it would be crazy to use money making 9% for the downpayment. We applied for a CMHC mortgage, figuring we were a shoe-in. At the time our family income was over $200K and we had excellent credit. The only potential snag was that I had changed jobs recently, but had a good continous employment history.

Well, CMHC gave us a HUGE runaround. They wished to completely discount my income thanks to my being at that position for less than 2.5 years. They wanted complete financial records going back years documenting how we had saved up the required downpayment. And the killer was the size of the insurance premium. Nearly 4% of the purchase price of the house! Well, finally, we gave up and just got the mortgage through our bank.

We were fortunate to be able to that.

There are some things that are not so great in Canada. One of them is the complete lack of consumer protection laws and anti-trust laws. Got a lemon car? Tough. Business is pretty much allowed to do as it pleases. Unfair trade practices and deceptive advertising are common. We have some laws, but they are weak-kneed and enforcement is non-existant. Monopolies are allowed to run unchecked, and price fixing is common. We have "deregulated" electrical markets, but there is no choice of provider. You can pay the monopoly price, or have your power shut off. Banking is another example. We placed lots of restrictions on banks years ago to guard against bank failure. But, now we have a handful of banks that creat an oligopoly that functions exactly like a monopoly. They basically do as they please, and this has not been beneficial to individuals. Credit granting is very restrictive. Access to capital for small business is non-existant.

The other problem we have is our style of government. I'm not saying others are better, but the way ours works means little direct representation. Our local Members of Parliment (MP) are elected, but the Prime Minister is chosen by the Party with the most seats. Then, the Prime Minister chooses which elected officials will hold cabinet posts and sit on committees. Sounds okay in theory, but sucks in practice. Cabinet posts and committee work carry huge financial bonuses, and MP's do anything to get these tickets.

Rarely would an MP ever vote against his party. No matter the outcome to his home riding, or the wishes of his electorate. This means that the Prime Minister essentially can work like a dictator.

This we've seen all too often in the last 30 years. Both in Federal and Provincial politics. If your home riding elects someone NOT in the ruling party, you're hooped. You'll get nothing. If you elect the right party member, but he's a "back-bencher" without a cabinet post, you'll get nothing. You have no representation whatsoever.

Though Canada is a due-process democratic nation, our level of true democratic representation has been waning.

The other problem that we have in Canada is a lack of democracy at local levels. Our municipal governments are given "grants" by the provincial government, and the provincial gov't specifies clearly what must be done with the money. Local communities are losing power to control their own environments. Take education funding. We pay two parts of property tax, one portion for services and the other for education, or "school taxes."

Well, the provincial gov't decided that local gov'ts couldn't be trusted with the money, so they now collect it all, and redistribute it as they see fit. We lost the right to locally tax. We lost the right to make comunity decisions. It was a power grab by a higher level of gov't, and we demure Canucks do little about it. Our ability to control our local environments is just about gone between power grabs from higher levels and things like NAFTA which is a unilateral agreement that takes away all local power.

The Canadian identity is one of compliance, and we are constantly reminded of this. Protestors are now labelled as terrorists and criminals, thanks to monopoly media ownership and police state laws to "protect" us.

There are moves to get rid of the right to privacy, and to enable police unwarranted search and seizure. Imagine the police being able to come to your home and ransack it at any time they please without just cause? We're heading there quick. The gov't will enact such laws and worry about constitutional challenges down the road, after they have beaten us down with it.

There are things that make being a Canadian great. No doubt about it, and I can't think of a better place to live (except for the climate). That said, we have a real battle to keep our democracy alive here. 9-11 gave our gov't the necessary excuse to begin immediate suspension of our rights.

And what does this mean to me? It means those damn terrorists win. They drive a plane or two into some buildings, and we're willing to compromise everything we stand for? We're willing to undermine democracy? What message does that send? Imagine Bin Laden, laughing away at us. Our hallowed democracy defeated by some mouth-breathing terrorists in the space of less than a day!

I am so SICK of hearing "in the wake of September 11" or "After September 11 we must do things differently." Do we think Bin Laden did this to kill some citizens? So what? 3000 people out of 300 million? What difference does that make? It wasn't a plan to reduce the number of US citizens. It was a plan to strike fear into us all living in Western Culture, and make us chip away at our democratic values. It was to make us live in constant fear of THEM, and it looks like they're winning. We can bomb them for decades and kill every last one, but as long as we compromise our ideals at their whim, they still win.

Rant ended.

Re: long winded, go get a cuppa...
 

Okay, John, now you got me curious...what HAVE you got in your basement? :p

When Jean "C" gets C17 passed the way he likes, you'll be able to come over and find out Dean!!:D

Damn,John! You sound like ME today! :D

Mike

Mike, despite you and I often being found at the opposite ends of a discussion, our ideals overlap more than either of us would probably care to admit. The one thing that social democrats and libertarians have in common is the preservation of democracy and the ability for people to exercise free will. If we chose to compromise the rights of an individual for the collective, it must be done by choice in a democratic manner. And it goes the other way too, when compromising the rights of the collective for individual rights. The balance must be a societal decision, not one made by a "ruler." The right to make those decisions and chart our course is essential to maintaining the freedom that we fought for. And in many cases, died for.

I like it when we agree...It's a lot less to type! :D

Mike

"David Dodge is about to kill our economy, just like John Crow did 12 years ago. Yippeeee."

I resent that remark! I am presently living in Oklahoma, and have very little to do with state of your fine country's economy.

The oil on my driveway will attest to my lack of importance.

David Dodge

LMAO! Thanks David...

sTiLL LauGHinG My aSS OFF aT ThaT OnE.

Perhaps it was down a hill?

Things are getting to damn mushy here....SOMEONE has to disagree :p

When things are fine, your scenario plays out BUT when the ***** hits the fan, people of all persuasions (politiks-wise) look for, even demand, a "ruler" to step in and save their collective bacon. How many times in history, John, has a willing populace placed a dictator on the seat of power?

John

Thanks for the informative commentary. I had no idea that Canada was so ?backwards? ?oppressive? ?different? in their lending policies. We were looking to buy a place in Whistler at one time and found out that Canada and the US have a reciprocal lending policy with a few exceptions. On the even footing part, an American can buy a place in Canada and still get a US tax deduction for any interest expenses and taxes paid for the property. However, unless one is willing to rent out the place, in addition to the purchase price, there are the mandatory GST/PST taxes that must be paid. Of course, being a US citizen we would have gotten a tax deduction for the taxes paid to Canada. I am floored that this isn’t offered to the native sons and daughters. Wow. It doesn’t exactly inspire property ownership. How would one lobby for a change in this practice?

Jsmith: It is possible that the reason for your credit rating is because you have enough credit card debt potential to be beyond your verifiable earnings. If everything else is good with ones credit rating, but the credit report says a person makes a dollar a month (to make up an amount) but has enough potential credit debt that they owe 1.5 per month, the credit scoring companies will slam you for this. If this is the case, the quick solution is to eliminate the unused credit cards.

Also you should periodically check your credit history to make sure everything is accurate. I recently did this and found that for some unknown reason Equifax had records that stated I lived at a place I never did live at, and still had something like 5 accounts which I either never had or had long since closed. It was only a little time consuming getting this straightened out but wasn’t a real problem to do.

Tracy,

I messed up, RSBiomedical help me focus on what the )(*#$%& credit report was saying. There was one adverse factor which was caused by a dead account that had a past due balance. The balance was an annual fee!:mad: Everything else was standard verbiage on why there could have been a problem. I cleaned up my previous post to eliminate confusion...