Highlights
Budget 2026 is almost here. We’re keeping our expectations for major housing reforms modest, but there could be some surprises. Join Mike and Cara for a special livestream episode of Answer Period shortly after 4:30 p.m. EST on Thursday, where we’ll take your budget questions.
Our podcast audience keeps growing. We’ve generated almost 300,000 YouTube views over the last two months and recently surpassed 1.5 million total views in total. We’re also preparing to launch a fourth podcast show in 2027, focused on a topic at the heart of the Missing Middle.
Our Homes and Growth Coalition is gearing up for launch. New polling of over 4,000 Canadians suggests the public has a more sophisticated understanding of housing affordability than many policymakers give them credit for.
More original research is on the way. After a busy year that included 28 published op-eds, we’ll release new research reports before year-end and bring back our Canadian Housing Microresearch Project in 2027.
We’re looking for new Supporting Partners to help us grow. Our small-but-mighty team has ambitious plans, but we need additional support to make them happen. We’re seeking new partners, including podcast sponsors, with opportunities starting at $1,000.
Budget season and growing the Missing Middle
To say the small-but-mighty Missing Middle team has been swamped in recent months would be an understatement. Between original research, launching a new livestream podcast show, producing a treasure trove of original content, launching a new coalition, meeting with policymakers, and preparing for the federal budget, we have more to do than hours in the day. Ideally, we would like to grow the team, which will require adding new supporting partners, including (but not limited to) sponsors for our podcast shows. If your organization might be a good fit, please contact Founding Director Mike Moffatt at [email protected].
Speaking of Thursday’s federal budget, Mike will be in the budget lockup in Ottawa with hundreds of other policy wonks. Shortly after 4:30pm EST, Mike and Cara will do a livestream episode of Answer Period, available on our YouTube channel, where we take your questions about the budget.
Our expectations for the Budget on issues of interest to MMI, such as middle-class housing, are quite modest, though budgets have been known to surprise. International trade issues are understandably dominating the agenda, and with the National Housing Strategy expiring in March 2028, we suspect that larger housing policy reforms will be pushed to Budget 2027, as well as Spring Economic Updates in both 2027 and 2028. Keeping that in mind, it is almost certain there will be some housing policy updates in the Budget; in a piece published in iPolitics yesterday, Mike noted that Budget 2026 is Ottawa’s chance to fix the foreign buyers ban. There should be enough surprises to make our upcoming Answer Period episode interesting!
We’re overdue to update our subscribers; here’s a brief summary of what we’re up to this year.
Help us launch a new podcast show in 2027
Our podcast audience keeps growing; the last two months have been our two best ever on YouTube, bringing in almost 300,000 views; hardly Mr. Beast numbers, but terrific for a group of Canadian policy wonks. Cara’s interview with Tom Babin on bike lanes and my interview with David Chilton (a.k.a. “The Wealthy Barber”) on the spending and saving habits of young Canadians were particularly popular, largely thanks to our superb production team: Meredith Martin, Cara Stern, Sean Foreman, our highly talented jack-of-all-trades co-op student, Francis Carmona, and our fantastic Classonomics co-host Sabrina Maddeaux. These episodes have generated a number of highly popular shorts on both YouTube and TikTok, such as Sabrina and I talking about Canada becoming an associate member of the EU, and Cara’s conversation with Henry Grabar (author of Paved Paradise) about how the game SimCity would be virtually unplayable if it used realistic assumptions about parking.
Our YouTube audience continues to grow, as we recently broke 1.5 million total views and 7,200 subscribers, though over 70% of our views come from non-subscribers, allowing us to reach a wider audience. Over 80% of our audience lives in Canada and is disproportionately made up of 25- 44-year-old men who work in government and policy-related fields.
The Missing Middle’s three podcast shows are available in both video and audio versions:
Answer Period is Missing Middle’s livestream show where we take audience questions on public policy matters. It’s like Question Period but with actual answers.
Classonomics explores the economic challenges of Canada’s middle class, from the rising cost of living to wage stagnation. Co-hosted by freelance columnists Mike Moffatt (Globe and Mail) and Sabrina Maddeaux (National Post), it provides evidence-based solutions to Canada’s middle-class malaise.
DemograFix recognizes that demographic change explains roughly two-thirds of everything. Co-hosted by Cara Stern and Mike Moffatt, it explores how the aging Baby Boomers and a growing cohort of economically challenged young Canadians are reshaping the country.
Because of the high volume of requests, we’ll launch a fourth show in the coming months, and we think you’ll really like it. No spoilers, but it’s on a topic at the heart of the Missing Middle.
None of this is possible without our Supporting Partners. MMI has no endowment and must pay for salaries and services used both inside and outside the University of Ottawa; therefore, it relies on relationships with supporting partners. MMI currently receives roughly half of its funding from charitable organizations and not-for-profit supporting partners, with the remainder from government and private-sector partners.
Our Classonomics show is made possible with a generous grant from the Neptis Foundation, but we are actively seeking support for our two other shows, as well as our soon-to-be-launched show. Sponsorship opportunities range from an entire season to part of a single episode, starting at $1,000, and must adhere to our editorial independence and integrity and disclosure policies. Please contact Mike for more information.
The Homes and Growth Coalition will soon go live
For the past few months, we’ve been working closely with Canada 2020 and Data Sciences Inc. to build the Homes and Growth Coalition. Our goal is incredibly straightforward: Canada Needs a Real Housing Plan. We’re Building One.
We’re starting to put this plan together, meeting policymakers both virtually and in Ottawa, to share ideas and research. Data Sciences Inc. was out in the field, polling over 4,000 Canadians on how they view the housing crisis and how it should be solved. The quantity and quality of the information Data Sciences put together are overwhelming, and it makes one thing clear: Our political class does not give Canadians nearly enough credit. Canadians understand that a diversity of homes is needed, the linkages between population growth and housing demand and that, yes, achieving housing affordability requires both rents and prices to fall.
More information and research to come next week. We’ll also announce the first group of coalition members, including some of Canada’s biggest housing-related organizations. We’ll add a few additional members in the months to come.
And even more research and writing to come
Frequent visitors to the Substack have almost certainly noticed a slowdown in posts and research reports over the last six months. That will be changing soon, with a couple of reports to be released at the end of the year. In 2027, we will be resurrecting our Canadian Housing Microresearch Project series of short research reports, posted on our site.
In 2026, much of MMI’s writing has appeared in the mainstream media, with 28 op-eds published to date, including 16 pieces in the Globe and Mail, seven pieces in the Toronto Star, three pieces in iPolitics, and two at The Hub. And that doesn’t even include the numerous pieces our Classonomics co-host, Sabrina Maddeaux, has published in the Star and National Post.
It is a lot for a small team, but there is a lot to do in our mission to create a Canada where every middle-class individual or family, in every city, has a high quality of life and access to both market-rate rental and market-rate ownership housing options that are affordable, adequate, suitable, resilient, and climate-friendly.
We will continue working with our Supporting Partners and seek to add new ones to make this vision a reality.