The original rationale for low rates was to incentivize business to invest more and create jobs. This has not happened. Instead, we incentivized real estate speculators and developers and we incentivized consumers to borrow too much and in less than 10 years we created a real estate bubble which made housing unaffordable for most Canadians.

Now with even a pathetic increase of 25 points the real beneficiaries of low rates are unhappy. We need to get back to basics and acknowledge the simple truth that borrowed money has to be paid back and growth built on speculation is no growth at all.