Mortgage Professionals Canada kicked off its 2026 national symposium tour in Ottawa this week, drawing strong attendance and setting the tone for what speakers described as a pivotal year for the mortgage industry.
“Our Ottawa symposium set the bar high,” said Carla Dorland, MPC’s Vice-President of Events and Marketing. “As the first stop in our seven-city national tour, we saw record attendance, a busy trade show floor, and speakers who sparked meaningful conversations throughout the day.”
“Thank you to our partners and sponsors for helping us launch the year in such a powerful way — we’re excited to bring this energy to communities across Canada,” she added.
The tour moves to Toronto on March 3, with registration closing Friday, February 26 and capacity filling quickly, before continuing to Montreal, Halifax, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
In Ottawa, much of the conversation centred on what presenters called the “peak” of the renewal wave, with more than $400 billion in mortgages coming up for renewal this year. The consensus: this is less a rate cycle story than an execution year for brokers.
“Most brokers will be busy. A few will be strategic,” said Melanie Pereira, regional vice-president at FCT, during a session focused on renewals and switch transactions.
Renewals: beyond rates and into retention strategy
With roughly 85% of renewals originating from Schedule A lenders, many of which contact borrowers six months in advance, brokers were urged to engage clients earlier and reposition themselves as advisors rather than rate shoppers.
Penalty literacy and close scrutiny of payout statements were cited as practical ways to stand out, particularly as lenders sharpen their retention strategies and move quickly to lock in borrowers before maturity.
“If you’re prioritizing and calling [your clients] five months before renewal, you’ve already lost a piece of that timeframe,” Pereira said, urging brokers to begin conversations six to eight months in advance.
Several speakers stressed that in a peak renewal year, timing and preparation will separate strong performers from the rest. Waiting for a maturity notice or assuming a file will move smoothly can limit options quickly.
With more than half of Ontario borrowers expected to see payment increases this year upon renewal, early outreach, disciplined file management and consistent client communication were framed as the difference between retaining business and watching it roll back to incumbent lenders.
A housing system under strain
While renewals drove the operational focus, speakers also turned to the economic backdrop shaping the mortgage market.
CREA chief economist Shaun Cathcart argued that demographics alone suggest demand hasn’t disappeared — it has been delayed.
“The 30-to-34-year-olds are the biggest demographic group ever in the history of Canada right now,” he said, noting that many would-be first-time buyers have been sidelined for the past four years by rates and affordability constraints.
With the Bank of Canada signalling its rate-cutting cycle is likely complete for now, Cathcart suggested 2026 could mark a turning point. “A huge factor in pulling people off the sidelines this year is that rates are probably about as good as you’re going to get,” he said.
At the same time, he cautioned that supply remains misaligned with demand. Over the past two decades, ownership-oriented family housing has steadily declined as a share of completions, replaced largely by smaller apartments and purpose-built rental units.
Policy, competition and the road ahead
Beyond renewals, the discussion also widened to the structural pressures facing the mortgage market.
Conservative MP Scott Aitchison, the shadow minister for Housing, argued that affordability is fundamentally a supply problem, pointing to municipal approval timelines and layered development charges as costs that ultimately flow through to borrowers. He described the cumulative impact as a “hidden tax” on new housing and called for federal infrastructure funding to be tied to measurable improvements in approval timelines.
Another session zeroed in on operational discipline and scalability. Jill Moellering, a broker with Mortgage Architects and founder of The Mortgage Nerd, urged brokers, particularly those in the $10- to $20-million range, to move beyond a deal-by-deal mindset and think like business owners.
“You’ve got to change your mind from working and operating as a mortgage broker on a day-to-day basis to working as a business owner who is self-employed, who is running a mortgage-brokering business,” she said. “In order to effectively create systems, processes, or set ourselves up for scaling, you have to change your mind.”
Brian Hutton, VP of Marketing and Communications at M3 Financial Group, addressed how brokers compete in a changing digital landscape, arguing that artificial intelligence has fundamentally altered how consumers discover mortgage advice.
“Two years later, AI is no longer a differentiator. It’s just the baseline for how marketing is done,” he said, noting that “SEO-driven traffic is down somewhere between 40% and 50%” across industries as AI-generated search summaries reduce direct website clicks.
Hutton urged brokers to rethink how they position themselves online, emphasizing brand visibility, consistent outreach and content structured around how consumers now ask questions in AI-driven search tools. As AI platforms increasingly determine which professionals to surface in response to consumer queries, early positioning may prove decisive.
“There is a very, very small window before AI starts sending people to the same three brokers over and over and over again,” he said.
For the full national symposium schedule, visit MPC’s events page.
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Last modified: February 26, 2026