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Yesterday’s Bank of Canada interest rate hike is going to hurt most of us.

It means the cost of money is going up and that’s going to have a huge impact on many aspects of our economy.

It’s going to slow down the housing market and that’s bad news for the real estate industry and the construction industry.

The rate hike will likely push up the value of the Canadian dollar, but that’s going to make exports more expensive in foreign markets and that will hurt the recovering Ontario economy which relies on that export business.

If you have a variable rate mortgage or a line of credit, your payments just went up about 10 per cent overnight.

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For people who live paycheque to paycheque, that increase puts more pressure on the household budget.

An economist friend of mine told me that the rate hike was needed to slow down our economy.

Really?

Our economy is growing at an annual rate of 4.5 per cent and unemployment rates are the lowest in nine years.

This is the second rate hike since July and we’re told that there will be more in the months ahead.

A lot of Canadians would like to know why taking the wind out of the sales of a smooth-sailing economy is supposed to be good for us.

Bill Kelly is the host of Bill Kelly Show on AM 900 CHML and a commentator for Global News.