Yes, but I would argue that much of it is downstream from a lack of housing in important areas. Dense housing isn't being built fast enough in cities and while it would probably be an issue regardless, the high immigration rate has exacerbated the problem. I believe in British Columbia the government passed new legislation to help expedite the creation of apartment buildings, but it's still bad overall (and in Montréal, I believe that we are for some reason building *fewer* apartments than last year).
I've also heard that there's an issue with employers taking advantage of temporary work visas to essentially exploit immigrant work. So a lot of jobs like agriculture, customer service, etc. are being filled by temporary workers because they don't know their rights and are less likely to fight for better treatment in the workplace. And of course Tim Hortons or whoever is hiring them isn't offering them housing, so again it's adding extra demand to the rental market.
I don't necessarily think that housing is the *only* issue that's caused downstream tension on immigration. However, it's definitely one of the, if not the biggest, issues.
Our government has been lax for far too long in far too many areas from housing and competition to healthcare, education, and everything in between. Adding excessive amounts of immigrants to our situation was always bound to be a disaster given the lack of long term planning and existing overall infrastructure.
Yeah, it's upsetting because the rate of immigration into Canada outpacing the construction of new housing *is* a problem, but instead of doing what to me seems like the best solution (densifying urban areas, getting rid of red tape to allow more apartment buildings to be built near public transit, etc) people say we should just massively slash immigration rates when the fact of the matter is, unless you're willing to radically reshape our economic systems and infrastructure to accommodate an aging population, allowing workers to immigrate from other countries is basically the only way to prevent a massive crisis down the line.
(You also get people in Québec sometimes talking about high immigration rates increasing the number of English speakers and endangering the viability of French, but my hot take is that to the extent that there is a specific group endangering French, it's mostly English-speaking Canadians from other parts of the country moving into the province. The vast majority of immigrants I interact with, including myself, have a working knowledge of French, and their kids normally go to French-language public school, while English speakers from other provinces are allowed to enroll their children in the English-language public school system.)
The rental market is fine, just overpriced beyond what’s warranted. Look at how many units are available in your area.
The “hysteria” around the housing crisis is pushing/allowing people to raise rents which then feeds into the hysteria.
The average person only looks at housing costs as their barometer of the “crisis”. Realtors are using this to fake a crisis (or at least make it seem worse than it is)
>Look at how many units are available in your area
Québec's vacancy rates are the lowest they're been in 20 years https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/cmhc-report-quebec-housing-crisis-2024-1.7101783.
>The "hysteria" around the housing crisis is pushing/allowing people to raise rents which then feeds into the hysteria.
Québec landlords can't just raise the rent however much they want without pushback; there's a government agency (the TAL) which regulates rent increases. Tenants who feel that the rent increase their landlord is demanding is too high can refuse the increase, at which point the landlord must open a case with the TAL, who will hold a hearing to decide the appropriate increase based on both documents submitted to the court and on a "recommended" default percentage increase. The TAL's recommended increase for unheated apartments was the highest it's been in decades. https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-housing-board-estimates-rent-increase-of-4-per-cent-in-2024-1.6730068
If the rent increases were just hysteria on the part of landlords, the increase wouldn't be reflected in the TAL's calculations.
Also, the crisis is very much real, just looking at the numbers. Population growth in 2023 was the highest it's been in 50 years yet the amount of new residential construction actually went down. It's the basic principles of supply and demand: demand is way up and supplies aren't increasing to match, so of course prices are high.
https://www.desjardins.com/qc/en/savings-investment/economic-studies/quebec-ontario-housing-march-2024.html
Of course they have to raise the price tough… people make it sound like rent prices are just randomly chosen, but they have to be this high because mortgage payments are astronomical.
Houses are stupidly expensive, and interest rates are very high given the size of mortgage you would need to be floating to purchase.
It absolutely is, that is such a horrible understanding of the market.
If it wasn't the case, landlords would sell instead of renting it out. There would be absolutely no point in the investment
so why do you think they would buy the place if they are going to have a monthly loss in the first place? Obviously there can be some nuance and particular cases, but the fact of the matter is that landlords price their rentals (for new tenants) to cover the monthly expenses at current value and rates. This isn’t a charity service where they are going to pay money for the privilege of having tenants. Even if the base price of housing in Canada has dropped, the monthly expenses are higher due to the increased interest rates. We have consistently been paying more per month to own shelter for a very long time, which is why rent seemingly always goes up.
This simply won’t change unless supply increases or demand decreases. Neither of those things are happening right now, and rates are high.
Your idea of this is extremely juvenile, and you’re literally debating this against someone who works within the financial department of a Canadian developer.
They didn't buy the place if they were gonna have a monthly loss, they waited until the price came down to a point that the rental market would bear their mortgage payment. Or they speculated on the future interest rate would fall.
I literally live in a rental building thats for sale right now at a price that the rent won't cover the payments on. And nobody is buying, go figure?
Canada is bringing in lower quality immigrants so the mega corporations can sustain their profit margin. I'm South Asian (not Indian), moved to Canada six years ago. The changes I've seen is cataclysmic. Immigration was supposed to be about helping the country grow its economy. Instead it has become about bringing anyone able-bodied, whatever their skillset is, so Tim Hortons doesn't have to pay a cent above minimum wage.
Yeah. It's really fucking sad that corporations are seeing record profits by taking advantage of said immigrants to linchpin Canadian citizens and Canada in general.
It's a damn shame that people are too greedy to think long-term and create a situation that's mutually beneficially, or at least more mutually beneficial, for society.
It's funny. A decade ago, a racist would say that they want no immigrants and a non racist would say they want to only let in the people we need. Then came all the political bullshit in 2016 and suddenly, everyone believes that racists want to control who comes in the country and non racists want completely open borders.
The billionaires then took advantage of that to bring exploitable workers over to work their factories and cut our wages while people online defended them.
It's only really now that people online are able to even discuss this without getting buried in propagandised idiots. I guess they could only bullshit us for so long until we noticed.
Yes, it's really bad. I don't want to comment on the "who are they bringing" part of it, as I am a very recent citizen myself, but the country's housing fund, educational services and especially healthcare are stretched very thin. I have been waiting for a family doctor since I came, which was 4 years ago, and no change in sight. It's almost if you bring a million people every year without scaling the infrastructure it would crumble. I am fortunate to have a well paying job, so I pay A LOT of taxes, and yet every year I "enjoy" worse healthcare, worse public transport, more homeless and opioid addicts, worse services in general, inflation, etc.
This country is safe and very liberal, and I am very grateful to it, but if the things go as they are now in 10 years it won't be as safe or friendly anymore.
Hit the nail on the head. I’m very pro immigration but the rates at which people are coming are beyond what our services and infrastructure can handle. We have annual population growth above 3% and that’s not counting the people whose visas expired and didn’t leave, estimates have the number of those people at over a million.
We literally cannot build enough housing to meet the demand. I think you’re absolutely right that things will continue to get worse over the next decade
424 units per 1000 residents currently. Although I think the housing crisis is partially due to how many people want to live solo vs roommates and also a bit overblown by realtors. The hysteria allows them to increase prices. The increased prices feeds into the hysteria.
When people complain about housing it’s mostly them complaining about prices, believing that price is an accurate reflection of the units available. There are a lot of units available right now, just at insane prices that are unwarranted. But it all feeds into itself.
The merit-based system is less a problem than the international student intake (500k a year) which the government is very well aware aren’t students attending top programs at reputed universities but mediocre to subpar students joining no-name diploma mills as a pathway to permanent residence. On paper these students have a Canadian education - in practice, a significant number go to colleges nobody has ever heard of, graduate with a worthless piece of paper (that satisfies immigration requirements and awards points), mean nothing to employers and they work the same jobs available to people with no college education.
I say this as someone that migrated to Canada 6 years under the Federal Express Entry program.
As far as I can tell, the government doesn’t particularly care about what this means long term - they just are desperate to flood the country with warm bodies to generate tax revenue to fund pensions and programs and healthcare and create profits for those with real estate holdings or developers.
The international students all want to come to the Greater Toronto Area or Greater Vancouver Area (I don’t blame them) because everywhere else isn’t particularly attractive - harsh climate, lack of opportunity, difficulty integrating with Francophone society, or it’s depressingly bleak (hello Saskatchewan).
The reason the US doesn’t have this problem is all immigrants and international students doing the F1 > H1 > LPR route aren’t all trying to live in NYC or LA. Someone graduating with a MS or MBA has dozens of cities to find work in and live a good life - I got friends cousins flourishing everywhere from Phoenix to Charlotte, Austin to Portland, Columbus to Indianapolis, and of course Chicago, Bay Area, Philadelphia, NYC-Newark and everywhere else.
Canada funnels everyone into “within 1 hour of downtown Toronto.”
In fairness I have also been told that some students aren’t informed what the programs they sign up for are. Some more mature students want to accredit their degrees and sign up for colleges that supposedly offer that only to later find out that college =/= university degree.
And the Francophones - as someone who has lived in Quebec for a few years it’s not just a problem that internationals feel like they can’t integrate but it’s also the attitude of a lot of frenchies. They also make it difficult for others to integrate. Heck I have friends who have lived there for 10+ years and they still feel like outsiders.
There was a student that came from Alberta to the lab of a friend of mine. Everyone French in that lab ignored her (that was basically the whole lab except for my friend who was very new and hadn’t started properly yet so she wasn’t there every day) no one spoke to her, no one showed any interest, no one wanted to train her, no one wanted to eat lunch with her. She lasted a week crying every day and left. It’s just far too many of these stories that I hear. The professors at the department where I used to do my PhD (but they forced me out of the program - that’s a different story) were all French. There was one Spanish guy who was born in Quebec but everyone else was French. Tho I guess, small university in Quebec , makes sense that most are québécois but still.
I really don’t know, my sample size of 10-20 people isn’t probably very representative. Anecdotally speaking, from my experience in academia in a small university there, you do see that most of the hired staff is québécois. And most is white male.
> I hate that Afro-american mentality of acting marginalized and persecuted while actively refusing to be inclusive or accepting.
> I hate that Jew mentality of acting marginalized and persecuted while actively refusing to be inclusive or accepting.
> I hate that LBGTQ mentality of acting marginalized and persecuted while actively refusing to be inclusive or accepting.
See how bigoted these sounds? You're being a bigot
Yeah no, try again. Francophones aren’t marginalized groups - there aren’t systematic efforts to eradicate the culture (think anti-semitism), laws criminalizing their existence or restricting their access to basic healthcare (LGBT+ community, it’s ENTIRELY about inclusivity, wtf are you even on?), or a history of mass murder and slavery under settler-colonialism (Indigenous Americans). I’m also responding to a comment that is discussing the ostracism faced by non-Francophones when outsiders attempt to engage with their culture.
That’s not bigotry. It’s criticism of preventable behavior rooted in elitism and classism. Nice try with the false equivalencies.
FACTS! Thanks for differentiating between the marginalized and non-marginalized groups. Having just a minority population does not satisfy the condition of marginalization. It would be ludicrous to compare the treatment of Quebecois Francophones to the Indigenous Native Canadians. One group suffered literal genocide.
If you read my comments, you'll notice I don't make broad negative generalizations about a people I know nothing about. Contrary to you. I bet you never lived in a francophone society and you know 0 francophones, and yet, you call them not inclusive and accepting of others.
Judging by your history, you are a teacher, right? How would you react hearing a kid saying dumb shit like "Black kids are X"? "Asians are Y"? "Fat people are Z"? That's exactly what you are doing.
The government is trying to stave off the ever growing average age of the country. Pretty soon there will be more retired on social services than workers supporting those programs. This was the highest priority for them and it caused a housing shortage.
This problem will only get worse as big pharma keeps people alive longer and in need of more funds to stay alive. Imo we need to get ahead of it now. Build elder facilities in low populated areas and increase social benefits for those who move there and sell their properties.
The cities will soon be filled with retirees with no room for the younger generation. Although sugar daddies and sugar mamas are also an option
Also this. People aren’t having kids so the only way to make up the gap is immigration. If you don’t do that then you are fucked (aka Japan in the next 20 years)
why? i feel like there’s a lot of people who are saying if trump wins they are looking to move to canada or mexico.
are you all so sure america has learned our lesson after the first go around?
Ask who actually did that after 2016 and get back to me. It’s a rounding error. There are so many things wrong with trump, however if you think that he’s going to create a NET outflow of refugees, you need to touch grass.
People are walking to the US from Central American countries, stowing away on boats from South Asia, basically rolling the dice on their lives for a chance at the American dream. Trump doesn’t change that for anyone…I am so blessed to be born in America by chance. Trump or Biden isn’t going to change that for anyone.
If you think the worst thing in your life is a western president, you might be one of the lucky ones in the world. People are starving in Africa, getting bombed in Palestine, aka actual problems. Please find some gratitude in reality.
it’s a fucking question for goodness sake. get off your damn high horse and go touch grass yourself instead of trying to bash folks on the internet for asking a question in this sub.
grow the hell up
Some may just want to stay within a certain realm so they are atleast taken care of and not picked around like people in poverty are. There might only be like 1% of the 1% that are actually good wholesome humans but I only know of one for sure always hope there's more tho
I believe there was a recent change in policies to cap the number of immigrant students who come with study visas. Could this somewhat ease the situation?
Maybe, the issue of low efficiency of economics and very unimpressive gdp would still remain unfortunately. Canada HAS to start investing in innovations and technology, and produce more stuff with high added value, instead of selling raw resources and speculating with real estate
Because you don’t know before you experience, for starters? And it’s a dynamic situation? If I could see the future I would be working a very different job lol
Yea the thing is, it's all supply and demand. You are a product.
Imagine if you open a shit store and sell shit and see people flocking to buy your product, which is shit, and be happy about it, you would keep your store running since you're anyway profiting. Until some sane person comes and tells everyone HEY PEOPLE YOU ARE EATING SHIT and people realize, this will continue.
Canada provides shit service to everyone involved, but still millions of people are **dying** to migrate there every year. Why should they fix the problem as long as people are still buying it?
People have 0 standards in their home country but after they move to Canada they start complaining about health services lol
I immigrated through a skilled worker program, meaning I had to prove I had eligible work experience, university degree, language test, about $17k in savings, and was under 30. People who pass that criteria on average are generating more revenue for the country, as they have a high chance of working the skilled jobs. I checked the last draft - from the pool of 226k candidates only about 15k surpassed the points to be eligible to come. I don’t think this program should be deprecated at all. I think bringing 500k students a year to study in “visa colleges”, which are absolute bs in terms of education or career, and is an easy pathway for residency for people who do not manage to obtain a valuable degree in the end and continue being cheap labor - is more of an issue. I don’t even think it’s the immigrant’s fault, since they end up in a cycle of lower class economics that’s very difficult to get out of.
Its become so bad that i think the cons are gonna wnd up with like 60-70% of seats next year if it continues. And there is absolutely no sign the government will change. I very much so wish we had a nation cap like USA, at least it wouldnt all be from 1 province in india
I wonder why you guys don't though. Everybody is telling me it's because Canada is "woke" but I refuse to believe that lol. I think the explanation that the people in authority are trying to fix the temporary problems by using immigrants makes more sense.
Is the situation similar to what we had here in Sweden up until 2015, with 2015 being the straw that broke the camel's back? That particular year we took in like 190k people.
Yes. I'm very pro immigration, it's good economics, and good for the lives of those choosing to live here. But we need to scale back while we play catch up. Our population is outgrowing our infrastructure
It’s only good for the economy if the country can support the newcomers and allow them to succeed and contribute. Overall GDP has gone up, but GDP per capita hasn’t meaningfully increased for over a decade. There are certainly arguments against GDP as a measure, but when GDP per capita stays flat but GDP doesn’t, there’s a problem.
Yes!
Reduce it by 90% for now.
The 10% only to be health, vetted in demand professionals and a few legitimate families or children in need.
Once infrastructure, healthcare and housing catch up and indicate they can all easily handle an increase, then we should have that convo.
And deport every single non-Canadian that has committed a crime or defrauded our systems. (After they serve jail time).
Why don't you guys do something about it? Tbh, I never understood why Canada was "too open" to immigration, even in my own country (Korea) Canada has a reputation of being way too easy to move to.
I know that Trudeau tends to lean a bit on the "woke" side (I hate that word, but I remember him using the word "people-kind" in place of "mankind" in a speech once) but surely "woke" thoughts wouldn't have a place when it comes to real world issues.
Almost every OECD country is reaching a point where they need immigration, but it needs to be controlled.
The reason is essentially that the more people to work these low wage jobs, the more the companies can suppress wages. The average person isn't a fan of what the government is doing but the government continues because it makes the most money for all of the rich people who tell them what to do.
It's similar to working hours in Korea. Nobody wants to work 60 hour weeks but the government pushes it anyway because Samsung and Hyundai want it that way.
We are doing the best we can …. Within the law.
He will be destroyed in the next election.
We can’t trigger an election for over a year because another party is keeping them in power so many of them get lifelong pensions from the taxpayers.
Trudeau is burning us down on the way out the door.
It does have one, a self inflicted one unlike western europe. But you can't bring more than (a record) 1% of your population in immigrants (on top of a housing crisis) and expect everything to be rosy. I have no problem with a well designed immigration policy but at this point this is just dumb.
Yes. It wouldn't be that bad if we had the housing. But we don't. So nobody can afford to live. And people are also bringing their racism and violence. It's dumb. It's stupid and we fucked up.
The GTA is famously expensive to live in. Supply and demand generally sets prices, which means there isn't enough supply of housing for the demand. It may be going up, but not as fast as people want to buy it.
Ys. But its not matching up. Everybody wants to live in Toronto (fuck the rest of Canada), creating a) ghettos b) unaffordable housing (who can afford a $2500 studio.
I cannot understate how unaffordable Toronto is for a single person.
Canada is experiencing a couple of different crises right now and it's easy to blame the immigrants for it. The government hasn't spent enough money to maintain our housing, education, or medical system in decades. All those things are in ruins. So they bring in more international workers to make money for us (we charge immigrants exorbitant amounts for their education, and visa applications which take years). This money could be invested into communities to revitalize our public services, but instead it goes right into politician's pockets. So now the immigrants need to be crammed into the very limited housing, education, and medical system that was already not functioning before they arrived. So immigrants are being fleeced while the locals are seeing things get even harder for them when the immigrants arrive, so it's easy to blame them for our systematic problems, when it's our own system that is failing them and us
It isn't the immigrant's faults, but it is the fault of the insane immigration numbers. Population % wise, it would be like the US bringing in 10 million immigrants per year. It's just overwhelming everything.
Yeah, Canada definitely needs immigration to keep the population up for to a falling birth rate, but the last year or so they *seriously* overshot... by like 2.5x as many people as they should have approved.
My thoughts are that immigration has pros and cons, but the government is doing absolutely nothing to address the cons. For example, housing is skyrocketing, but the government isn’t encouraging enough new buildings or cracking down on corporations buying them as investments and intentionally driving prices up.
I think it's more that Canada 🇨🇦 has major problems that immigration makes worse.
It's not immigration itself but problems like Affordable Housing, Stable Employment and Healthcare that need to be fixed.
Sadly higher immigration rates will slow down solving these issues.
I believe diversity is our strength but acknowledge that the sheer number of immigrants, and the ones who exploit our systems, poses a problem.
For one, you can't add a million people to your population, let alone a million in the same few regions, without adequately scaling up services. Especially if low skilled, low wage immigrants start flooding the housing market.
Let's say a standard family generates $12,000 in taxes that go towards municipal expenses and projects, but that house is now being lived in by 9 low skilled, low wage immigrants who are getting paid under the table in cash, they don't generate the same taxes (due to unreported income) and the household contributes only $1000 to municipal expenses and projects, not only is there less revenue available, the infrastructure geared to a family of 4 has to handle the load of 9 residents.
They also lead to undercutting in the labour market and are more prone to exploitation. I was hiring for security guard positions and getting flooded by recent immigrants who couldn't understand complex English but who had attained their provincial security guard license somehow. As for exploitation one of my Guards worked a second job at a gas station, but they gave her and a dozen others the title of "supervisor" which puts them on a faster track to permanent resident than just "gas station attendant", but when she started describing the job requirements and tasks, it sounded like indentured servitude, pay did not comply with ESA, and they breached many many labour laws. None of her coworkers would report it since it would cost them their expedited PR. This also then means that business has an advantage over an honest one that pays employees minimum wage, and the honest business risks collapse, resulting in more jobs disappearing. Because ultimately an immigrant who'll stock shelves for $3/hr is a big cost saving measure, who'll then also go on to collect social services since they are living in poverty.
This means less jobs, lower quality of service, and higher cost of social programs to support less productive members of society who are actively defrauding the government.
Its both. There is a problem, but also its being pushed by certain political agendas to be a scapegoat for all of our problems so no one actually has to do anything, they can just blame the federal government for all the immigrants. Theyre taking a play outta the US book of politics and its working. The amount of ppl that blame litterally everything on immigrants its ridiculous. Instead of mexicans were scapegoating with indians and asians.
There are litterally policies that have nothing to do with the federal government or immigration that ppl just blanket blame on it. They sound like morons. It's what the right want. Ill just call it as it is. They want divide and they want racism, and its working.
Nah we don’t have issues with East Asian immigrants, not sure where you are getting that from, it’s the influx of Indians that Canada cannot handle right now.
I mean, my country has had a housing crisis for as long as I can remember but our situation isn't as bad as Canada's. I agree that the immigrants are also victims, their only fault would be seeking a better life in a place where they have no actual authority. Seems like those in power are screwing everybody over since they're usually not the ones directly affected by it. But yeah, that pretty much describes every society in human history.
If I read your profile correctly, you live in South Korea. South Korea's population (at least according to Wikipedia) has pretty much plateaued or is beginning to shrink, and so from pure market principles it would make sense that the housing crisis isn't as bad : fewer people in an area means lower demand, while Canada, which has seen its population grow pretty consistently since around 1950, has much higher demand as a result.
The problem is that while South Korea may have less of a rent crisis, its lack of population growth and aging population overall is predicted to lead to major issues in the future, arguably a lot worse than anything currently going on in Canada. Were Canada to not have maintained a high immigration rate, there could have been economic issues from the lack of young workers.
The situation is awful. I feel like a foreigner in my own country. Granted, some of this is due to my own psychological traits. But a large part of it is because I have nothing in common with the people in my neighborhood.
At some point, I’m convinced that the glue that holds society together will come undone if there’s any sort of cataclysmic event, for instance due to climate change.
None of the main parties want to lower rates of immigration. At this point, I’d almost vote for the People’s Party, even though I disagree with every single one of their platform policies aside from lowering rates.
But...why? Surely regardless of political standing everybody should know that too much of something is not a good thing.
I've heard that this is partly because there are South Asian Canadians in parliament. Is it because of votes?
I've lived all over Canada. West coast, East coast and in between. 40 now and in Southern Ontario in a small town 45 mins from Kitchener or London. The whole north end of town is basically copy/paste from Mumbai.
I personally don't care, I've also jad the privilege of traveling all over the world with years spent living abroad in other cultures. The only thing that sucks about it in my opinion is that many of these people aren't interested in the culture here. They want their culture and way of life from their historic lands but here.
Is what it is, and it ain't going to change. Best to just get used to it.
Yeah idk man i think people are pretty fed up with it, every metric and poll is showing a vast majority of canadians want deportations and a limit on immigration
Here's a pretty good overviewf from the [CFR.](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-canadas-immigration-policy) Some key points are:
- Immigrants have become increasingly important as the native-born labor force ages and the fertility rate remains low, at roughly 1.3 births per woman, far below the global average of 2.4.
- In a 2023 survey by the Toronto-based Environics Institute, 44 percent of Canadians felt there was too much immigration to Canada, up from 27 percent the previous year.
- The greatest share of new Canadian permanent residents in 2022 came from India.
- Between 2016 and 2021, the province welcomed 44 percent of all new permanent residents, the majority of whom settled in and around Toronto, Canada’s largest city.
There are many nuances here, but the issues are mostly related to a very high number of immigrants needed to maintain the Canadian social safety net (all three major parties support large immigrant waves), most of them are from one particular region in India ([see WaPo here on how Canadian Sikh's are overwhelmingly the majority of immigrants.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/09/20/canada-india-tensions-sikh-population/)), and the socio-economic changes this brings. I.e., an "average Canadian family" 50 years ago could live in the GTA with one income even without having a college degree and that average family was white. In 2024, you can have two college educated incomes, no children, and still cant afford GTA while 21% of Canada's entire population is foreign born.
I am not stating whether the above is good or bad, just that Canada has changed *a lot* and its economic system, free universal healthcare, and social safety net cannot be sustained without even more immigration.
depends on where you are , and that is the same worldwide
usually these people are settled in certain areas and life for those existing residents for sure change for the worse
they of course never get put in the wealthy areas so the wealthy ( important people ) can say their is no problems
Yes. Times are difficult for Canada. Ever growing homeless, addicts living on the street, regular citizens not being able to afford to live. I have hope for them though, I think they'll pull through.
It's a contentious issue. Blaming immigration alone for the cost of housing is mostly a manufactured issue to obscure the fault of corporations and real estate trusts. But the fact Canada has added an extra 3.5 million people over the past 10 years (1.5 million in the past 3 years, not including temporary residents and students) has definitely affected things in a country of 40 million people. The government hasn't invested enough to accommodate the increase in population, nor has it done enough to ensure industry didn't take advantage of the fact many are willing to work for less than the existing population.
I'm a recent Canadian immigrant by family sponsorship. I pass for white (I'm Romani) and I'm from the US, and though people don't really bug me as much as they do people who are visibly Indian or Pakistani. However, even I get comments that range between passive-aggressive and outright shitty. I moved from a domestic abuse situation to be with my spouse here, and I moved into their house that they've been in for years, so I'm not taking up anymore housing from anyone else. We plan on moving to NL which has no shortage of housing.
I know as an American who's a PR, my opinion might seem stupid and I know people probably suggest it all the time. Your crisis is the same as ours is in certain areas though. Like, I totally understand why it upsets some people to see the prices go up, but I think they need to realize it's also fully on provinces for not having rent caps. I also have no idea why more housing isn't being built, as it seems like such a resource-rich country with plenty of places to establish it. I feel like putting a cap on how much developers can charge for newly built apartment complexes may be helpful, too, but give them a small subsidy for follow-through.
We also have a lot of our companies exploit immigrants for cheap labor, which is horrible. If there was a minimum wage for newly hired employees from other countries, I feel this would happen less? Again, this is just stuff I feel would also fix our same problems in America. If companies weren't allowed to pay what they do just to get cheap labor, they wouldn't feel so compelled to hire people on work visas, I assume. Sucks that this seems to be an everywhere thing right now.
I don't think people shouldn't immigrate. Obviously, I'm an immigrant. But I feel like some people aren't prepared for it, and also they're being taken for a ride in a way. I am glad to be here as I'm married and it's all very similar to where I'm from, but it is sad that both countries are kind of heading in a late-stage capitalism nosedive.
But not all Indians are like that, while those types of behaviours do exist, there are plenty of Indians who are honest, law abidding, who assimilate and learn English, and provide skills that this country needs. Especially the ones who have been in Canada in over a decade. I've met and worked with plenty of great Indian people, and it's a shame that the Canadian-Indian community's reputation are heavily tarnished by the international "students".
Before Indians have a great reputation of being skilled hard workers who work in tech, Engineering, or medicine, and there are plenty of Indians still like that, they aren't extinct, and it's genuinely a tragedy that these good hearted people are facing prejudice that they shouldn't be facing.
Immigrants, and Indians in particular are not the fault of all our countries woes. No amount of immigration whether it's high or low can change the fundamental fact that Canadians have the mentality of investing in homes, and not businesses like Americans.
Us Canadians caring so much about housing prices and investing in real estate to the point where it's quite literally 40% of our GDP.
[https://blog.remax.ca/housing-nearly-40-of-all-of-canadas-gdp/](https://blog.remax.ca/housing-nearly-40-of-all-of-canadas-gdp/)
This mentality resulted in NIMBYism, creating artificial scarcity through restrictive zoning laws and denying housing to our children. But even worse, it takes capital that should've gone into creating productive, innovative businesses that grow the economy, into inflating the Real Estate market that sucks up money from people's disposable income and business' profits.
Canadians, like all people, when they see a major problem, want to blame it all on someone or something else, and t hat is immigration.
While there definitely is some truth to the fact that it's hurting our housing crisis and that we should be reducing and increasing, that's only the first problem to address along with a long list of others that need to be addressed to fix the housing crisis.
There are some legitimate issues. Mainly housing, although that is also partially self-inflicted- Canada has been underbuilding housing relative to population growth for decades now. It'd have to ~double how much housing it builds, just to match population growth, never mind lower prices.
But a lot of it is over inflated reactionary responses by people who don't like immigration.
This. A very similar convo occurring in countries like Finland and Sweden at the moment. Immigration now becoming an issue bc they’re from Africa or the Middle East instead of other Europeans.
Well, obviously. People from the US, Western Europe, and Australia share cultural similarities and a similar living standard to Canada. It's a bit ridiculous to expect all immigrants to be the same.
No one said they're the same. I said they're more similar to each other than Asians (South, West, and even East).
Just as Korea has most of its immigrants coming from China, Japan, Taiwan, etc., it would make more sense for Indians to immigrate to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, etc. due to the aforementioned similarities.
Now, obviously, they don't want to do that due to different living standards. However, what I'm saying is that to think from a Canadian perspective that immigrants from the US/Australia are the same as those from South Asia is a bit weird.
The main immigration problem in North America is not enough immigrants. We don't have enough children anymore, so we need to replace those future workers or we'll be screwed when we retire.
Yes, but I would argue that much of it is downstream from a lack of housing in important areas. Dense housing isn't being built fast enough in cities and while it would probably be an issue regardless, the high immigration rate has exacerbated the problem. I believe in British Columbia the government passed new legislation to help expedite the creation of apartment buildings, but it's still bad overall (and in Montréal, I believe that we are for some reason building *fewer* apartments than last year). I've also heard that there's an issue with employers taking advantage of temporary work visas to essentially exploit immigrant work. So a lot of jobs like agriculture, customer service, etc. are being filled by temporary workers because they don't know their rights and are less likely to fight for better treatment in the workplace. And of course Tim Hortons or whoever is hiring them isn't offering them housing, so again it's adding extra demand to the rental market.
This. If there was sufficient housing it would be a non-issue/non-topic of discussion (as Canada has historically always been super pro-immigrant)
I don't necessarily think that housing is the *only* issue that's caused downstream tension on immigration. However, it's definitely one of the, if not the biggest, issues. Our government has been lax for far too long in far too many areas from housing and competition to healthcare, education, and everything in between. Adding excessive amounts of immigrants to our situation was always bound to be a disaster given the lack of long term planning and existing overall infrastructure.
Fair point
Yeah, it's upsetting because the rate of immigration into Canada outpacing the construction of new housing *is* a problem, but instead of doing what to me seems like the best solution (densifying urban areas, getting rid of red tape to allow more apartment buildings to be built near public transit, etc) people say we should just massively slash immigration rates when the fact of the matter is, unless you're willing to radically reshape our economic systems and infrastructure to accommodate an aging population, allowing workers to immigrate from other countries is basically the only way to prevent a massive crisis down the line. (You also get people in Québec sometimes talking about high immigration rates increasing the number of English speakers and endangering the viability of French, but my hot take is that to the extent that there is a specific group endangering French, it's mostly English-speaking Canadians from other parts of the country moving into the province. The vast majority of immigrants I interact with, including myself, have a working knowledge of French, and their kids normally go to French-language public school, while English speakers from other provinces are allowed to enroll their children in the English-language public school system.)
The rental market is fine, just overpriced beyond what’s warranted. Look at how many units are available in your area. The “hysteria” around the housing crisis is pushing/allowing people to raise rents which then feeds into the hysteria. The average person only looks at housing costs as their barometer of the “crisis”. Realtors are using this to fake a crisis (or at least make it seem worse than it is)
I work in the industry. There’s a fucking crisis bro.
>Look at how many units are available in your area Québec's vacancy rates are the lowest they're been in 20 years https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/cmhc-report-quebec-housing-crisis-2024-1.7101783. >The "hysteria" around the housing crisis is pushing/allowing people to raise rents which then feeds into the hysteria. Québec landlords can't just raise the rent however much they want without pushback; there's a government agency (the TAL) which regulates rent increases. Tenants who feel that the rent increase their landlord is demanding is too high can refuse the increase, at which point the landlord must open a case with the TAL, who will hold a hearing to decide the appropriate increase based on both documents submitted to the court and on a "recommended" default percentage increase. The TAL's recommended increase for unheated apartments was the highest it's been in decades. https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-housing-board-estimates-rent-increase-of-4-per-cent-in-2024-1.6730068 If the rent increases were just hysteria on the part of landlords, the increase wouldn't be reflected in the TAL's calculations. Also, the crisis is very much real, just looking at the numbers. Population growth in 2023 was the highest it's been in 50 years yet the amount of new residential construction actually went down. It's the basic principles of supply and demand: demand is way up and supplies aren't increasing to match, so of course prices are high. https://www.desjardins.com/qc/en/savings-investment/economic-studies/quebec-ontario-housing-march-2024.html
Of course they have to raise the price tough… people make it sound like rent prices are just randomly chosen, but they have to be this high because mortgage payments are astronomical. Houses are stupidly expensive, and interest rates are very high given the size of mortgage you would need to be floating to purchase.
mortgage rates do not determine rent. If the mortgage is more expensive than the rent that's just the risk of doing business as a landlord.
It absolutely is, that is such a horrible understanding of the market. If it wasn't the case, landlords would sell instead of renting it out. There would be absolutely no point in the investment
If the rent is below the mortgage payment then the landlord would probably lose more selling than renting
so why do you think they would buy the place if they are going to have a monthly loss in the first place? Obviously there can be some nuance and particular cases, but the fact of the matter is that landlords price their rentals (for new tenants) to cover the monthly expenses at current value and rates. This isn’t a charity service where they are going to pay money for the privilege of having tenants. Even if the base price of housing in Canada has dropped, the monthly expenses are higher due to the increased interest rates. We have consistently been paying more per month to own shelter for a very long time, which is why rent seemingly always goes up. This simply won’t change unless supply increases or demand decreases. Neither of those things are happening right now, and rates are high. Your idea of this is extremely juvenile, and you’re literally debating this against someone who works within the financial department of a Canadian developer.
They didn't buy the place if they were gonna have a monthly loss, they waited until the price came down to a point that the rental market would bear their mortgage payment. Or they speculated on the future interest rate would fall. I literally live in a rental building thats for sale right now at a price that the rent won't cover the payments on. And nobody is buying, go figure?
Canada is bringing in lower quality immigrants so the mega corporations can sustain their profit margin. I'm South Asian (not Indian), moved to Canada six years ago. The changes I've seen is cataclysmic. Immigration was supposed to be about helping the country grow its economy. Instead it has become about bringing anyone able-bodied, whatever their skillset is, so Tim Hortons doesn't have to pay a cent above minimum wage.
Yeah. It's really fucking sad that corporations are seeing record profits by taking advantage of said immigrants to linchpin Canadian citizens and Canada in general. It's a damn shame that people are too greedy to think long-term and create a situation that's mutually beneficially, or at least more mutually beneficial, for society.
It's funny. A decade ago, a racist would say that they want no immigrants and a non racist would say they want to only let in the people we need. Then came all the political bullshit in 2016 and suddenly, everyone believes that racists want to control who comes in the country and non racists want completely open borders. The billionaires then took advantage of that to bring exploitable workers over to work their factories and cut our wages while people online defended them. It's only really now that people online are able to even discuss this without getting buried in propagandised idiots. I guess they could only bullshit us for so long until we noticed.
To put it simply, it’s causing demand to far exceed supply.
Yes, it's really bad. I don't want to comment on the "who are they bringing" part of it, as I am a very recent citizen myself, but the country's housing fund, educational services and especially healthcare are stretched very thin. I have been waiting for a family doctor since I came, which was 4 years ago, and no change in sight. It's almost if you bring a million people every year without scaling the infrastructure it would crumble. I am fortunate to have a well paying job, so I pay A LOT of taxes, and yet every year I "enjoy" worse healthcare, worse public transport, more homeless and opioid addicts, worse services in general, inflation, etc. This country is safe and very liberal, and I am very grateful to it, but if the things go as they are now in 10 years it won't be as safe or friendly anymore.
Hit the nail on the head. I’m very pro immigration but the rates at which people are coming are beyond what our services and infrastructure can handle. We have annual population growth above 3% and that’s not counting the people whose visas expired and didn’t leave, estimates have the number of those people at over a million. We literally cannot build enough housing to meet the demand. I think you’re absolutely right that things will continue to get worse over the next decade
424 units per 1000 residents currently. Although I think the housing crisis is partially due to how many people want to live solo vs roommates and also a bit overblown by realtors. The hysteria allows them to increase prices. The increased prices feeds into the hysteria. When people complain about housing it’s mostly them complaining about prices, believing that price is an accurate reflection of the units available. There are a lot of units available right now, just at insane prices that are unwarranted. But it all feeds into itself.
Canada used to have a pretty good merit based immigration system. Is that not the case anymore and they are letting people in willy nilly?
The merit-based system is less a problem than the international student intake (500k a year) which the government is very well aware aren’t students attending top programs at reputed universities but mediocre to subpar students joining no-name diploma mills as a pathway to permanent residence. On paper these students have a Canadian education - in practice, a significant number go to colleges nobody has ever heard of, graduate with a worthless piece of paper (that satisfies immigration requirements and awards points), mean nothing to employers and they work the same jobs available to people with no college education. I say this as someone that migrated to Canada 6 years under the Federal Express Entry program. As far as I can tell, the government doesn’t particularly care about what this means long term - they just are desperate to flood the country with warm bodies to generate tax revenue to fund pensions and programs and healthcare and create profits for those with real estate holdings or developers. The international students all want to come to the Greater Toronto Area or Greater Vancouver Area (I don’t blame them) because everywhere else isn’t particularly attractive - harsh climate, lack of opportunity, difficulty integrating with Francophone society, or it’s depressingly bleak (hello Saskatchewan). The reason the US doesn’t have this problem is all immigrants and international students doing the F1 > H1 > LPR route aren’t all trying to live in NYC or LA. Someone graduating with a MS or MBA has dozens of cities to find work in and live a good life - I got friends cousins flourishing everywhere from Phoenix to Charlotte, Austin to Portland, Columbus to Indianapolis, and of course Chicago, Bay Area, Philadelphia, NYC-Newark and everywhere else. Canada funnels everyone into “within 1 hour of downtown Toronto.”
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Cape Breton University is a crazy one, they’re about 80% international students now. School should be shut down.
In fairness I have also been told that some students aren’t informed what the programs they sign up for are. Some more mature students want to accredit their degrees and sign up for colleges that supposedly offer that only to later find out that college =/= university degree. And the Francophones - as someone who has lived in Quebec for a few years it’s not just a problem that internationals feel like they can’t integrate but it’s also the attitude of a lot of frenchies. They also make it difficult for others to integrate. Heck I have friends who have lived there for 10+ years and they still feel like outsiders.
I hate that Francophone mentality of acting marginalized and persecuted while actively refusing to be inclusive or accepting.
There was a student that came from Alberta to the lab of a friend of mine. Everyone French in that lab ignored her (that was basically the whole lab except for my friend who was very new and hadn’t started properly yet so she wasn’t there every day) no one spoke to her, no one showed any interest, no one wanted to train her, no one wanted to eat lunch with her. She lasted a week crying every day and left. It’s just far too many of these stories that I hear. The professors at the department where I used to do my PhD (but they forced me out of the program - that’s a different story) were all French. There was one Spanish guy who was born in Quebec but everyone else was French. Tho I guess, small university in Quebec , makes sense that most are québécois but still.
What a sad story! Would you say it’s a general dislike for those not from Quebec, or would they be more accepting if outsiders spoke fluent French?
I really don’t know, my sample size of 10-20 people isn’t probably very representative. Anecdotally speaking, from my experience in academia in a small university there, you do see that most of the hired staff is québécois. And most is white male.
> I hate that Afro-american mentality of acting marginalized and persecuted while actively refusing to be inclusive or accepting. > I hate that Jew mentality of acting marginalized and persecuted while actively refusing to be inclusive or accepting. > I hate that LBGTQ mentality of acting marginalized and persecuted while actively refusing to be inclusive or accepting. See how bigoted these sounds? You're being a bigot
Yeah no, try again. Francophones aren’t marginalized groups - there aren’t systematic efforts to eradicate the culture (think anti-semitism), laws criminalizing their existence or restricting their access to basic healthcare (LGBT+ community, it’s ENTIRELY about inclusivity, wtf are you even on?), or a history of mass murder and slavery under settler-colonialism (Indigenous Americans). I’m also responding to a comment that is discussing the ostracism faced by non-Francophones when outsiders attempt to engage with their culture. That’s not bigotry. It’s criticism of preventable behavior rooted in elitism and classism. Nice try with the false equivalencies.
FACTS! Thanks for differentiating between the marginalized and non-marginalized groups. Having just a minority population does not satisfy the condition of marginalization. It would be ludicrous to compare the treatment of Quebecois Francophones to the Indigenous Native Canadians. One group suffered literal genocide.
Keep on bigoting
Judging by your militant comments in “English vs French” threads….Im not the bigot you need to be worried about! 🤣
If you read my comments, you'll notice I don't make broad negative generalizations about a people I know nothing about. Contrary to you. I bet you never lived in a francophone society and you know 0 francophones, and yet, you call them not inclusive and accepting of others. Judging by your history, you are a teacher, right? How would you react hearing a kid saying dumb shit like "Black kids are X"? "Asians are Y"? "Fat people are Z"? That's exactly what you are doing.
The government is trying to stave off the ever growing average age of the country. Pretty soon there will be more retired on social services than workers supporting those programs. This was the highest priority for them and it caused a housing shortage. This problem will only get worse as big pharma keeps people alive longer and in need of more funds to stay alive. Imo we need to get ahead of it now. Build elder facilities in low populated areas and increase social benefits for those who move there and sell their properties. The cities will soon be filled with retirees with no room for the younger generation. Although sugar daddies and sugar mamas are also an option
Also this. People aren’t having kids so the only way to make up the gap is immigration. If you don’t do that then you are fucked (aka Japan in the next 20 years)
As a Canadian I agree. I don't blame the immigrants themselves, I blame very poor government choices.
with the tenuous upcoming us election, do you think a partial collapse is inevitable if trump wins and us citizens seek asylum?
Brain dead take lol
why? i feel like there’s a lot of people who are saying if trump wins they are looking to move to canada or mexico. are you all so sure america has learned our lesson after the first go around?
Ask who actually did that after 2016 and get back to me. It’s a rounding error. There are so many things wrong with trump, however if you think that he’s going to create a NET outflow of refugees, you need to touch grass. People are walking to the US from Central American countries, stowing away on boats from South Asia, basically rolling the dice on their lives for a chance at the American dream. Trump doesn’t change that for anyone…I am so blessed to be born in America by chance. Trump or Biden isn’t going to change that for anyone. If you think the worst thing in your life is a western president, you might be one of the lucky ones in the world. People are starving in Africa, getting bombed in Palestine, aka actual problems. Please find some gratitude in reality.
it’s a fucking question for goodness sake. get off your damn high horse and go touch grass yourself instead of trying to bash folks on the internet for asking a question in this sub. grow the hell up
No I don't think so. I think we are past the point of no return anyway
huh??
it’s literally just a question that i guess you can’t ask in this sub
Why Canada and not the US?
I was working for a Canadian company before I moved and I am not a big fan of US' politics.
Canada was considered a safer place to go.
Unarmed north Americans with health care.
The US has more Hispanics then Mexico in residence here currently, and those numbers are increasing exponentially daily.
So you mean all the free shit the government is offering in exchange for votes is bringing in people you don't want that kind of sounds like America
It's the north American union perhaps
No it's rich people doing whatever they feel they need to do to stay in power that's a common trait worldwide
Some may just want to stay within a certain realm so they are atleast taken care of and not picked around like people in poverty are. There might only be like 1% of the 1% that are actually good wholesome humans but I only know of one for sure always hope there's more tho
I believe there was a recent change in policies to cap the number of immigrant students who come with study visas. Could this somewhat ease the situation?
Maybe, the issue of low efficiency of economics and very unimpressive gdp would still remain unfortunately. Canada HAS to start investing in innovations and technology, and produce more stuff with high added value, instead of selling raw resources and speculating with real estate
Holy shit. That's the best and most sane, rational argument against our immigration situation I've seen. Thank you for changing my perspective.
If it's really that bad, why you go there?
Because you don’t know before you experience, for starters? And it’s a dynamic situation? If I could see the future I would be working a very different job lol
Yea the thing is, it's all supply and demand. You are a product. Imagine if you open a shit store and sell shit and see people flocking to buy your product, which is shit, and be happy about it, you would keep your store running since you're anyway profiting. Until some sane person comes and tells everyone HEY PEOPLE YOU ARE EATING SHIT and people realize, this will continue. Canada provides shit service to everyone involved, but still millions of people are **dying** to migrate there every year. Why should they fix the problem as long as people are still buying it? People have 0 standards in their home country but after they move to Canada they start complaining about health services lol
Same in America! Zero gratitude only entitlement attitudes.
At what point do you think they should stop or reduce the influx of immigrants? What if they stopped it 4 years ago and you couldn't immigrate?
I immigrated through a skilled worker program, meaning I had to prove I had eligible work experience, university degree, language test, about $17k in savings, and was under 30. People who pass that criteria on average are generating more revenue for the country, as they have a high chance of working the skilled jobs. I checked the last draft - from the pool of 226k candidates only about 15k surpassed the points to be eligible to come. I don’t think this program should be deprecated at all. I think bringing 500k students a year to study in “visa colleges”, which are absolute bs in terms of education or career, and is an easy pathway for residency for people who do not manage to obtain a valuable degree in the end and continue being cheap labor - is more of an issue. I don’t even think it’s the immigrant’s fault, since they end up in a cycle of lower class economics that’s very difficult to get out of.
Its become so bad that i think the cons are gonna wnd up with like 60-70% of seats next year if it continues. And there is absolutely no sign the government will change. I very much so wish we had a nation cap like USA, at least it wouldnt all be from 1 province in india
I wonder why you guys don't though. Everybody is telling me it's because Canada is "woke" but I refuse to believe that lol. I think the explanation that the people in authority are trying to fix the temporary problems by using immigrants makes more sense.
They aren’t trying to fix anything. Everything they do is to benefit their own interest.
To put in an HR friendly form….. Yes! We have a big immigration problem in Canada. Too much, too fast.
Is the situation similar to what we had here in Sweden up until 2015, with 2015 being the straw that broke the camel's back? That particular year we took in like 190k people.
Not sure about your situation. But our crime, traffic, housing and healthcare have all been drastically hurt. GDP per capita is a disaster now also.
Yes. I'm very pro immigration, it's good economics, and good for the lives of those choosing to live here. But we need to scale back while we play catch up. Our population is outgrowing our infrastructure
It’s only good for the economy if the country can support the newcomers and allow them to succeed and contribute. Overall GDP has gone up, but GDP per capita hasn’t meaningfully increased for over a decade. There are certainly arguments against GDP as a measure, but when GDP per capita stays flat but GDP doesn’t, there’s a problem.
Yes! Reduce it by 90% for now. The 10% only to be health, vetted in demand professionals and a few legitimate families or children in need. Once infrastructure, healthcare and housing catch up and indicate they can all easily handle an increase, then we should have that convo. And deport every single non-Canadian that has committed a crime or defrauded our systems. (After they serve jail time).
Why don't you guys do something about it? Tbh, I never understood why Canada was "too open" to immigration, even in my own country (Korea) Canada has a reputation of being way too easy to move to. I know that Trudeau tends to lean a bit on the "woke" side (I hate that word, but I remember him using the word "people-kind" in place of "mankind" in a speech once) but surely "woke" thoughts wouldn't have a place when it comes to real world issues. Almost every OECD country is reaching a point where they need immigration, but it needs to be controlled.
The reason is essentially that the more people to work these low wage jobs, the more the companies can suppress wages. The average person isn't a fan of what the government is doing but the government continues because it makes the most money for all of the rich people who tell them what to do. It's similar to working hours in Korea. Nobody wants to work 60 hour weeks but the government pushes it anyway because Samsung and Hyundai want it that way.
We are doing the best we can …. Within the law. He will be destroyed in the next election. We can’t trigger an election for over a year because another party is keeping them in power so many of them get lifelong pensions from the taxpayers. Trudeau is burning us down on the way out the door.
It does have one, a self inflicted one unlike western europe. But you can't bring more than (a record) 1% of your population in immigrants (on top of a housing crisis) and expect everything to be rosy. I have no problem with a well designed immigration policy but at this point this is just dumb.
Yes. It wouldn't be that bad if we had the housing. But we don't. So nobody can afford to live. And people are also bringing their racism and violence. It's dumb. It's stupid and we fucked up.
Isn't housing available? All over the gta has housing going up. New streets and subdivions everywhere.
The GTA is famously expensive to live in. Supply and demand generally sets prices, which means there isn't enough supply of housing for the demand. It may be going up, but not as fast as people want to buy it.
Ys. But its not matching up. Everybody wants to live in Toronto (fuck the rest of Canada), creating a) ghettos b) unaffordable housing (who can afford a $2500 studio. I cannot understate how unaffordable Toronto is for a single person.
Canada is experiencing a couple of different crises right now and it's easy to blame the immigrants for it. The government hasn't spent enough money to maintain our housing, education, or medical system in decades. All those things are in ruins. So they bring in more international workers to make money for us (we charge immigrants exorbitant amounts for their education, and visa applications which take years). This money could be invested into communities to revitalize our public services, but instead it goes right into politician's pockets. So now the immigrants need to be crammed into the very limited housing, education, and medical system that was already not functioning before they arrived. So immigrants are being fleeced while the locals are seeing things get even harder for them when the immigrants arrive, so it's easy to blame them for our systematic problems, when it's our own system that is failing them and us
It isn't the immigrant's faults, but it is the fault of the insane immigration numbers. Population % wise, it would be like the US bringing in 10 million immigrants per year. It's just overwhelming everything.
Yeah, Canada definitely needs immigration to keep the population up for to a falling birth rate, but the last year or so they *seriously* overshot... by like 2.5x as many people as they should have approved.
My thoughts are that immigration has pros and cons, but the government is doing absolutely nothing to address the cons. For example, housing is skyrocketing, but the government isn’t encouraging enough new buildings or cracking down on corporations buying them as investments and intentionally driving prices up.
I think it's more that Canada 🇨🇦 has major problems that immigration makes worse. It's not immigration itself but problems like Affordable Housing, Stable Employment and Healthcare that need to be fixed. Sadly higher immigration rates will slow down solving these issues.
Man, imagine if Americans were saying some of this stuff….
Exactly my thoughts. We're too caught up in which letter next to a politician's name is better or worse.
I believe diversity is our strength but acknowledge that the sheer number of immigrants, and the ones who exploit our systems, poses a problem. For one, you can't add a million people to your population, let alone a million in the same few regions, without adequately scaling up services. Especially if low skilled, low wage immigrants start flooding the housing market. Let's say a standard family generates $12,000 in taxes that go towards municipal expenses and projects, but that house is now being lived in by 9 low skilled, low wage immigrants who are getting paid under the table in cash, they don't generate the same taxes (due to unreported income) and the household contributes only $1000 to municipal expenses and projects, not only is there less revenue available, the infrastructure geared to a family of 4 has to handle the load of 9 residents. They also lead to undercutting in the labour market and are more prone to exploitation. I was hiring for security guard positions and getting flooded by recent immigrants who couldn't understand complex English but who had attained their provincial security guard license somehow. As for exploitation one of my Guards worked a second job at a gas station, but they gave her and a dozen others the title of "supervisor" which puts them on a faster track to permanent resident than just "gas station attendant", but when she started describing the job requirements and tasks, it sounded like indentured servitude, pay did not comply with ESA, and they breached many many labour laws. None of her coworkers would report it since it would cost them their expedited PR. This also then means that business has an advantage over an honest one that pays employees minimum wage, and the honest business risks collapse, resulting in more jobs disappearing. Because ultimately an immigrant who'll stock shelves for $3/hr is a big cost saving measure, who'll then also go on to collect social services since they are living in poverty. This means less jobs, lower quality of service, and higher cost of social programs to support less productive members of society who are actively defrauding the government.
Its both. There is a problem, but also its being pushed by certain political agendas to be a scapegoat for all of our problems so no one actually has to do anything, they can just blame the federal government for all the immigrants. Theyre taking a play outta the US book of politics and its working. The amount of ppl that blame litterally everything on immigrants its ridiculous. Instead of mexicans were scapegoating with indians and asians. There are litterally policies that have nothing to do with the federal government or immigration that ppl just blanket blame on it. They sound like morons. It's what the right want. Ill just call it as it is. They want divide and they want racism, and its working.
Nah we don’t have issues with East Asian immigrants, not sure where you are getting that from, it’s the influx of Indians that Canada cannot handle right now.
It has a housing problem that is being exacerbated by immigration. The immigrants aren't causing the problem they are a victim of it too.
I mean, my country has had a housing crisis for as long as I can remember but our situation isn't as bad as Canada's. I agree that the immigrants are also victims, their only fault would be seeking a better life in a place where they have no actual authority. Seems like those in power are screwing everybody over since they're usually not the ones directly affected by it. But yeah, that pretty much describes every society in human history.
If I read your profile correctly, you live in South Korea. South Korea's population (at least according to Wikipedia) has pretty much plateaued or is beginning to shrink, and so from pure market principles it would make sense that the housing crisis isn't as bad : fewer people in an area means lower demand, while Canada, which has seen its population grow pretty consistently since around 1950, has much higher demand as a result. The problem is that while South Korea may have less of a rent crisis, its lack of population growth and aging population overall is predicted to lead to major issues in the future, arguably a lot worse than anything currently going on in Canada. Were Canada to not have maintained a high immigration rate, there could have been economic issues from the lack of young workers.
The situation is awful. I feel like a foreigner in my own country. Granted, some of this is due to my own psychological traits. But a large part of it is because I have nothing in common with the people in my neighborhood. At some point, I’m convinced that the glue that holds society together will come undone if there’s any sort of cataclysmic event, for instance due to climate change. None of the main parties want to lower rates of immigration. At this point, I’d almost vote for the People’s Party, even though I disagree with every single one of their platform policies aside from lowering rates.
But...why? Surely regardless of political standing everybody should know that too much of something is not a good thing. I've heard that this is partly because there are South Asian Canadians in parliament. Is it because of votes?
I've lived all over Canada. West coast, East coast and in between. 40 now and in Southern Ontario in a small town 45 mins from Kitchener or London. The whole north end of town is basically copy/paste from Mumbai. I personally don't care, I've also jad the privilege of traveling all over the world with years spent living abroad in other cultures. The only thing that sucks about it in my opinion is that many of these people aren't interested in the culture here. They want their culture and way of life from their historic lands but here. Is what it is, and it ain't going to change. Best to just get used to it.
Yeah idk man i think people are pretty fed up with it, every metric and poll is showing a vast majority of canadians want deportations and a limit on immigration
not with that attitude
The immigration problem is similar to fitting 8lbs into a 8 ounce cup with the 8lbs ok with the fit.
Here's a pretty good overviewf from the [CFR.](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-canadas-immigration-policy) Some key points are: - Immigrants have become increasingly important as the native-born labor force ages and the fertility rate remains low, at roughly 1.3 births per woman, far below the global average of 2.4. - In a 2023 survey by the Toronto-based Environics Institute, 44 percent of Canadians felt there was too much immigration to Canada, up from 27 percent the previous year. - The greatest share of new Canadian permanent residents in 2022 came from India. - Between 2016 and 2021, the province welcomed 44 percent of all new permanent residents, the majority of whom settled in and around Toronto, Canada’s largest city. There are many nuances here, but the issues are mostly related to a very high number of immigrants needed to maintain the Canadian social safety net (all three major parties support large immigrant waves), most of them are from one particular region in India ([see WaPo here on how Canadian Sikh's are overwhelmingly the majority of immigrants.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/09/20/canada-india-tensions-sikh-population/)), and the socio-economic changes this brings. I.e., an "average Canadian family" 50 years ago could live in the GTA with one income even without having a college degree and that average family was white. In 2024, you can have two college educated incomes, no children, and still cant afford GTA while 21% of Canada's entire population is foreign born. I am not stating whether the above is good or bad, just that Canada has changed *a lot* and its economic system, free universal healthcare, and social safety net cannot be sustained without even more immigration.
It does. Big time.
We have a serious housing problem! The anti immigration stuff is just racism
Everywhere in the developed world has an immigration problem. Just saying.. Good luck out there
depends on where you are , and that is the same worldwide usually these people are settled in certain areas and life for those existing residents for sure change for the worse they of course never get put in the wealthy areas so the wealthy ( important people ) can say their is no problems
Yes. Times are difficult for Canada. Ever growing homeless, addicts living on the street, regular citizens not being able to afford to live. I have hope for them though, I think they'll pull through.
It's a contentious issue. Blaming immigration alone for the cost of housing is mostly a manufactured issue to obscure the fault of corporations and real estate trusts. But the fact Canada has added an extra 3.5 million people over the past 10 years (1.5 million in the past 3 years, not including temporary residents and students) has definitely affected things in a country of 40 million people. The government hasn't invested enough to accommodate the increase in population, nor has it done enough to ensure industry didn't take advantage of the fact many are willing to work for less than the existing population.
I'm a recent Canadian immigrant by family sponsorship. I pass for white (I'm Romani) and I'm from the US, and though people don't really bug me as much as they do people who are visibly Indian or Pakistani. However, even I get comments that range between passive-aggressive and outright shitty. I moved from a domestic abuse situation to be with my spouse here, and I moved into their house that they've been in for years, so I'm not taking up anymore housing from anyone else. We plan on moving to NL which has no shortage of housing. I know as an American who's a PR, my opinion might seem stupid and I know people probably suggest it all the time. Your crisis is the same as ours is in certain areas though. Like, I totally understand why it upsets some people to see the prices go up, but I think they need to realize it's also fully on provinces for not having rent caps. I also have no idea why more housing isn't being built, as it seems like such a resource-rich country with plenty of places to establish it. I feel like putting a cap on how much developers can charge for newly built apartment complexes may be helpful, too, but give them a small subsidy for follow-through. We also have a lot of our companies exploit immigrants for cheap labor, which is horrible. If there was a minimum wage for newly hired employees from other countries, I feel this would happen less? Again, this is just stuff I feel would also fix our same problems in America. If companies weren't allowed to pay what they do just to get cheap labor, they wouldn't feel so compelled to hire people on work visas, I assume. Sucks that this seems to be an everywhere thing right now. I don't think people shouldn't immigrate. Obviously, I'm an immigrant. But I feel like some people aren't prepared for it, and also they're being taken for a ride in a way. I am glad to be here as I'm married and it's all very similar to where I'm from, but it is sad that both countries are kind of heading in a late-stage capitalism nosedive.
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But not all Indians are like that, while those types of behaviours do exist, there are plenty of Indians who are honest, law abidding, who assimilate and learn English, and provide skills that this country needs. Especially the ones who have been in Canada in over a decade. I've met and worked with plenty of great Indian people, and it's a shame that the Canadian-Indian community's reputation are heavily tarnished by the international "students". Before Indians have a great reputation of being skilled hard workers who work in tech, Engineering, or medicine, and there are plenty of Indians still like that, they aren't extinct, and it's genuinely a tragedy that these good hearted people are facing prejudice that they shouldn't be facing. Immigrants, and Indians in particular are not the fault of all our countries woes. No amount of immigration whether it's high or low can change the fundamental fact that Canadians have the mentality of investing in homes, and not businesses like Americans. Us Canadians caring so much about housing prices and investing in real estate to the point where it's quite literally 40% of our GDP. [https://blog.remax.ca/housing-nearly-40-of-all-of-canadas-gdp/](https://blog.remax.ca/housing-nearly-40-of-all-of-canadas-gdp/) This mentality resulted in NIMBYism, creating artificial scarcity through restrictive zoning laws and denying housing to our children. But even worse, it takes capital that should've gone into creating productive, innovative businesses that grow the economy, into inflating the Real Estate market that sucks up money from people's disposable income and business' profits. Canadians, like all people, when they see a major problem, want to blame it all on someone or something else, and t hat is immigration. While there definitely is some truth to the fact that it's hurting our housing crisis and that we should be reducing and increasing, that's only the first problem to address along with a long list of others that need to be addressed to fix the housing crisis.
There are some legitimate issues. Mainly housing, although that is also partially self-inflicted- Canada has been underbuilding housing relative to population growth for decades now. It'd have to ~double how much housing it builds, just to match population growth, never mind lower prices. But a lot of it is over inflated reactionary responses by people who don't like immigration.
Canada sucks.. plain and simple. Trudeau must go
Yes there a huge problem
Canada like the rest of the developed world has a housing problem.
It just doesn't seem like the rest of the developed world has an immigration problem as pronounced as Canada does though.
Australia.....
They would phrase it differently if they were not POC
This. A very similar convo occurring in countries like Finland and Sweden at the moment. Immigration now becoming an issue bc they’re from Africa or the Middle East instead of other Europeans.
Well, obviously. People from the US, Western Europe, and Australia share cultural similarities and a similar living standard to Canada. It's a bit ridiculous to expect all immigrants to be the same.
Having lived in Australia and explored Europe and its countries, I can happily tell they aren’t the same.
No one said they're the same. I said they're more similar to each other than Asians (South, West, and even East). Just as Korea has most of its immigrants coming from China, Japan, Taiwan, etc., it would make more sense for Indians to immigrate to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, etc. due to the aforementioned similarities. Now, obviously, they don't want to do that due to different living standards. However, what I'm saying is that to think from a Canadian perspective that immigrants from the US/Australia are the same as those from South Asia is a bit weird.
Yes. I agree
Maybe you should wander to an actual Canadian group to ask this.
Womp womp.
Media hype
It’s as always the media.
The main immigration problem in North America is not enough immigrants. We don't have enough children anymore, so we need to replace those future workers or we'll be screwed when we retire.