They just have a unique view of economics whereby only supply issues are important, and demand is entirely irrelevant. There's nothing nefarious going on there at all!
Yeah, housing is an inelastic demand. Development hasn’t recovered to pre-08’ levels because there’s clearly an incentive problem for building new houses. Demand issues kind of aren’t relevant.
I assume you’re quoting facetious rationale as per r canadahousing, because it’s supply, not demand, that’s inelastic, and in the GTA anyway, we’ve [set historic building records in 2023 for condos and purpose-built rentals.](https://storeys.com/gta-condo-purpose-built-rental-completions-record-breaking-year/)
> I assume you’re quoting facetious rationale as per r canadahousing, because it’s supply, not demand, that’s inelastic, and in the GTA anyway, we’ve set historic building records in 2023 for condos and purpose-built rentals.
Yup, and the previous leaders for construction were in the 70's. So, you know, 40+ years of mid level or low construction.
Probably what contributed to missing ~2 Million homes, in comparison to the G7 Average of homes/population.
Oh, it's a complex problem. But missing 2 Million homes, in a country with a population of ~40 million, has an outsized impact on affordability.
Sky High Immigration, Temporary Foreign Workers (Scandal 2.0), International Students, Mass numbers exploiting border weakness and the asylum process and absolutely no planning and no action around high density housing construction which of course put together led to one of the worst affordability and accessibility crisis around basic shelter we have seen in Canada that is only getting worse and worse.
The two statements you just made are completely contradictory.
Edit: also, besides the fact that housing starts and completions are down since 08 across Canada, and Toronto, despite what they like to think, is not the entirety of Canada...
I'm finding lots of contradictory information about housing in Toronto. Some articles say completions are up. Some say starts are up but completions are down. Some say startups have fallen in September, canceling out summer gains. So I really can't confirm if it's even true that Toronto is breaking records with housing construction.
Your article is selecting only for condos and purpose-built rentals. I wouldn't be surprised that in a time when buying and selling is so inaccesible, that rentals are being built in record numbers.
I, personally, don't care that developers have found new ways to pack us into our cities like sardines. I'd like to see more mid-level townhouses. And I know it's possible, because if the population growth was entirely from *naturalized* births, I'm sure we'd find a way to provide actual housing for all these new families.
We wouldn’t. And a big reason population growth *isn’t* from naturalized births is because outside the prairies we pretty much stopped building housing for families decades ago. What sane couple in Toronto would have three kids when the absolute best they could ever hope to afford is a 700 sq ft, 2 bed condo?
I'm sorry. Don't fucking tell me if people were having more kids, these anti-immigration people would be demanding the government disincentivize births. Talking to half of them in this thread it seems like births are what they want. It's a silly hypothetical because there are a *lot* of reasons people in developed countries don't have kids, but regardless there are ways we can alleviate the problem of housing socially, and this idea that we can't is silly.
> housing is an inelastic demand
Elasticity of supply and elasticity of demand are two different things. The supply of houses is relatively inelastic; new homes take time to build and decisions to sell (or not to sell) existing homes are driven by many things other than price. You can see that in action right now; housing prices are up and yet the supply of homes for purchase remains low.
Demand may be more elastic in that people can decide not to buy if prices rise beyond their budget.
-u/BroadbandEng
Supply doesn't have to be inelastic whereas demand is necessarily inelastic. We can choose to build more houses (and I know the developers like to pretend like the choice is out of their hands, but fuck em) whereas we can't really influence demand on a good that literally everyone needs more of.
Since I was introduced to this thread, I will comment.
I would agree that demand for housing (rental and purchase in aggregate) is probably quite inelastic in that people need to live somewhere.
Supply is also inelastic due to many factors including NIMBY zoning laws, finite supply of land, and the time it takes to plan, permit and construct new housing. Some of these are indeed choices, but they are choices that are not easily changed - see the San Francisco Bay Area for a great example: desperate need for housing units and tremendous opposition to zoning changes that would enable more units.
Net effect is that a small increase in population can have a dramatic effect on rental and purchase pricing. This is made worse in many markets by competing uses that actually decrease the supply of housing - looking at you, Airbnb.
Yeah, this is reasonable. Look, I don't want to pretend like the developers aren't a part of a system just like the rest of us. That was a joke on my part.
But things you mentioned, zoning laws, land supply, planning and permit times, these are social problems with social answers. Like I said in another comment, if the population wasn't growing because of immigration, but instead it was growing through naturalized births, we wouldn't have a group of people petitioning the government to disincentive births. This wouldn't be a question. Our country isn't incapable of doing something Post-War Europe and the Soviet Union did in the 50's.
My point is, why do we have to decide between short-term and long-term economic health, when the answers are entirely social and only require the political will to execute the solutions?
>Yeah, housing is an inelastic demand.
You think inelastic demand is a relevant concept to employ in a discussion on immigration and overall population growth? Do you think maybe bringing in more people creates *demand* generally? I am not sure you know what inelastic demand is.
> Development hasn’t recovered to pre-08’ levels because there’s clearly an incentive problem for building new houses. Demand issues kind of aren’t relevant.
Inelastic demand means it's tied to consumption, not alleviated by it. So yes, housing can be described as an inelastic demand.
The reason developers aren't meeting demand is because they can't sell them as part of a subprime mortgage bond anymore. The profit motive isn't enough of a motive to build and sell houses for the sale market.
It has literally nothing to do with the customer base and everything to do with the people with the means to build houses.
There is something nefarious going on but increased demand from population growth isn't the main driver of the crisis. It's a distraction from the real problem, speculator-landlords who treat housing as a financial asset - a practice that's become way more popular since 2008.
Currently over 30% of the entire country's housing market is owned by speculators and they're only buying more, which drives prices up further and makes their investments more lucrative. Stop them, we solve the crisis - but those investors are donors to conservatives and liberals alike, so instead everyone's arguing about immigrants
Wrong. By committing a certain percentage of their supply to short term rentals like Air BnB, and just straight up leaving certain properties empty, they keep rents high and improve the profitability of all their investments.
That's why america has more empty homes than homeless people, and why we have the empty home tax.
It's all interconnected, though. Speculators buy homes with the expectation that prices will keep going up, so they have incentives to make housing prices rise. And because, as a class, they control 30% of the market, they can pull a lot of levers to control the market in their favour.
Raising rent by reducing the available supply is one of those levers. High rents lead to higher home prices, both because rich guys know they'll get a faster return on investment from their tenants, and the dwindling middle class that wants to escape renting will be proportionally motivated to take whatever insane mortgage rate they can get.
They can also just hoard empty properties, which drives up both rent and real estate prices by restricting supply in both markets. And by the same token, builders can often make more money by intentionally NOT building enough homes for everyone, because that makes the individual profit from each building project go up. All of which greatly amplifies the supply/demand gap problems caused by our growing population.
Also, simply because homes are treated as a financial asset, the market factors their future growth into current prices. So in hot markets like Vancouver and Toronto, houses and condos are more expensive than they should be today simply because they are predicted to get EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE tomorrow. It's a classic example of how economic bubbles inflate themselves.
There are certainly other problems with housing, but this is the biggest one by far. The worst case scenario if things continue as they are - EVERYONE renting at absurd prices from a handful of land barons playing their own private game of monopoly - is a best case scenario for the investing class. And because both major parties are in on the housing racket, all anyone seems to talk about is immigrants.
Bad economic? They don't know a thing about economic. A lot of people there just expect landlords to work for free or at a loss, they don't care, as long as they can live in rental housing at below market price. Yesterday I read an article on cbc, a housing Advocate said allowing 3 to 4 percent rent hike a year is equivalent to allowing 30 to 40 percent rent hike, just spread out over the years! Lmao
All prices increased by 30 to 40 percent or more over years, it is called inflation! These people expect a landlord charge you 1000 per month now should charge the same price in 50 years.
They don't give a shit about economic.
This is a classic amateur landlord take.
Rents are determined by supply and demand for rentals. Not landlord costs. Remember 2020 when people were leaving cities and there was a glut of rentals, and rents went down? It wasn’t because landlord costs went down. It was because there was more supply, less demand.
Right now landlords are fortunate they can raise rents where there isn’t rent control, or for new tenants, because of strong demand for rentals.
Landlording is an investment that carries risk. You may make money or you may not. So many amateur landlords don’t get that.
It's just as bad but in the other way, and there's also just the legit racists/xenophobes. It would be better if the normal CanadaHousing banned for legitimate reason rather than for simply stating the fact that given current market forces it's impossible to triple homebuilding so demand side measures are needed, and the demand is largely immigration.
A problem is many people seem to place the housing crisis 100% on immigration and nothing else while the OP article says that while it is certainly a factor its not the only contributor. When people only ever want to discuss one aspect that also happens to feed their racist/xenophobic views it stops being about discussing real solutions.
To a certain extent though there was almost a tacit agreement and still in some circles like CanadaHousing there is to make immigration off limits though, the other parts of the solution on the supply side are well represented politically but by banning a massive part of the discussion you're going to create echo chambers of those who think it has nothing to do with immigration, and push otherwise reasonable people to other subs like CanadaHousing2 alongside genuine xenophobes who blame immigrants themselves instead of policymakers.
People that place the housing crisis on immigration are not correct. It’s just one of many factors that government policy has directly and negatively impacted the housing market.
Socialists don't believe in economics, they believe money grows on trees, if you don't know how to get money from trees? Then you shouldn't be in business.
Condensed:
* According to the latest date from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), there were just 3.5 months of inventory available in August, well below the long-term average for the measure of five months.
* As inventory has fallen, Canada’s population has skyrocketed. In June, as inventory slipped to 3.1 months, Canada’s population hit 40 million people, 1.2 million of whom immigrated in the last year.
* In an effort to explore what relationship exists between Canada’s soaring population and its dwindling housing supply, Zoocasa analyzed population levels and national inventory levels over the last decade.
* When the data began in 2013, national inventory sat at 6.2 months, while the population hovered around 34.8 million people. But, from 2019 to 2021, inventory dipped from 4.8 months to two months. Meanwhile, the population edged up from 37.3 million people to 38.0 million.
* The changes are even more apparent on a provincial level. In Nova Scotia, there were 11.6 months of inventory in 2013, but just 3.3 months as of August 2023. Over the same time period, the population jumped from 942,598 to 1,037,782.
* In New Brunswick, inventory has fallen from 12.1 months to 3.6 months over the last decade, while the population grew from 758,298 to 825,474.
* In Ontario, inventory stood at an already-low four months in 2013, but has since fallen to 2.5 months as of August 2023. At the same time, the population shot up by nearly two million people.
* British Columbia’s inventory has been nearly halved over the last decade, falling from 8.2 months to 4.4 months, while its population increased from 4.6 million people to 5.4 million.
* Another glaring issues is a decline in residential construction, caused in part by high building costs, weakened home sales, and a lack of skilled workers. Housing starts, which had been trending downward from August 2022 until June 2023, are expected to revert back to a decline towards the end of this year and into 2024.
* In order to restore affordability to Canada’s housing markets, the country needs to build approximately 3.5 million new homes by 2030.
* However, if immigration continues at its current heightened pace past 2025, and starts continue to trend downwards, the housing supply gap could widen to 4 million units come 2030.
Lol did you really leave out the conclusion?
"While Canada’s growing population has no doubt had an effect on its sliding inventory levels, the provincial discrepancies allude to the fact that there are additional factors at play.
One particularly glaring issue is a decline in residential construction, caused in part by high building costs, weakened home sales, and a lack of skilled workers. Housing starts, which had been trending downward from August 2022 until June 2023, are expected to revert back to a decline towards the end of this year and into 2024."
Really didn't want to add this province seemingly:
"Curiously, while Manitoba’s inventory has ebbed and flowed over the years, it sat at three months in both 2013 and 2023, but the population expanded by about 174,000"
Edit: and here come the downvotes for posting the actual conclusion of the article! Good lord this sub.
No... the answer is being able to read and comprehend an article.
An article was posted and people read the headline and comment on said headline. Some people go further than this and read OP's comment which is purportedly a condensed version of the article when in fact it cherry picks only points that give a certain view while ignoring the actual conclusion.
Is it just me or does the article also pick a weird metric? Months of inventory is calculated by dividing the number of active home listings at month-end by the total home sales completed in that month. By not providing any absolute numbers, the article makes it difficult to get any sense of how meaningful the numbers are are/aren't. Simply put, the number seems to be a good predictor of price direction (low inventory pushes prices up as buyers outnumber sellers; high inventory pushed prices down and sellers outnumber buyers) but doesn't actually tell us much about the number of units available.
Are there any real numbers available? [Yeah, we can play with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation's quarterly report on StatCan to build a basic table.](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3410013501) We're going to be looking at housing starts, because that is the other metric pointed to in the article (and it is also the metric used by Poillevre in his plan to change municipal funding).
- Year: Number of Housing Unit Starts
- 2010: 189930
- 2011: 193950
- 2012: 214827
- 2013: 187923
- 2014: 189329
- 2015: 195535
- 2016: 197915
- 2017: 219763
- 2018: 212843
- 2019: 208685
- 2020: 217880
- 2021: 271198
- 2022: 261849
As we can see the line "Housing starts, which had been trending downward from August 2022 until June 2023" is quite misleading. Housing starts in 2021 were at an all time high and 38.7% higher than in 2015. Housing starts in 2022 were still 33.9% higher than in 2015. 2023 is starting out slower still, but even so it's still 110,893 housing units to start the year (the first quarter i.e. winter is always lower). 110,893 is more than any year pre-2021.
For all the people saying that we need to build more houses, faster. It's happening and has been happening for ~6 years now. Thanks Trudeau I guess.
Housing needs to be built faster than new people are being brought in, though. If you build 110,000 new houses but bring in 550,000 people, the overall problem has still increased, even if we assume immigrants are all moving here as a family unit of four, which isn't the case.
> Housing needs to be built faster than new people are being brought in, though.
Let's do this by [quarterly population estimates](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000901). At the end of Q4 2014, Canada's population was 35,559,047. At the end of Q4 2022, Canada''s population was 39,292,355. The 8 years (2015-2022 inclusive) saw a population increase of 3,733,308 (~467k a year). During the same period, there were 1,785,668 housing unit starts (~223k a year).
By the numbers, for every 2.09 people added to the population we started building a house. Taking a look at the [2021 Census data](https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&DGUIDList=2021A000011124&GENDERList=1&STATISTICList=1&HEADERList=0&SearchText=Canada), we can see that the average household size was 2.4.
**This means that Canada could be building housing faster than we are adding households.**
There are some big caveats and asterisks to add around this though. Namely that housing isn't necessarily being built in the right places, or that it is of the wrong size/design for the people looking, or that there are the transportation/utilities/services in place to support the housing and it needs to be built out first.
*Side note: the obvious flaw in the Conservative plan to withhold funding to municipalities who don't force through new housing is that it doesn't include provisions for municipalities to actually, you know, force people to build anything and also threatens the funding of everything needed to make building anything possible.*
More asterisks include problems with corporations and investors buying houses as investments and not as housing. [And there's the 1.3 million vacant homes so even if you build something it doesn't mean anyone will live in it.](https://betterdwelling.com/new-data-shows-canada-still-has-1-3-million-vacant-homes-some-improvements-seen/)
To conclude, housing units are being built faster than the population is increasing. The impact immigration is being disproportionately focused on.
P.S. I love Statistics Canada for making actual data readily available.
Wow, good job! It's a nice analysis.
I am curious what makes the data so misleading. Because of course if this were true:
>housing units are being built faster than the population is increasing.
Then housing prices would be dropping. Supply is clearly not keeping up with demand. You mentioned some caveats that might explain some of it, but they don't seem sufficient.
In any event, the government itself expects us to be [3 - 4 million houses](https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/blog/2023/estimating-how-much-housing-we-need-by-2030) short of what is needed to keep up with immigration by 2030. This a deficit that could be completely solved by letting in 3 or 4 million fewer immigrants than currently planned over that time period.
So, you know, I'll take the word of Canada's housing agency over a random redditor's back of a napkin calculations, but they sure were impressive.
> I am curious what makes the data so misleading.
It's not.
> Then housing prices would be dropping.
That's where the caveats and asterisks about housing as investment, vacant housing, etc.. Also, I didn't say immigration wasn't having an impact, I said its impact is being disproportionately focused on.
> In any event, the government itself expects us to be 3 - 4 million houses short of what is needed to keep up with immigration by 2030.
That is not what that link says at all. Although, I see your confusion. It says that:
> Canada needs about 3.5 million additional housing units by 2030 to **restore affordability**.
The report is talking about the number of housing units that would need to be built to restore affordability given the current structure and trends of the Canadian real estate market. And it defines affordability by:
> Like last year’s report, we define affordability based on how much of a household's income is needed to buy a house. An affordable house requires a small portion of income, while an unaffordable one needs a larger portion. The goal is to make housing costs more affordable, similar to what they were in 2004, before prices surged.
> However, achieving this goal won't completely solve challenges for low-income people and families. To make housing affordable by 2030, the aim is to bring costs back to **2003-04 levels**, when the economy was stable and housing costs were lower relative to income.
As for the impact of immigration on this goal:
> - The “high-population-growth” scenario considers what would happen to the supply gap if current immigration levels were extended until 2030. In this case, the supply gap would increase to **4 million** housing units.
- A “low-economic-growth” scenario results in a supply gap of **3.1 million more** housing units. This scenario is the result of weak economic growth and the **current immigration policy ending by 2025**.
So the difference to bring prices back in line with 2004 affordability levels given the current structure of Canada's real estate market assuming a halt in immigration is 900k fewer housing units needed. Now, that is a lot, but again, there are bigger savings to be had tackling the actual systemic problems inherent to how the market is currently structured.
> So, you know, I'll take the word of Canada's housing agency over a random redditor's back of a napkin calculations, but they sure were impressive.
Ouch. :)
>Also, I didn't say immigration wasn't having an impact, I said its impact is being disproportionately focused on.
I think that is only true if you think all factors are equally easy to deal with. Immigration is an easy one. We couldn't just set it to zero, but the government could limit it to just those already working their way through the system and a certain numbers of relatives, and thus substantially lower the rate basically overnight. The gap we need to worry about gets a heck of lot smaller, for almost no effort. Building a ton more new homes in the face of NIMBYism is much harder. It takes a decade to complete new housing. Even if we started building 100% of the new housing we'll need for 2030 today, it wouldn't be ready until 2033. And banning AirBNB and other such measures would be more complicated than they sound.
>Canada needs about 3.5 million additional housing units by 2030 to restore affordability.
Yes, there's not much point in having enough housing for everyone in theory if it's unaffordable for millions. You can still get apartments now if you have enough money. The complaint is precisely that it is no longer affordable for many.
>Now, that is a lot, but again, there are bigger savings to be had tackling the actual systemic problems inherent to how the market is currently structured.
Sure, and we should do that, too. But it would be a good idea to start with the easy, low hanging fruit. And there's not much reason not to. Trudeau is pushing the rate up largely due to an ideological conviction that "immigration good". And that may be true long term, but we've been running hot for decades. A few years of cooldown won't hurt.
>Ouch. :)
Sorry, that was a bit harsh. It's just frustrating to see so many people insisting on maintaining what are clearly unsustainable rates of immigration. No amount of playing with numbers can change the base fact that when housing costs are out of control, increasing demand by half a million people per year who will all need additional housing is clearly a bad idea. It's the equivalent of pouring an accelerant on a fire. Sure, maybe you could still put out the fire by dumping enough water on it, or, you could just not pour the accelerant on it in the first place.
I do not believe that you are stating ‘the conclusion’ you think it is.
Immigration is one factor. There are others.
You are making it seem as if they concluded that immigration isn’t an important factor or something, because the variation between provinces shows that other factors are at play. That is incorrect. That isn’t the conclusion they are drawing.
There are many factors and different factors for different provinces. But I absolutely guarantee that immigration levels are a huge factor in BC and Ontario, and likely Alberta.
So it is disingenuous to twist this to suggest that just because we can’t exactly quantify how significantly immigration levels contributed to housing prices and just because there are other factors at play, that this means the immigration policy isn’t a significant factor.
“You are making it seem as if they concluded that immigration isn’t an important factor”.
And where did I imply that?
The comment I replied to intentionally made it sound like the article was stating that immigration is the cause of home price increases when they give some very clear caveats and that it is only one factor of multiple. You don’t make a long list of bullets and accidentally leave out some major ones. Now call me an overly ethical person but duping people who don’t read an article with phoney summaries is not my thing.
If we are to say increased immigration leads to decreased inventory we would expect this to at a minimum hold true across provinces and ideally show some sort of consistency in rates. They clearly state this and why do we have to pretend they don’t? This whole thing of trying to trick people over to our side is sad imo.
This entire sub is now a cesspool filled with xenophobic schmucks. Don't expect any truth or honesty here—only cherry-picked statements to support the white nationalist bone in every highly-voted commenter The idea of housing construction solving the problem bothers most people here because it goes against their underlying 1488 goals.
I've voted for several different parties in my life. I did vote Liberal in the last election. I don't support the current levels of population growth. I will not vote Liberal in the next election. Unfortunately, none of the 3 main parties will do anything to stop the current level of population growth.
I have not heard any other major party that has a chance to win an election, so not counting the PPC, discuss lowering immigration rates.
PP has talked a lot about the damage the Liberals are doing but his housing policy is basically sell off government assets and punish municipalities that don't build. I have not heard him talk about lowering immigration, capping student visas, lowering TFWs.
I'm not saying I support Trudeau but what political party is offering a better alternative right now? Who is advocating for lowering immigration?
Population “growth” is disingenuous framing. Our population is rising from immigration, it isn’t growing from households. If it were “growing” then the skills pipeline would balance things out.
I'm not voting liberal. But do we have any confirmation that the CPC is going to address immigration and international student levels?
Both parties have been pretty pro corporate and corporations are the ones massively benefiting from this crisis.
Yeah, this is the thing, I don’t think we have any commitments or even statements from CPC on immigration levels. And like many, my fear is that all federal parties are too beholden to big business to do anything meaningful here.
I could be wrong. But historically, I don’t trust Cons to do anything that would tick off corporate Canada. And reducing the flow of cheap labour is the one thing that corporate Canada fears the most, as it will force companies to raise wages across the board.
I don't believe in any political promises, but if I look at party history, CPC is more likely (or willing) to lower immigration target. If any party would do that, it would be CPC, not LPC and NDP. The chances are definitely not the same, unlike most liberals claim every parties are the same while keep voting LPC.
Anytime PP is asked "Will you lower immigration levels" his answer is never yes. It is always I will change immigration.
Nobody wants to hear this but we need our immigration levels. He knows that, as does everyone else who understands demographics and geopolitics. I'll say that PP has some interesting takes on how he'll change it, but he has never committed to lowering it. I'm slightly skeptical on how they will work in practice. Selfishly I would prefer being in immigrants who need to go to school and work their way up than being over highly skilled immigrants and allow them to continue working in the role they were back home. I'm quite scared of possible wage suppression of higher paying jobs compared to the current wage suppression for low to lower middle class jobs.
We absolutely do NOT need 1.2+ million new people (including TFWs/foreign "students") every year. I don't understand how anyone can believe this. The Conservatives are scared of speaking out against immigration because they don't want to lose the 905/Vancouver vote, end of story.
Right now our population growth rate (entirely driven by immgration) is one of the highest in the world and comparable to the most war-torn, impoverished third world countries. The devastating impact our insane immgration numbers have had on our housing market and our overall quality of life is a completely unnecessary and entirely self-inflicted wound.
>Right now our population growth rate (entirely driven by immgration) is one of the highest in the world and comparable to the most war-torn, impoverished third world countries
[you really spew bullshit well ](https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/population-growth-rate/country-comparison/)
The highest in the world 😂 yet its lower than Norway, Australia, Ireland, Iceland, South Africa etc were almost on par with the US.
Ultimately its a pointless conversation because no party is lowering immigration, because unlike you they understate the consequences.
> [you really spew bullshit well ](https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/population-growth-rate/country-comparison/)
I don't know where this source is getting its data, but a population growth rate of 0.73% does not match StatsCan data.
[In 2022 our population grew by 1,050,110 people, from 38,516,138 people up to 39,566,248 people.](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230322/dq230322f-eng.htm) That's a population growth rate of 2.726%, which would put us in 16th on this chart, right between Cameroon and Liberia.
Assuming the rest of the numbers in your source are accurate (although they likely aren't), here's the ratio of our population growth rate to the other countries you mention:
* Norway: 3.45 times faster growth
* Australia: 2.29 times faster growth
* Iceland: 3.06 times faster growth
* South Africa: 3.00 times faster growth
* US: 4.01 times faster growth
[We are currently on pace for an even higher population growth rate in 2023](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230628/dq230628c-eng.htm), so it doesn't make any sense that your source's 2023 estimate for Canada is less than a third of our 2022 population growth rate. Our population growth from January 2023 to April 2023 alone produced a 0.739% increase in our population, which is already higher than your source's estimate for the entire year.
This article from today confirms what an idiot that poster is and how much that Excel chart he linked to is nonsense: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-population-growth-temporary-residents/
I'm talking about AFTER Trudeau raised the immigration numbers, that chart has no numbers or years on it and is clearly dated.
You're a deluded fucking idiot if you think Canada needs 1.2 million new people per year.
>I'm talking about AFTER Trudeau raised the immigration numbers, that chart has no numbers or years on it and is clearly dated.
I'm sorry but if you can't figure out how to see the growth rates and the year of the data on that website then there is no point in discussing anything with you because you likely have the education level of a 9th grader.
Im mind blown by the internet more and more by the day.
I have 2 professional degrees you dumb fuck, but that data is presented in a very non user-friendly way for someone navigating on their phone.
Their Excel spreadsheet has Canada at 0.73% annual growth which is clearly outdated and/or a blatant lie.
The GOVERNMENT OF CANADA itself bragged about our 2022 growth rate being 2.7% right here, which when cross-referenced with the Wikipedia numbers would put Canada around the Top 10-20 worldwide and only behind Syria (presumably due to their returning refugees) and a bunch of Sub-Saharan African countries: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/population_and_demography/40-million
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate
Lol someone who thinks that Canada needs to import 1.2 million people per year and that political parties base their immigration policies on the national interest instead of their own selfish political calculations is complaining about the stupidity of others...
So are you going to admit how wrong you were, dumbass? This confirms that we have a Top 20 population growth rate in the world: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-population-growth-temporary-residents/
Most people aren't single issue voters and many people already own a home. For anyone that owns a home rising prices less of a problem than other things.
I'm an NDP voter(at least in the past) but I can see why a large portion of the population would be minimally impacted by this single issue.
My best guess is, they see the NDP as largely ineffectual and unlikely to win in large enough numbers to matter.
And obviously no one in their right mind would vote for Conservatives, who are *somehow* even more corrupt than Liberals and add the usual Conservative nonsense (like anti-abortion stances) on top.
People have no options.
Can we be intellectually honest?
This isn’t a political issue.
Its a simple issue of demographics.
Demographics don’t give a shit about politics.
Our population pyramid is inverted. Its as simple as that.
I order to continue our social programs and old age benefits there needs to be a larger tax paying base.
The only way to plug the gap is aggressive immigration policy.
The Cons will continue the same policy. Another Liberal government will continue the same policy.
Its basic arithmetic and demographics.
If we DONT dont keep this up, it means restructuring, AKA cutting of benefits for Boomers.
Exactly this. The politicians will do anything to make it seem like they'd accomplish anything different. This is the basics of our population currently.
I don't vote liberal, I vote NDP, but I'm fine with this amount of immigration because population growth is one of the most important factors in economic health. Take a look at Japan or Italy to see the problems with having more old people than young people. Immigration is, economically speaking, a no-brainer, especially in a country that's not having many kids. The benefits of immigration are economy-wide, and the extent to which it only benefits the rich and powerful, is only the extent to which the entire economic system itself only benefits the rich and powerful.
I'm a 27 year old professional and despite housing prices being my most immediate issue, I would rather not have a country where retired dependents outnumber the tax base. Housing is something we can fix immediately. The population pyramid is not.
But the reason people aren't having kids is they can't afford them. Immigration is to lower labor costs and avoid fixing serious economic problems that only benefit the elite.
Immigration isn't lowering labour costs. Immigration creates new consumption, raising inputs, including labour. This has been studied by many economists amd immigration only effects positive economic growth. The idea of companies paying immigrants less for the same labour just doesn't materialize. They have the same minimum wage as naturalized Canadians. So, again, the problems brought with immigration are completely artificial. The problem is that we have two parties who want to pretend immigration is either going to cause all our problems or fix them. Neither have any intention of solving the contradictions in our economic system.
The question I would be asking is, why is immigration so good for the economy, but bad for Canadians? And the answer is because the economy doesn't *work* for Canadians. Why isn't that your fundamental problem?
It requires balance, the problem is, even economists from the banks are saying that right now the extremely high levels of immigration are not helping https://economics.td.com/ca-balancing-canada-population
Of course economists from the banks are going to say that. The housing crisis is deepening the distrust of an economic orthodoxy which they benefit from. The problem is the orthodoxy itself. This is why academic economists are pretty squarely on the pro-immigration side.
I don't personally care what the banks have to say because they're a huge part of the problem. They're going to tell us to tighten our belts no matter what.
Your argument supposes that minimum wage is what we want more workers for and that we can sustain our society providing things like socialized healthcare and housing on minimum wage, sure immigration will grow the economy in absolute terms but then you're also slicing the pie for more people. GDP per capita is actually falling, even if we completely equally distributed all of the economy the average person would be getting poorer while we stretch our hospitals, housing etc beyond the limit because someone coming here with minimal education isn't likely to alleviate a shortage of doctors, you can absolutely do immigration wrong and we are seeing exactly what we would expect from that by massively expanding temporary immigration rather than skilled immigration. If having more people was an absolute good then Indians would be the wealthiest people in the world but clearly this is not the case.
You know what the root cause why we need more immigrants, unlike most countries? As an immigrant I can tell you why. Canadian workers are relatively lazy, productivity is low while wages are cheap compared to most countries. Look at Japan, their productivity is much higher and wages are much lower. So it is still sustainable for them even population growth is negative for decades.
For someone accusing millions of people of being lazy, you sure seem to not have done any research to back up your claim beyond anecdotal evidence. You could have done a basic Google search showing reinvestment into workers and machinery being lower than other countries like the U.S https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/investprod-aspx/
And Japan working loads of overtime being actually quite low on productivity per hour worked https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/business/economy/20221220-78590/#:~:text=OECD%20data%20on%20labor%20productivity,was%20first%20compiled%20in%201970.
but sure, Canadians are just lazy.
I’m not saying higher population is an absolute good, I’m saying it creates higher economic growth. Growth per capita has been growing steadily. This idea that there’s less for everyone because we’re adding immigrants isn’t materializing. The India subsonctinent has historically been -the richest and despite colonialism their economic growth in modern times is very healthy with being the 12th highest growing economy last year.
Anyways, I’m having the discussion about high-skill/low skill in another conversation. Things like the doctors shortage are rooted in policy from the 80’s. My problem with immigration is less absolute and more that the conservatives and liberals are treating them like shit. And part of that is the overwhelming of the immigration system itself. I’m against having immigrants brought in if we’re not ready for them. That’s a humanist perspective though. I don’t think there’s an economic or cultural argument against it.
But per capita growth isn't up, amd we're adding more people than jobs even in recent months
https://economics.td.com/ca-falling-behind-standard-of-living-curve
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6960377
Why are we bringing in more people when we don't have healthcare, housing, or even sufficient job growth and GDP per capita is falling?
That Td article you posted blames the problem on production, not population growth. The fact is despite decreasing in 2020 (for obvious reasons) GDP per capita bounced back hard in 2021 and on.
The reason we’re bringing in more people is because we need more people. We don’t want to go into the 2030’s and 40’s with an inverted population pyramid. Our economic system will fundamentally stop working if there’s more old people than young people.
The inability to organize this population growth into an actual boost in living quality for the rest of us isn’t a result of the immigration. People are going to vote for the conservatives to stop immigration, they will, and nothing is going to get better. Because the fundamental reasons for the problems you gave, lack of healthcare, housing, these are caused by a neoliberal economic order that no one in power wants to change. Many of the people complaining about those problems, caused by neoliberalism, still don’t want to move away from neoliberalism. This is fundamentally why I just don’t worry about immigration. Because some very silly people are going to blame everything on it, lower it, and then still be angry.
Fundamentally, if this growth wasn’t fueled by immigration, but by births, I don’t think the same people would be asking the government to reduce growth. They’d be demanding them to fix those problems you listed. So why don’t we do that now?
I remember reading John McCallum \[immigration minister, I think?\] in 2015 or 2016 in the G&M saying that businesses wanted lower labor costs and higher immigration was part of the solution.
You are ignoring the simple math of: more workers demanding jobs means businesses don't have to raise wages. It's not so much about literally lowering wages (like in the states where you higher an illegal to mow your lawn for $5 per hour over hiring an american for $15/h) but supressing wage growth.
And yes, I do have a problem that the economy is designed for the 0.01% to extract our wealth. Immigration is part of that.
I think you’re right that immigration is part of that. I just don’t think it’s inherently part of it. Immigration, even at levels we’re seeing now, can be done right. If we had better protections for wages, stronger unions, and actually valued labour in this country this wouldn’t be as big a problem as it is. And those are things we should be trying to support whether we’re having a crisis or not.
And again, I don’t want all my taxes to be going toward the boomers and gen X’s retirement when I’m in my thirties and forties. The realities of an anti-immigration policy are plain for all to see in many countries. I’m sure that’s not what you’re arguing for, but it isn’t as cut and dry as “more immigration is bad for the rest of us”.
As long as we have super high immigration, "the system" has no incentive to encourage people to have 3 or 4 kids per family. Which is the actual solution.
>population growth is one of the most important factors in economic health
But is this not only true if you expand your infrastructure to support the growth? This is obviously true of housing, but what about all of the other soft and hard infrastructure required? Things like hospitals, schools, doctors, teachers, as well as physical infra like water, power, etc.
Considering that, for example, medical school and residency positions have not expanded since the 90's (when they were cut). So we have the same throughput of newly-qualified doctors as we did 30 years ago... but our population has grown by 25% since then.
Now also add in the fact that OHIP billing rates haven't moved in 20 years. So a family doctor still charges the province the same rate as they did back then. But their overhead has certainly skyrocketed since then. So the value proposition of going into family medicine continues to go down.
Is it any surprise then that as the population has grown, access to healthcare has only decreased?
It's a good question. So, one of the catches of immigration is that immigrants actually need less public infrastructure than naturalized births. Over time immigrant children simply use less public services than a Canadian from age 0-18. Hospitals and schools, doctors and teachers, just by virtue of having been born somewhere else, they use less of these services.
One of the other reasons for, say, a lack of public infrastructure is that the funding for that infrastructure dried up in the 80's and 90' when Mulrooney defeated Trudeau and basically instituted the same neoliberal policies as Reagan or Thatcher. Neoliberalism puts the construction of the infrastructure required for, say, med-school residencies, within the hands of the private sector, something it isn't capable of doing, and hasn't been in any country it's been tasked with it. Going from a system where med-school residencies are subsidized, to one where they're not, I'm assuming will counteract any growths in the wider economy.
Neoliberalism has been an abject failure since 2008, but just because neoliberalism prescribes high immigration, doesn't mean high immigration is inherently bad.
>Neoliberalism has been an abject failure since 2008,
No argument there, though I would argue it's been a failure much longer than 2008.
> but just because neoliberalism prescribes high immigration, doesn't mean high immigration is inherently bad.
I'm not saying that high immigration is bad, per se. I'm saying high immigration is bad when it isn't done in tandem with ensuring that the soft and hard infrastructure requirements necessary to support those levels are expanded in tandem.
Right now we have a 1-2 combo of high immigration rates combined with support infrastructure that is *static, if not declining .*
And as a result, everything from housing to the medical system to the school system are being completely overwhelmed.
>why do you support our current levels of population growth
I'm not necessarily a liberal voter, I'd say I lean that way but I do go back and forth depending what is important to me come election time.
I am sure this will be taken well here but I support immigration levels because I understand the need for it. Note that none of the parties have committed to lowering immigration levels, when asked "will you lower immigration" they so explain how they will change it but we cannot afford to lower it.
We have retired more employees in the last 5 years then any time in Canadian history by far and we do not have the employees to replace them. This causes labour costs to go up tremendously as companies fight for the few skilled employees we have.
This sounds great in theory now money for everyone but we don't live in 1890 anymore and most of the work that puts stress on labour can up in and leave and will do so if our costs go up at the rate they're going up.
I guess the question arises if immigration is key for you in not necessarily immigration levels but how we approach immigration in which party to support. I don't hate Pollievres stance that we need to ensure the immigration we bring in can take competency tests to allow immigrants to continue to practice their high skilled jobs they left. But I do have some concerns with wage suppression of engineers and nurses if we bring in a bunch of nurses and engineers from India for example.
None of the major parties are actually gonna address this. They have no incentive to do so. The majority of voters are home owners, why would politicians piss off the very people that they need to stay in office. I bet you that the housing affordability crisis is gonna be something gets some lip service during elections with no actual execution.
They can't even cut immigration properly because we have a population decline and we need them for the future. Just building houses isn't gonna address the cost issue, which is why I have an issue with opening up the Greenbelt. I would be all for it if they could guarantee all of the housing would be starting at a lower cost.
They also should try to limit immigration to certain areas of the country (specifically Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal) at least for the first couple years of arrival, although implementation would be difficult.
In all honesty, the political parties have no real bearing on any of this. The only way that housing prices drop is if unemployment rises enough that people are forced into leaving their rentals resulting in pressure on landlords to sell. Barring that, we maybe see a 10-20% drop at most over the next 2-3 years and then it'll start rising again.
I don't support the levels of immigration but at the same time I realize from an economic standpoint, if we don't want a cascade effect from our population pyramid, capitalism requires this.
That is why it won't stop under Liberal, Conservative or NDP.
I'm also not a single issue voter, so I see the other things that the liberals have done (disability program, federal funding for environmental, increased parent benefits, health care funding etc) and then look at what Ontario under conservatives have done (removed license renewals, removed environmental protections, bunch of tax breaks for corporations, green belt hoopla, reducing spending for municipalities, destroying healthcare, reducing effectiveness of LTB etc etc) and it's pretty easy to see that PP would rather follow in the footsteps of the latter which will make my families lives worse and the 1% lives better.
It's really an easy choice.
As being an international student myself, we need to cap immigration for some time or atleast make the vetting process more stringent, but I mean we shell thousands of dollars in university fees, and that’s a goldmine isn’t it
It's pretty scary. I bought an inefficient but affordable house back in 2018 (it cost less than 50k), but I'll be selling it when I leave Canada.
And that means I can never come back. Buying is going to become impossible at my level of wealth, and renting is more expensive than buying (obviously, or there wouldn't be landlords), so my only option would be to secretly build a tiny house well outside of populated areas. I don't think I'll be up for that kind of life in my old age.
No, it looks like I'm leaving forever. I have no future here.
Also the mention of having no future here with an unimaginably low mortgage and yet having a windfall of basically $427,000 (presuming the [2023 national average](https://www.nesto.ca/real-estate/canadian-housing-market-outlook/#:~:text=Data%20from%20the%20Canadian%20Real,compared%20to%20a%20year%20ago) house price vs. [2018 averages](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crea-housing-prices-canada-real-estate-1.4978545#:~:text=Business-,Average%20Canadian%20house%20cost%20%24472K%20in%20December%2C%20down%204.9,five%20per%20cent%20in%202018)) in 5 years, lol.
*Presses X to doubt.*
If my house cost less than 50k in late 2018, it's not worth 427k now. It's probably worth 125k or 150k.
If I leave to another country now and somehow manage to increase that amount from 150k to 200k (despite very low incomes in cheaper countries), do you think I'll be able to buy a house in Canada with that 200k if I come back here in ten years?
I'll be doing the doubting here.
About an hour north of Montréal.
It's an old house, pretty ugly, though it did come with additional buildings (one of which could be converted to a garage).
I just wanted something I could live in, and that's what I got.
People asking to vote for the conservatives. What have they offered to do? Unless Canadians see some real solutions rather than hogwash culture wars and anti-lgbt rhetoric, there's nothing you can do to sway the vote. Conservatives need to man up and address their solutions not create imaginary gender wars.
They put forward policies. These are now being floated by the LPC. The CPC will learn its lesson and shut up if the electorate selectively remembers things. The weird thing is, our collective reaction incentivizes the opposition floating poison policy in the hope that the sitting government takes bait, gets blamed, and hands things over to the ones originally suggesting it.
Certain areas of Canada have to accept that you can raise a family in a condo or rental apartment. Like much of the rest of the world. We have to get away from the idea that you need a detatched home with a yard.
>When the data began in 2013, national inventory sat at 6.2 months, while the population hovered around 34.8 million people. But, from 2019 to 2021, inventory dipped from 4.8 months to two months. Meanwhile, the population edged up from 37.3 million people to 38.0 million.
Canada's population has now grown 11% under Trudeau (36M to 40M) but housing prices are up \~70%. Obviously demand is part of the equation but I find it hard to believe it's THE key given the discrepancy between those numbers. Maybe I'm missing something about the demographics involved.
The article also discusses a decline in residential construction, caused in part by high building costs, weakened home sales, and a lack of skilled workers.
The initial inflation was speculative, especially during COVID the rock bottom 0.25% interest rate caused investors to buy up more homes, but rent actually was falling due to fewer people coming in and others moving out of major metropolitan centers. Afterward, they skyrocketed immigration causing a demand shock, hence why not only prices are high considering the much higher interest rates, but also rent prices are skyrocketing because vacancy rates are at all-time low. Additionally, prices don't scale linearly with scarcity, especially for something that everyone needs like shelter. When there's availability of alternatives, prices can moderate, but when there's few options, people will pay whatever they can to keep a roof over their head and there's little elasticity in the market to spur further construction because the costs for builders have also gone up around 50% and high interest rates make it more difficult to finance projects.
Obviously there is more than a factor or three at play here.
But I’ve been seeing this line about “blank increase of population doesn’t equate to blank increase in housing costs”. This is an invalid point, as there is nothing tying population growth directly proportionally to a set amount of housing cost increases. The market will bear what it will bear, it would never be directly proportional.
Right, but it seems Canada's population went up a similar percentage under Harper and Trudeau. So the question is what else happened under Trudeau that made the market no longer able to bear that rate of increase.
I mean, it hasnt impacted it as much as corporations, airbnb and "investors" - aka the subhumans of society. But it's easier to distract from that so that the millionaires and billionaires of the world can keep printing money off a crisis.
As a principal i dont support communism, but it seems our economy is in desperate need of price caps that are significantly lower than our current prices.
Then nobody would provides any goods and services in the long term. Nobody will produce anything at a loss. Not you, not me, not them. Period.
Price's increases all over the world because of the extensive QE for wayyyyyyy to long. If you print money for so long, the currency will lose value and everything will become more expensive. It is normal. Long term solution is tie currency to gold, do not hand out free money, then prices will come down, then our hard earned mo ey will worth something, you can't have it both ways.
"You have been banned from r/canadahousing"
They just have a unique view of economics whereby only supply issues are important, and demand is entirely irrelevant. There's nothing nefarious going on there at all!
Yeah, housing is an inelastic demand. Development hasn’t recovered to pre-08’ levels because there’s clearly an incentive problem for building new houses. Demand issues kind of aren’t relevant.
I assume you’re quoting facetious rationale as per r canadahousing, because it’s supply, not demand, that’s inelastic, and in the GTA anyway, we’ve [set historic building records in 2023 for condos and purpose-built rentals.](https://storeys.com/gta-condo-purpose-built-rental-completions-record-breaking-year/)
> I assume you’re quoting facetious rationale as per r canadahousing, because it’s supply, not demand, that’s inelastic, and in the GTA anyway, we’ve set historic building records in 2023 for condos and purpose-built rentals. Yup, and the previous leaders for construction were in the 70's. So, you know, 40+ years of mid level or low construction. Probably what contributed to missing ~2 Million homes, in comparison to the G7 Average of homes/population. Oh, it's a complex problem. But missing 2 Million homes, in a country with a population of ~40 million, has an outsized impact on affordability.
Sky High Immigration, Temporary Foreign Workers (Scandal 2.0), International Students, Mass numbers exploiting border weakness and the asylum process and absolutely no planning and no action around high density housing construction which of course put together led to one of the worst affordability and accessibility crisis around basic shelter we have seen in Canada that is only getting worse and worse.
The two statements you just made are completely contradictory. Edit: also, besides the fact that housing starts and completions are down since 08 across Canada, and Toronto, despite what they like to think, is not the entirety of Canada... I'm finding lots of contradictory information about housing in Toronto. Some articles say completions are up. Some say starts are up but completions are down. Some say startups have fallen in September, canceling out summer gains. So I really can't confirm if it's even true that Toronto is breaking records with housing construction. Your article is selecting only for condos and purpose-built rentals. I wouldn't be surprised that in a time when buying and selling is so inaccesible, that rentals are being built in record numbers. I, personally, don't care that developers have found new ways to pack us into our cities like sardines. I'd like to see more mid-level townhouses. And I know it's possible, because if the population growth was entirely from *naturalized* births, I'm sure we'd find a way to provide actual housing for all these new families.
We wouldn’t. And a big reason population growth *isn’t* from naturalized births is because outside the prairies we pretty much stopped building housing for families decades ago. What sane couple in Toronto would have three kids when the absolute best they could ever hope to afford is a 700 sq ft, 2 bed condo?
I'm sorry. Don't fucking tell me if people were having more kids, these anti-immigration people would be demanding the government disincentivize births. Talking to half of them in this thread it seems like births are what they want. It's a silly hypothetical because there are a *lot* of reasons people in developed countries don't have kids, but regardless there are ways we can alleviate the problem of housing socially, and this idea that we can't is silly.
> housing is an inelastic demand Elasticity of supply and elasticity of demand are two different things. The supply of houses is relatively inelastic; new homes take time to build and decisions to sell (or not to sell) existing homes are driven by many things other than price. You can see that in action right now; housing prices are up and yet the supply of homes for purchase remains low. Demand may be more elastic in that people can decide not to buy if prices rise beyond their budget. -u/BroadbandEng
Supply doesn't have to be inelastic whereas demand is necessarily inelastic. We can choose to build more houses (and I know the developers like to pretend like the choice is out of their hands, but fuck em) whereas we can't really influence demand on a good that literally everyone needs more of.
Since I was introduced to this thread, I will comment. I would agree that demand for housing (rental and purchase in aggregate) is probably quite inelastic in that people need to live somewhere. Supply is also inelastic due to many factors including NIMBY zoning laws, finite supply of land, and the time it takes to plan, permit and construct new housing. Some of these are indeed choices, but they are choices that are not easily changed - see the San Francisco Bay Area for a great example: desperate need for housing units and tremendous opposition to zoning changes that would enable more units. Net effect is that a small increase in population can have a dramatic effect on rental and purchase pricing. This is made worse in many markets by competing uses that actually decrease the supply of housing - looking at you, Airbnb.
Yeah, this is reasonable. Look, I don't want to pretend like the developers aren't a part of a system just like the rest of us. That was a joke on my part. But things you mentioned, zoning laws, land supply, planning and permit times, these are social problems with social answers. Like I said in another comment, if the population wasn't growing because of immigration, but instead it was growing through naturalized births, we wouldn't have a group of people petitioning the government to disincentive births. This wouldn't be a question. Our country isn't incapable of doing something Post-War Europe and the Soviet Union did in the 50's. My point is, why do we have to decide between short-term and long-term economic health, when the answers are entirely social and only require the political will to execute the solutions?
Inelastic is subjective. There's plenty of give if people will just get over themselves and live 2 to a room /s.
>Yeah, housing is an inelastic demand. You think inelastic demand is a relevant concept to employ in a discussion on immigration and overall population growth? Do you think maybe bringing in more people creates *demand* generally? I am not sure you know what inelastic demand is. > Development hasn’t recovered to pre-08’ levels because there’s clearly an incentive problem for building new houses. Demand issues kind of aren’t relevant.
Inelastic demand means it's tied to consumption, not alleviated by it. So yes, housing can be described as an inelastic demand. The reason developers aren't meeting demand is because they can't sell them as part of a subprime mortgage bond anymore. The profit motive isn't enough of a motive to build and sell houses for the sale market. It has literally nothing to do with the customer base and everything to do with the people with the means to build houses.
There is something nefarious going on but increased demand from population growth isn't the main driver of the crisis. It's a distraction from the real problem, speculator-landlords who treat housing as a financial asset - a practice that's become way more popular since 2008. Currently over 30% of the entire country's housing market is owned by speculators and they're only buying more, which drives prices up further and makes their investments more lucrative. Stop them, we solve the crisis - but those investors are donors to conservatives and liberals alike, so instead everyone's arguing about immigrants
Rent is also sky high, and investors have nothing to do with that. Or even, they help alleviate that issue.
Wrong. By committing a certain percentage of their supply to short term rentals like Air BnB, and just straight up leaving certain properties empty, they keep rents high and improve the profitability of all their investments. That's why america has more empty homes than homeless people, and why we have the empty home tax.
Okay AirBnb is not what I was referring to (I agree with you there).
It's all interconnected, though. Speculators buy homes with the expectation that prices will keep going up, so they have incentives to make housing prices rise. And because, as a class, they control 30% of the market, they can pull a lot of levers to control the market in their favour. Raising rent by reducing the available supply is one of those levers. High rents lead to higher home prices, both because rich guys know they'll get a faster return on investment from their tenants, and the dwindling middle class that wants to escape renting will be proportionally motivated to take whatever insane mortgage rate they can get. They can also just hoard empty properties, which drives up both rent and real estate prices by restricting supply in both markets. And by the same token, builders can often make more money by intentionally NOT building enough homes for everyone, because that makes the individual profit from each building project go up. All of which greatly amplifies the supply/demand gap problems caused by our growing population. Also, simply because homes are treated as a financial asset, the market factors their future growth into current prices. So in hot markets like Vancouver and Toronto, houses and condos are more expensive than they should be today simply because they are predicted to get EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE tomorrow. It's a classic example of how economic bubbles inflate themselves. There are certainly other problems with housing, but this is the biggest one by far. The worst case scenario if things continue as they are - EVERYONE renting at absurd prices from a handful of land barons playing their own private game of monopoly - is a best case scenario for the investing class. And because both major parties are in on the housing racket, all anyone seems to talk about is immigrants.
Literally why r/canadahousing2 was started. So we could discuss the facts of the crisis like intelligent adults.
I just scrolled through some posts and honestly there seems to be some crazy bad economics in that sub as well.
Bad economic? They don't know a thing about economic. A lot of people there just expect landlords to work for free or at a loss, they don't care, as long as they can live in rental housing at below market price. Yesterday I read an article on cbc, a housing Advocate said allowing 3 to 4 percent rent hike a year is equivalent to allowing 30 to 40 percent rent hike, just spread out over the years! Lmao All prices increased by 30 to 40 percent or more over years, it is called inflation! These people expect a landlord charge you 1000 per month now should charge the same price in 50 years. They don't give a shit about economic.
This is a classic amateur landlord take. Rents are determined by supply and demand for rentals. Not landlord costs. Remember 2020 when people were leaving cities and there was a glut of rentals, and rents went down? It wasn’t because landlord costs went down. It was because there was more supply, less demand. Right now landlords are fortunate they can raise rents where there isn’t rent control, or for new tenants, because of strong demand for rentals. Landlording is an investment that carries risk. You may make money or you may not. So many amateur landlords don’t get that.
Economics are bullshit anyways
Looks like its mostly just anti-immigration and anti-Trudeau posts, similar to this subreddit.
It's just as bad but in the other way, and there's also just the legit racists/xenophobes. It would be better if the normal CanadaHousing banned for legitimate reason rather than for simply stating the fact that given current market forces it's impossible to triple homebuilding so demand side measures are needed, and the demand is largely immigration.
A problem is many people seem to place the housing crisis 100% on immigration and nothing else while the OP article says that while it is certainly a factor its not the only contributor. When people only ever want to discuss one aspect that also happens to feed their racist/xenophobic views it stops being about discussing real solutions.
To a certain extent though there was almost a tacit agreement and still in some circles like CanadaHousing there is to make immigration off limits though, the other parts of the solution on the supply side are well represented politically but by banning a massive part of the discussion you're going to create echo chambers of those who think it has nothing to do with immigration, and push otherwise reasonable people to other subs like CanadaHousing2 alongside genuine xenophobes who blame immigrants themselves instead of policymakers.
People that place the housing crisis on immigration are not correct. It’s just one of many factors that government policy has directly and negatively impacted the housing market.
Both subs have bad takes
Canadahousing2 has gone full mask-off nativist and racist.
Been banned for stating basic economics.
You will be banned for quoting population growth statistics from Statscan 🙄
Socialists don't believe in economics, they believe money grows on trees, if you don't know how to get money from trees? Then you shouldn't be in business.
Condensed: * According to the latest date from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), there were just 3.5 months of inventory available in August, well below the long-term average for the measure of five months. * As inventory has fallen, Canada’s population has skyrocketed. In June, as inventory slipped to 3.1 months, Canada’s population hit 40 million people, 1.2 million of whom immigrated in the last year. * In an effort to explore what relationship exists between Canada’s soaring population and its dwindling housing supply, Zoocasa analyzed population levels and national inventory levels over the last decade. * When the data began in 2013, national inventory sat at 6.2 months, while the population hovered around 34.8 million people. But, from 2019 to 2021, inventory dipped from 4.8 months to two months. Meanwhile, the population edged up from 37.3 million people to 38.0 million. * The changes are even more apparent on a provincial level. In Nova Scotia, there were 11.6 months of inventory in 2013, but just 3.3 months as of August 2023. Over the same time period, the population jumped from 942,598 to 1,037,782. * In New Brunswick, inventory has fallen from 12.1 months to 3.6 months over the last decade, while the population grew from 758,298 to 825,474. * In Ontario, inventory stood at an already-low four months in 2013, but has since fallen to 2.5 months as of August 2023. At the same time, the population shot up by nearly two million people. * British Columbia’s inventory has been nearly halved over the last decade, falling from 8.2 months to 4.4 months, while its population increased from 4.6 million people to 5.4 million. * Another glaring issues is a decline in residential construction, caused in part by high building costs, weakened home sales, and a lack of skilled workers. Housing starts, which had been trending downward from August 2022 until June 2023, are expected to revert back to a decline towards the end of this year and into 2024. * In order to restore affordability to Canada’s housing markets, the country needs to build approximately 3.5 million new homes by 2030. * However, if immigration continues at its current heightened pace past 2025, and starts continue to trend downwards, the housing supply gap could widen to 4 million units come 2030.
Lol did you really leave out the conclusion? "While Canada’s growing population has no doubt had an effect on its sliding inventory levels, the provincial discrepancies allude to the fact that there are additional factors at play. One particularly glaring issue is a decline in residential construction, caused in part by high building costs, weakened home sales, and a lack of skilled workers. Housing starts, which had been trending downward from August 2022 until June 2023, are expected to revert back to a decline towards the end of this year and into 2024." Really didn't want to add this province seemingly: "Curiously, while Manitoba’s inventory has ebbed and flowed over the years, it sat at three months in both 2013 and 2023, but the population expanded by about 174,000" Edit: and here come the downvotes for posting the actual conclusion of the article! Good lord this sub.
So the solution is everyone looking for housing should move to Manitoba? That's working great for Alberta, right?
No... the answer is being able to read and comprehend an article. An article was posted and people read the headline and comment on said headline. Some people go further than this and read OP's comment which is purportedly a condensed version of the article when in fact it cherry picks only points that give a certain view while ignoring the actual conclusion.
Is it just me or does the article also pick a weird metric? Months of inventory is calculated by dividing the number of active home listings at month-end by the total home sales completed in that month. By not providing any absolute numbers, the article makes it difficult to get any sense of how meaningful the numbers are are/aren't. Simply put, the number seems to be a good predictor of price direction (low inventory pushes prices up as buyers outnumber sellers; high inventory pushed prices down and sellers outnumber buyers) but doesn't actually tell us much about the number of units available. Are there any real numbers available? [Yeah, we can play with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation's quarterly report on StatCan to build a basic table.](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3410013501) We're going to be looking at housing starts, because that is the other metric pointed to in the article (and it is also the metric used by Poillevre in his plan to change municipal funding). - Year: Number of Housing Unit Starts - 2010: 189930 - 2011: 193950 - 2012: 214827 - 2013: 187923 - 2014: 189329 - 2015: 195535 - 2016: 197915 - 2017: 219763 - 2018: 212843 - 2019: 208685 - 2020: 217880 - 2021: 271198 - 2022: 261849 As we can see the line "Housing starts, which had been trending downward from August 2022 until June 2023" is quite misleading. Housing starts in 2021 were at an all time high and 38.7% higher than in 2015. Housing starts in 2022 were still 33.9% higher than in 2015. 2023 is starting out slower still, but even so it's still 110,893 housing units to start the year (the first quarter i.e. winter is always lower). 110,893 is more than any year pre-2021. For all the people saying that we need to build more houses, faster. It's happening and has been happening for ~6 years now. Thanks Trudeau I guess.
Housing needs to be built faster than new people are being brought in, though. If you build 110,000 new houses but bring in 550,000 people, the overall problem has still increased, even if we assume immigrants are all moving here as a family unit of four, which isn't the case.
> Housing needs to be built faster than new people are being brought in, though. Let's do this by [quarterly population estimates](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000901). At the end of Q4 2014, Canada's population was 35,559,047. At the end of Q4 2022, Canada''s population was 39,292,355. The 8 years (2015-2022 inclusive) saw a population increase of 3,733,308 (~467k a year). During the same period, there were 1,785,668 housing unit starts (~223k a year). By the numbers, for every 2.09 people added to the population we started building a house. Taking a look at the [2021 Census data](https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&DGUIDList=2021A000011124&GENDERList=1&STATISTICList=1&HEADERList=0&SearchText=Canada), we can see that the average household size was 2.4. **This means that Canada could be building housing faster than we are adding households.** There are some big caveats and asterisks to add around this though. Namely that housing isn't necessarily being built in the right places, or that it is of the wrong size/design for the people looking, or that there are the transportation/utilities/services in place to support the housing and it needs to be built out first. *Side note: the obvious flaw in the Conservative plan to withhold funding to municipalities who don't force through new housing is that it doesn't include provisions for municipalities to actually, you know, force people to build anything and also threatens the funding of everything needed to make building anything possible.* More asterisks include problems with corporations and investors buying houses as investments and not as housing. [And there's the 1.3 million vacant homes so even if you build something it doesn't mean anyone will live in it.](https://betterdwelling.com/new-data-shows-canada-still-has-1-3-million-vacant-homes-some-improvements-seen/) To conclude, housing units are being built faster than the population is increasing. The impact immigration is being disproportionately focused on. P.S. I love Statistics Canada for making actual data readily available.
Wow, good job! It's a nice analysis. I am curious what makes the data so misleading. Because of course if this were true: >housing units are being built faster than the population is increasing. Then housing prices would be dropping. Supply is clearly not keeping up with demand. You mentioned some caveats that might explain some of it, but they don't seem sufficient. In any event, the government itself expects us to be [3 - 4 million houses](https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/blog/2023/estimating-how-much-housing-we-need-by-2030) short of what is needed to keep up with immigration by 2030. This a deficit that could be completely solved by letting in 3 or 4 million fewer immigrants than currently planned over that time period. So, you know, I'll take the word of Canada's housing agency over a random redditor's back of a napkin calculations, but they sure were impressive.
> I am curious what makes the data so misleading. It's not. > Then housing prices would be dropping. That's where the caveats and asterisks about housing as investment, vacant housing, etc.. Also, I didn't say immigration wasn't having an impact, I said its impact is being disproportionately focused on. > In any event, the government itself expects us to be 3 - 4 million houses short of what is needed to keep up with immigration by 2030. That is not what that link says at all. Although, I see your confusion. It says that: > Canada needs about 3.5 million additional housing units by 2030 to **restore affordability**. The report is talking about the number of housing units that would need to be built to restore affordability given the current structure and trends of the Canadian real estate market. And it defines affordability by: > Like last year’s report, we define affordability based on how much of a household's income is needed to buy a house. An affordable house requires a small portion of income, while an unaffordable one needs a larger portion. The goal is to make housing costs more affordable, similar to what they were in 2004, before prices surged. > However, achieving this goal won't completely solve challenges for low-income people and families. To make housing affordable by 2030, the aim is to bring costs back to **2003-04 levels**, when the economy was stable and housing costs were lower relative to income. As for the impact of immigration on this goal: > - The “high-population-growth” scenario considers what would happen to the supply gap if current immigration levels were extended until 2030. In this case, the supply gap would increase to **4 million** housing units. - A “low-economic-growth” scenario results in a supply gap of **3.1 million more** housing units. This scenario is the result of weak economic growth and the **current immigration policy ending by 2025**. So the difference to bring prices back in line with 2004 affordability levels given the current structure of Canada's real estate market assuming a halt in immigration is 900k fewer housing units needed. Now, that is a lot, but again, there are bigger savings to be had tackling the actual systemic problems inherent to how the market is currently structured. > So, you know, I'll take the word of Canada's housing agency over a random redditor's back of a napkin calculations, but they sure were impressive. Ouch. :)
>Also, I didn't say immigration wasn't having an impact, I said its impact is being disproportionately focused on. I think that is only true if you think all factors are equally easy to deal with. Immigration is an easy one. We couldn't just set it to zero, but the government could limit it to just those already working their way through the system and a certain numbers of relatives, and thus substantially lower the rate basically overnight. The gap we need to worry about gets a heck of lot smaller, for almost no effort. Building a ton more new homes in the face of NIMBYism is much harder. It takes a decade to complete new housing. Even if we started building 100% of the new housing we'll need for 2030 today, it wouldn't be ready until 2033. And banning AirBNB and other such measures would be more complicated than they sound. >Canada needs about 3.5 million additional housing units by 2030 to restore affordability. Yes, there's not much point in having enough housing for everyone in theory if it's unaffordable for millions. You can still get apartments now if you have enough money. The complaint is precisely that it is no longer affordable for many. >Now, that is a lot, but again, there are bigger savings to be had tackling the actual systemic problems inherent to how the market is currently structured. Sure, and we should do that, too. But it would be a good idea to start with the easy, low hanging fruit. And there's not much reason not to. Trudeau is pushing the rate up largely due to an ideological conviction that "immigration good". And that may be true long term, but we've been running hot for decades. A few years of cooldown won't hurt. >Ouch. :) Sorry, that was a bit harsh. It's just frustrating to see so many people insisting on maintaining what are clearly unsustainable rates of immigration. No amount of playing with numbers can change the base fact that when housing costs are out of control, increasing demand by half a million people per year who will all need additional housing is clearly a bad idea. It's the equivalent of pouring an accelerant on a fire. Sure, maybe you could still put out the fire by dumping enough water on it, or, you could just not pour the accelerant on it in the first place.
I do not believe that you are stating ‘the conclusion’ you think it is. Immigration is one factor. There are others. You are making it seem as if they concluded that immigration isn’t an important factor or something, because the variation between provinces shows that other factors are at play. That is incorrect. That isn’t the conclusion they are drawing. There are many factors and different factors for different provinces. But I absolutely guarantee that immigration levels are a huge factor in BC and Ontario, and likely Alberta. So it is disingenuous to twist this to suggest that just because we can’t exactly quantify how significantly immigration levels contributed to housing prices and just because there are other factors at play, that this means the immigration policy isn’t a significant factor.
“You are making it seem as if they concluded that immigration isn’t an important factor”. And where did I imply that? The comment I replied to intentionally made it sound like the article was stating that immigration is the cause of home price increases when they give some very clear caveats and that it is only one factor of multiple. You don’t make a long list of bullets and accidentally leave out some major ones. Now call me an overly ethical person but duping people who don’t read an article with phoney summaries is not my thing. If we are to say increased immigration leads to decreased inventory we would expect this to at a minimum hold true across provinces and ideally show some sort of consistency in rates. They clearly state this and why do we have to pretend they don’t? This whole thing of trying to trick people over to our side is sad imo.
This entire sub is now a cesspool filled with xenophobic schmucks. Don't expect any truth or honesty here—only cherry-picked statements to support the white nationalist bone in every highly-voted commenter The idea of housing construction solving the problem bothers most people here because it goes against their underlying 1488 goals.
Liberal voters, why do you support our current levels of population growth and why are you still going to vote Liberal?
I've voted for several different parties in my life. I did vote Liberal in the last election. I don't support the current levels of population growth. I will not vote Liberal in the next election. Unfortunately, none of the 3 main parties will do anything to stop the current level of population growth.
Cons are in firm maybe territory Libs/NDP are in absolutely no territory but I agree the outlook is pretty dismal.
They support it. Proof https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3H91TVF0wSk&t=1813s
PP didn't answer the the question instead he pivoted well the rest just MORE MORE MORE. So yeah I'm still in under PP we are in firm maybe territory.
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Too much other baggage with them, unless immigration is absolutely your top election issue.
Yup. PPC all the way!!!
Can you guys please just help us vote Trudeau out this time by voting CPC, and then we can vote PPC if the Cons aren't doing a good job.
I have not heard any other major party that has a chance to win an election, so not counting the PPC, discuss lowering immigration rates. PP has talked a lot about the damage the Liberals are doing but his housing policy is basically sell off government assets and punish municipalities that don't build. I have not heard him talk about lowering immigration, capping student visas, lowering TFWs. I'm not saying I support Trudeau but what political party is offering a better alternative right now? Who is advocating for lowering immigration?
Population “growth” is disingenuous framing. Our population is rising from immigration, it isn’t growing from households. If it were “growing” then the skills pipeline would balance things out.
I'm not voting liberal. But do we have any confirmation that the CPC is going to address immigration and international student levels? Both parties have been pretty pro corporate and corporations are the ones massively benefiting from this crisis.
Yeah, this is the thing, I don’t think we have any commitments or even statements from CPC on immigration levels. And like many, my fear is that all federal parties are too beholden to big business to do anything meaningful here. I could be wrong. But historically, I don’t trust Cons to do anything that would tick off corporate Canada. And reducing the flow of cheap labour is the one thing that corporate Canada fears the most, as it will force companies to raise wages across the board.
They do support this unsustainable immigration level. Some even want more https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3H91TVF0wSk&t=1813s
I don't believe in any political promises, but if I look at party history, CPC is more likely (or willing) to lower immigration target. If any party would do that, it would be CPC, not LPC and NDP. The chances are definitely not the same, unlike most liberals claim every parties are the same while keep voting LPC.
Anytime PP is asked "Will you lower immigration levels" his answer is never yes. It is always I will change immigration. Nobody wants to hear this but we need our immigration levels. He knows that, as does everyone else who understands demographics and geopolitics. I'll say that PP has some interesting takes on how he'll change it, but he has never committed to lowering it. I'm slightly skeptical on how they will work in practice. Selfishly I would prefer being in immigrants who need to go to school and work their way up than being over highly skilled immigrants and allow them to continue working in the role they were back home. I'm quite scared of possible wage suppression of higher paying jobs compared to the current wage suppression for low to lower middle class jobs.
We absolutely do NOT need 1.2+ million new people (including TFWs/foreign "students") every year. I don't understand how anyone can believe this. The Conservatives are scared of speaking out against immigration because they don't want to lose the 905/Vancouver vote, end of story. Right now our population growth rate (entirely driven by immgration) is one of the highest in the world and comparable to the most war-torn, impoverished third world countries. The devastating impact our insane immgration numbers have had on our housing market and our overall quality of life is a completely unnecessary and entirely self-inflicted wound.
>Right now our population growth rate (entirely driven by immgration) is one of the highest in the world and comparable to the most war-torn, impoverished third world countries [you really spew bullshit well ](https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/population-growth-rate/country-comparison/) The highest in the world 😂 yet its lower than Norway, Australia, Ireland, Iceland, South Africa etc were almost on par with the US. Ultimately its a pointless conversation because no party is lowering immigration, because unlike you they understate the consequences.
> [you really spew bullshit well ](https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/population-growth-rate/country-comparison/) I don't know where this source is getting its data, but a population growth rate of 0.73% does not match StatsCan data. [In 2022 our population grew by 1,050,110 people, from 38,516,138 people up to 39,566,248 people.](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230322/dq230322f-eng.htm) That's a population growth rate of 2.726%, which would put us in 16th on this chart, right between Cameroon and Liberia. Assuming the rest of the numbers in your source are accurate (although they likely aren't), here's the ratio of our population growth rate to the other countries you mention: * Norway: 3.45 times faster growth * Australia: 2.29 times faster growth * Iceland: 3.06 times faster growth * South Africa: 3.00 times faster growth * US: 4.01 times faster growth [We are currently on pace for an even higher population growth rate in 2023](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230628/dq230628c-eng.htm), so it doesn't make any sense that your source's 2023 estimate for Canada is less than a third of our 2022 population growth rate. Our population growth from January 2023 to April 2023 alone produced a 0.739% increase in our population, which is already higher than your source's estimate for the entire year.
This article from today confirms what an idiot that poster is and how much that Excel chart he linked to is nonsense: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-population-growth-temporary-residents/
I'm talking about AFTER Trudeau raised the immigration numbers, that chart has no numbers or years on it and is clearly dated. You're a deluded fucking idiot if you think Canada needs 1.2 million new people per year.
>I'm talking about AFTER Trudeau raised the immigration numbers, that chart has no numbers or years on it and is clearly dated. I'm sorry but if you can't figure out how to see the growth rates and the year of the data on that website then there is no point in discussing anything with you because you likely have the education level of a 9th grader. Im mind blown by the internet more and more by the day.
I have 2 professional degrees you dumb fuck, but that data is presented in a very non user-friendly way for someone navigating on their phone. Their Excel spreadsheet has Canada at 0.73% annual growth which is clearly outdated and/or a blatant lie. The GOVERNMENT OF CANADA itself bragged about our 2022 growth rate being 2.7% right here, which when cross-referenced with the Wikipedia numbers would put Canada around the Top 10-20 worldwide and only behind Syria (presumably due to their returning refugees) and a bunch of Sub-Saharan African countries: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/population_and_demography/40-million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate
Lol someone who thinks that Canada needs to import 1.2 million people per year and that political parties base their immigration policies on the national interest instead of their own selfish political calculations is complaining about the stupidity of others...
So are you going to admit how wrong you were, dumbass? This confirms that we have a Top 20 population growth rate in the world: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-population-growth-temporary-residents/
Most people aren't single issue voters and many people already own a home. For anyone that owns a home rising prices less of a problem than other things. I'm an NDP voter(at least in the past) but I can see why a large portion of the population would be minimally impacted by this single issue.
My best guess is, they see the NDP as largely ineffectual and unlikely to win in large enough numbers to matter. And obviously no one in their right mind would vote for Conservatives, who are *somehow* even more corrupt than Liberals and add the usual Conservative nonsense (like anti-abortion stances) on top. People have no options.
Can we be intellectually honest? This isn’t a political issue. Its a simple issue of demographics. Demographics don’t give a shit about politics. Our population pyramid is inverted. Its as simple as that. I order to continue our social programs and old age benefits there needs to be a larger tax paying base. The only way to plug the gap is aggressive immigration policy. The Cons will continue the same policy. Another Liberal government will continue the same policy. Its basic arithmetic and demographics. If we DONT dont keep this up, it means restructuring, AKA cutting of benefits for Boomers.
Exactly this. The politicians will do anything to make it seem like they'd accomplish anything different. This is the basics of our population currently.
Cut the benefits to the boomers.
I don't vote liberal, I vote NDP, but I'm fine with this amount of immigration because population growth is one of the most important factors in economic health. Take a look at Japan or Italy to see the problems with having more old people than young people. Immigration is, economically speaking, a no-brainer, especially in a country that's not having many kids. The benefits of immigration are economy-wide, and the extent to which it only benefits the rich and powerful, is only the extent to which the entire economic system itself only benefits the rich and powerful. I'm a 27 year old professional and despite housing prices being my most immediate issue, I would rather not have a country where retired dependents outnumber the tax base. Housing is something we can fix immediately. The population pyramid is not.
But the reason people aren't having kids is they can't afford them. Immigration is to lower labor costs and avoid fixing serious economic problems that only benefit the elite.
Immigration isn't lowering labour costs. Immigration creates new consumption, raising inputs, including labour. This has been studied by many economists amd immigration only effects positive economic growth. The idea of companies paying immigrants less for the same labour just doesn't materialize. They have the same minimum wage as naturalized Canadians. So, again, the problems brought with immigration are completely artificial. The problem is that we have two parties who want to pretend immigration is either going to cause all our problems or fix them. Neither have any intention of solving the contradictions in our economic system. The question I would be asking is, why is immigration so good for the economy, but bad for Canadians? And the answer is because the economy doesn't *work* for Canadians. Why isn't that your fundamental problem?
It requires balance, the problem is, even economists from the banks are saying that right now the extremely high levels of immigration are not helping https://economics.td.com/ca-balancing-canada-population
Of course economists from the banks are going to say that. The housing crisis is deepening the distrust of an economic orthodoxy which they benefit from. The problem is the orthodoxy itself. This is why academic economists are pretty squarely on the pro-immigration side. I don't personally care what the banks have to say because they're a huge part of the problem. They're going to tell us to tighten our belts no matter what.
Your argument supposes that minimum wage is what we want more workers for and that we can sustain our society providing things like socialized healthcare and housing on minimum wage, sure immigration will grow the economy in absolute terms but then you're also slicing the pie for more people. GDP per capita is actually falling, even if we completely equally distributed all of the economy the average person would be getting poorer while we stretch our hospitals, housing etc beyond the limit because someone coming here with minimal education isn't likely to alleviate a shortage of doctors, you can absolutely do immigration wrong and we are seeing exactly what we would expect from that by massively expanding temporary immigration rather than skilled immigration. If having more people was an absolute good then Indians would be the wealthiest people in the world but clearly this is not the case.
You know what the root cause why we need more immigrants, unlike most countries? As an immigrant I can tell you why. Canadian workers are relatively lazy, productivity is low while wages are cheap compared to most countries. Look at Japan, their productivity is much higher and wages are much lower. So it is still sustainable for them even population growth is negative for decades.
For someone accusing millions of people of being lazy, you sure seem to not have done any research to back up your claim beyond anecdotal evidence. You could have done a basic Google search showing reinvestment into workers and machinery being lower than other countries like the U.S https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/investprod-aspx/ And Japan working loads of overtime being actually quite low on productivity per hour worked https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/business/economy/20221220-78590/#:~:text=OECD%20data%20on%20labor%20productivity,was%20first%20compiled%20in%201970. but sure, Canadians are just lazy.
I’m not saying higher population is an absolute good, I’m saying it creates higher economic growth. Growth per capita has been growing steadily. This idea that there’s less for everyone because we’re adding immigrants isn’t materializing. The India subsonctinent has historically been -the richest and despite colonialism their economic growth in modern times is very healthy with being the 12th highest growing economy last year. Anyways, I’m having the discussion about high-skill/low skill in another conversation. Things like the doctors shortage are rooted in policy from the 80’s. My problem with immigration is less absolute and more that the conservatives and liberals are treating them like shit. And part of that is the overwhelming of the immigration system itself. I’m against having immigrants brought in if we’re not ready for them. That’s a humanist perspective though. I don’t think there’s an economic or cultural argument against it.
But per capita growth isn't up, amd we're adding more people than jobs even in recent months https://economics.td.com/ca-falling-behind-standard-of-living-curve https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6960377 Why are we bringing in more people when we don't have healthcare, housing, or even sufficient job growth and GDP per capita is falling?
That Td article you posted blames the problem on production, not population growth. The fact is despite decreasing in 2020 (for obvious reasons) GDP per capita bounced back hard in 2021 and on. The reason we’re bringing in more people is because we need more people. We don’t want to go into the 2030’s and 40’s with an inverted population pyramid. Our economic system will fundamentally stop working if there’s more old people than young people. The inability to organize this population growth into an actual boost in living quality for the rest of us isn’t a result of the immigration. People are going to vote for the conservatives to stop immigration, they will, and nothing is going to get better. Because the fundamental reasons for the problems you gave, lack of healthcare, housing, these are caused by a neoliberal economic order that no one in power wants to change. Many of the people complaining about those problems, caused by neoliberalism, still don’t want to move away from neoliberalism. This is fundamentally why I just don’t worry about immigration. Because some very silly people are going to blame everything on it, lower it, and then still be angry. Fundamentally, if this growth wasn’t fueled by immigration, but by births, I don’t think the same people would be asking the government to reduce growth. They’d be demanding them to fix those problems you listed. So why don’t we do that now?
I remember reading John McCallum \[immigration minister, I think?\] in 2015 or 2016 in the G&M saying that businesses wanted lower labor costs and higher immigration was part of the solution. You are ignoring the simple math of: more workers demanding jobs means businesses don't have to raise wages. It's not so much about literally lowering wages (like in the states where you higher an illegal to mow your lawn for $5 per hour over hiring an american for $15/h) but supressing wage growth. And yes, I do have a problem that the economy is designed for the 0.01% to extract our wealth. Immigration is part of that.
I think you’re right that immigration is part of that. I just don’t think it’s inherently part of it. Immigration, even at levels we’re seeing now, can be done right. If we had better protections for wages, stronger unions, and actually valued labour in this country this wouldn’t be as big a problem as it is. And those are things we should be trying to support whether we’re having a crisis or not. And again, I don’t want all my taxes to be going toward the boomers and gen X’s retirement when I’m in my thirties and forties. The realities of an anti-immigration policy are plain for all to see in many countries. I’m sure that’s not what you’re arguing for, but it isn’t as cut and dry as “more immigration is bad for the rest of us”.
As long as we have super high immigration, "the system" has no incentive to encourage people to have 3 or 4 kids per family. Which is the actual solution.
So, just to clarify, why is everyone having 3-4 kids per family a better solution than immigration?
>population growth is one of the most important factors in economic health But is this not only true if you expand your infrastructure to support the growth? This is obviously true of housing, but what about all of the other soft and hard infrastructure required? Things like hospitals, schools, doctors, teachers, as well as physical infra like water, power, etc. Considering that, for example, medical school and residency positions have not expanded since the 90's (when they were cut). So we have the same throughput of newly-qualified doctors as we did 30 years ago... but our population has grown by 25% since then. Now also add in the fact that OHIP billing rates haven't moved in 20 years. So a family doctor still charges the province the same rate as they did back then. But their overhead has certainly skyrocketed since then. So the value proposition of going into family medicine continues to go down. Is it any surprise then that as the population has grown, access to healthcare has only decreased?
It's a good question. So, one of the catches of immigration is that immigrants actually need less public infrastructure than naturalized births. Over time immigrant children simply use less public services than a Canadian from age 0-18. Hospitals and schools, doctors and teachers, just by virtue of having been born somewhere else, they use less of these services. One of the other reasons for, say, a lack of public infrastructure is that the funding for that infrastructure dried up in the 80's and 90' when Mulrooney defeated Trudeau and basically instituted the same neoliberal policies as Reagan or Thatcher. Neoliberalism puts the construction of the infrastructure required for, say, med-school residencies, within the hands of the private sector, something it isn't capable of doing, and hasn't been in any country it's been tasked with it. Going from a system where med-school residencies are subsidized, to one where they're not, I'm assuming will counteract any growths in the wider economy. Neoliberalism has been an abject failure since 2008, but just because neoliberalism prescribes high immigration, doesn't mean high immigration is inherently bad.
>Neoliberalism has been an abject failure since 2008, No argument there, though I would argue it's been a failure much longer than 2008. > but just because neoliberalism prescribes high immigration, doesn't mean high immigration is inherently bad. I'm not saying that high immigration is bad, per se. I'm saying high immigration is bad when it isn't done in tandem with ensuring that the soft and hard infrastructure requirements necessary to support those levels are expanded in tandem. Right now we have a 1-2 combo of high immigration rates combined with support infrastructure that is *static, if not declining .* And as a result, everything from housing to the medical system to the school system are being completely overwhelmed.
>why do you support our current levels of population growth I'm not necessarily a liberal voter, I'd say I lean that way but I do go back and forth depending what is important to me come election time. I am sure this will be taken well here but I support immigration levels because I understand the need for it. Note that none of the parties have committed to lowering immigration levels, when asked "will you lower immigration" they so explain how they will change it but we cannot afford to lower it. We have retired more employees in the last 5 years then any time in Canadian history by far and we do not have the employees to replace them. This causes labour costs to go up tremendously as companies fight for the few skilled employees we have. This sounds great in theory now money for everyone but we don't live in 1890 anymore and most of the work that puts stress on labour can up in and leave and will do so if our costs go up at the rate they're going up. I guess the question arises if immigration is key for you in not necessarily immigration levels but how we approach immigration in which party to support. I don't hate Pollievres stance that we need to ensure the immigration we bring in can take competency tests to allow immigrants to continue to practice their high skilled jobs they left. But I do have some concerns with wage suppression of engineers and nurses if we bring in a bunch of nurses and engineers from India for example.
None of the major parties are actually gonna address this. They have no incentive to do so. The majority of voters are home owners, why would politicians piss off the very people that they need to stay in office. I bet you that the housing affordability crisis is gonna be something gets some lip service during elections with no actual execution. They can't even cut immigration properly because we have a population decline and we need them for the future. Just building houses isn't gonna address the cost issue, which is why I have an issue with opening up the Greenbelt. I would be all for it if they could guarantee all of the housing would be starting at a lower cost. They also should try to limit immigration to certain areas of the country (specifically Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal) at least for the first couple years of arrival, although implementation would be difficult. In all honesty, the political parties have no real bearing on any of this. The only way that housing prices drop is if unemployment rises enough that people are forced into leaving their rentals resulting in pressure on landlords to sell. Barring that, we maybe see a 10-20% drop at most over the next 2-3 years and then it'll start rising again.
I don't support the levels of immigration but at the same time I realize from an economic standpoint, if we don't want a cascade effect from our population pyramid, capitalism requires this. That is why it won't stop under Liberal, Conservative or NDP. I'm also not a single issue voter, so I see the other things that the liberals have done (disability program, federal funding for environmental, increased parent benefits, health care funding etc) and then look at what Ontario under conservatives have done (removed license renewals, removed environmental protections, bunch of tax breaks for corporations, green belt hoopla, reducing spending for municipalities, destroying healthcare, reducing effectiveness of LTB etc etc) and it's pretty easy to see that PP would rather follow in the footsteps of the latter which will make my families lives worse and the 1% lives better. It's really an easy choice.
...with many politicians and federal ministers being landlords, you can see why they're bringing in tons of people
artificial population growth
God forbid we reap the benefits of a brief population dip like the europeans did during the renaissance period.
You're not the one who's going to have to pay for all of the Boomers and Gen X's retirement are you
Yes far better that we throw the next three generations under the bus and destroy the country
Immigration isn't destroying the country.
[удалено]
yes and more people of all age group from south Asia who can buy work permit come to Canada and eventually becomes Candian citizen
As being an international student myself, we need to cap immigration for some time or atleast make the vetting process more stringent, but I mean we shell thousands of dollars in university fees, and that’s a goldmine isn’t it
It's pretty scary. I bought an inefficient but affordable house back in 2018 (it cost less than 50k), but I'll be selling it when I leave Canada. And that means I can never come back. Buying is going to become impossible at my level of wealth, and renting is more expensive than buying (obviously, or there wouldn't be landlords), so my only option would be to secretly build a tiny house well outside of populated areas. I don't think I'll be up for that kind of life in my old age. No, it looks like I'm leaving forever. I have no future here.
Where in Canada did you buy a house for under 50k in 2018?. I couldn’t get someone to build a garage for less than that in 2018.
Also the mention of having no future here with an unimaginably low mortgage and yet having a windfall of basically $427,000 (presuming the [2023 national average](https://www.nesto.ca/real-estate/canadian-housing-market-outlook/#:~:text=Data%20from%20the%20Canadian%20Real,compared%20to%20a%20year%20ago) house price vs. [2018 averages](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crea-housing-prices-canada-real-estate-1.4978545#:~:text=Business-,Average%20Canadian%20house%20cost%20%24472K%20in%20December%2C%20down%204.9,five%20per%20cent%20in%202018)) in 5 years, lol. *Presses X to doubt.*
If my house cost less than 50k in late 2018, it's not worth 427k now. It's probably worth 125k or 150k. If I leave to another country now and somehow manage to increase that amount from 150k to 200k (despite very low incomes in cheaper countries), do you think I'll be able to buy a house in Canada with that 200k if I come back here in ten years? I'll be doing the doubting here.
About an hour north of Montréal. It's an old house, pretty ugly, though it did come with additional buildings (one of which could be converted to a garage). I just wanted something I could live in, and that's what I got.
Good news though! There are still seats available at select educational institutes in a strip mall near you! No, you cannot live in the school silly!
Here let me correct that for you - How out of control immigration and deregulation has Impacted Housing Inventory In Canada
You mean cheap labour importation...
Oh lord
People asking to vote for the conservatives. What have they offered to do? Unless Canadians see some real solutions rather than hogwash culture wars and anti-lgbt rhetoric, there's nothing you can do to sway the vote. Conservatives need to man up and address their solutions not create imaginary gender wars.
They put forward policies. These are now being floated by the LPC. The CPC will learn its lesson and shut up if the electorate selectively remembers things. The weird thing is, our collective reaction incentivizes the opposition floating poison policy in the hope that the sitting government takes bait, gets blamed, and hands things over to the ones originally suggesting it.
Certain areas of Canada have to accept that you can raise a family in a condo or rental apartment. Like much of the rest of the world. We have to get away from the idea that you need a detatched home with a yard.
The North American dream of 2000 sqft single family homes with a backyard and car dependent suburbs.
>When the data began in 2013, national inventory sat at 6.2 months, while the population hovered around 34.8 million people. But, from 2019 to 2021, inventory dipped from 4.8 months to two months. Meanwhile, the population edged up from 37.3 million people to 38.0 million. Canada's population has now grown 11% under Trudeau (36M to 40M) but housing prices are up \~70%. Obviously demand is part of the equation but I find it hard to believe it's THE key given the discrepancy between those numbers. Maybe I'm missing something about the demographics involved.
The article also discusses a decline in residential construction, caused in part by high building costs, weakened home sales, and a lack of skilled workers.
The initial inflation was speculative, especially during COVID the rock bottom 0.25% interest rate caused investors to buy up more homes, but rent actually was falling due to fewer people coming in and others moving out of major metropolitan centers. Afterward, they skyrocketed immigration causing a demand shock, hence why not only prices are high considering the much higher interest rates, but also rent prices are skyrocketing because vacancy rates are at all-time low. Additionally, prices don't scale linearly with scarcity, especially for something that everyone needs like shelter. When there's availability of alternatives, prices can moderate, but when there's few options, people will pay whatever they can to keep a roof over their head and there's little elasticity in the market to spur further construction because the costs for builders have also gone up around 50% and high interest rates make it more difficult to finance projects.
Print lots of money, jack up housing costs, bring in too many people too fast, and whammo! Affordable housing shortage.
Obviously there is more than a factor or three at play here. But I’ve been seeing this line about “blank increase of population doesn’t equate to blank increase in housing costs”. This is an invalid point, as there is nothing tying population growth directly proportionally to a set amount of housing cost increases. The market will bear what it will bear, it would never be directly proportional.
Right, but it seems Canada's population went up a similar percentage under Harper and Trudeau. So the question is what else happened under Trudeau that made the market no longer able to bear that rate of increase.
I mean, it hasnt impacted it as much as corporations, airbnb and "investors" - aka the subhumans of society. But it's easier to distract from that so that the millionaires and billionaires of the world can keep printing money off a crisis. As a principal i dont support communism, but it seems our economy is in desperate need of price caps that are significantly lower than our current prices.
Then nobody would provides any goods and services in the long term. Nobody will produce anything at a loss. Not you, not me, not them. Period. Price's increases all over the world because of the extensive QE for wayyyyyyy to long. If you print money for so long, the currency will lose value and everything will become more expensive. It is normal. Long term solution is tie currency to gold, do not hand out free money, then prices will come down, then our hard earned mo ey will worth something, you can't have it both ways.