From a housing perspective, yeah, there are currently too many. That's a policy failure not related to immigration itself though. The housing problem could be easily solved and then this level of immigration would make sense.
this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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I mean depends on how you define easily.
Even assuming infinite money, Canada has built roughly the same number of houses per year since the 90s. This means we have roughly the same number of skilled and experienced carpenters, roofers, plumbers, etc that work in new builds.
This means that if tomorrow we passed legislation eliminating every single bureaucratic red tape AND convinced developers to build everywhere they have land to do so, we would take years to catch up with the point where our houses:population ratio is back among the rest of the western world.
Just limiting how many properties a person/corporation can own would solve the problem alone. Tax should exponentially increase after 2+ properties.
Make coop housing viable, currently it's almost impossible to start one.
Gov should be building housing too, just like the ww2 houses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawberry_box_houses
In addition, feds should be building housing to house every single person, unconditionally. On the topic of homelessness it's the only way to reintegrate folks into society. Even if, say, 80% do nothing but shoot up in their free housing, it's still cheaper for taxpayers when you consider the cost of taking care of folks on the street and the problems that causes. And just by building housing stock you're making good entry level jobs that don't require university education.
And this may be controversial, but non-Canadians should pay a higher mortgage rate. Finland does this and they have probably the best housing situation on the planet. They are actually the ones who pioneered the idea of unconditionally housing everyone, IIRC.
Canada has built roughly the same number of houses per year since the 90s.
Yes but we also weren't taking 1 million newcomers per year in the 90s. If you want these immigration numbers you need to have a plan to make it work.
I can agree it would help, but we're at an all time low for housing to population. A Fraser institute study, so there's a definite conservative bias to their presentation and info, but it shows how long this has been coming.
In theory, we should be okay - Fraser report shows were at 424 housing units per capita, and most households are an average of 2.4 people, which means in theory wevs got enough housing.
But comparison to other countries show that, in general, we need about 10% more houses (closer to the 471 G7 average) in order to feel more balanced. Most other European countries have more
I agree with all your proposals, but they all require land/housing already built OR the people available to build them, and THAT would be the real bottleneck
Near me there are TONS of empty places, the developing is not the issue. Nobody can afford them. Hell I don't even own and the place next to me sat empty for 3 months because it was going at an absurd rent for the size.
Why would I build affordable housing? That just invites the poor. /s
There are a bunch of new apartments in my city's downtown (USA). They're all premium spaces. I can afford a spot, but I doubt most can.
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It's worth noting that government housing programs started scaling back in the 80s. Funny how that works, isn't it?
We don't have too many immigrants, we have too many houses being wasted as "InVeStMeNtS" and too many rich fucks not paying taxes choking out the economy and social services.
We donβt have too many investment properties (we do but thatβs not the issue)
We arenβt building up non-traditional cities
We are relying on private sector for housing
Road based civil planning
They only polled people that have such investments
Thanks, municipalities, by trying to persevere the character of your neighbourhoods, you've managed to destroy the character of Canada.
People are upset about immigrants because of housing. Housing is a problem because cities made it de jure illegal.
I think this is it. The survey points to rational thinking amongst the most severely affected, not a racist aversion.
They (upper class) want it to sound racist though. Immigration plus housing crunch is making people who own property incredibly rich
Ooooof, now that's a spicy conjecture! I don't think this is done consciously by most but it doesn't change the effects. π€
I think it's definitely done consciously by politicians though, as the majority of MPs are landlords
But immigrants make a good scapegoat.
The real story:
Just 10 per cent of Canadians who think there is too much immigration say their concern is that Canadians will become βa minorityβ in their own country. Only eight per cent say new immigrants donβt adhere to Canadian values and just four per cent believe that immigration is bringing criminals to the country. Eighteen per cent worry that immigrants are taking jobs from Canadians.
Yeah, but if we said "Half of Canadians are sick of late-stage capitalism's worst feature" it wouldn't go down as well with the people who buy and sell advertising.
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Woah those are some healthy looking numbers, ty
Most Canadians are not anti immigrants, they are anti housing crisis and anti healthcare strain. The former is the results of capitalist decision making/lobbying, latter is the results of cuts in government budget for healthcare (a favorite policy of libertarian/conservative parties) and extreme bureaucracy and aversion to innovative healthcare management designed for efficiency (this is a problem in many parts of the world, and we all know Canadian governments, provincial or federal, are not known for their efficiency).
The lack of technocrats in government is a massive issue. Holland (fed) and DubΓ© (QC) both worked in financial services before going into politics. Dix (BC) worked as a journalist, and it's unclear what Jones (ON) was doing before politics. Why aren't doctors, nurses, healthcare management experts (i.e., people who actually ran hospitals and worked with doctors) getting elected and taking those positions?
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And the other half arrived this year
Canada needs more people. It also needs more infrastructure.
Unfortunately Canada is doing a good job tackling #1, but a bad job tackling #2 because the financials work out to be just fine to do so.
Concerns over immigration are mostly about the economy
https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/new-immig.pdf
It is incorrect to think of economic activity as a limited resource that must be defended against the rapacious outsider. Economic activity is not only consumed by people, but also created by them. Value is a product of human labour. In fact, Canada should be looking to increase it's population rapidly so that the market that exists here can develop enough of a gravity of its own that we aren't so reliant on the US market.
Outsourcing and automation have been far, far more impactful with regards to wages. NAFTA (now CUSMA) as well has hollowed out a lot of our economy so that the only real growth sectors are resource extraction which feeds the US market, and real estate. Protectionism is a bit of a dirty word however I think it's necessary to develop industries where we can create value-added products out of our own natural resources, and ultimately build a much more varied and healthy economy. And we need far more people than we are birthing locally to do that.
The new economic activity created by human labor requires resources from nature. More metal for cars, more hair spray for hairdos. More concrete for buildings and more corn for cinemas. Economic activity can expand under conditions of no significant resource constraints. Unfortunately we've hit a resource constraint in the most in-demand locations - housing - due to all the known causes like zoning, etc. Regardless of the causes, it's a constraint that increases the costs across the economy and swallows value, but it is felt the most by the lower parts of the wage scale. It may be wise to balance that while solving the resource constraint in order to avoid destabilization. People will vote against the precarity of their housing situation whether it negatively affects other priorities or not and for a good reason. Keeping the roof over ones head in a country with non-functional safety nets against homelessness is top priority. And so the results of the survey sounds pretty rational to me. I think this sentiment would go away if we build a shit ton of non-market plattenbautens in the major metropolitan areas.
It's insane to me that anyone in Canada would hold this opinion given that our economy is on the verge of ruin due to the lack of available labour and the massive amount of retirees we have. Where do they think this money will come from?
We don't have a lack of labour. That's a myth the neoliberals are pushing to keep wages low. There's a lack of businesses who are willing to raise their wages to the point that people would be willing to work for them.
And keeping businesses dependent on sub-livable wage labor is problematic.
Exactly. We bring in immigrants because our economy is addicted to paying poverty wages. People will post the studies showing that immigration doesn't suppress the wages of good paying jobs as though that's a winning argument, but what they're ignoring is that that's because the economy has a built-in assumption that immigrants are all paid starvation wages.
That's an argument to end the exploitative TFW program and increase unionization rates. Not against immigration generally.
I agree. But that's not the approach the Liberal party is taking, and their approach deserves criticism.
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We are also in the middle of a housing crisis that has been developing for years. Canada is in a tough spot to agressively grow from immigration and many people feel like their quality of life is threatened by the economic conditions, housing crisis and healthcare crisis. It is understandable to be worried more people without the housing to support them could stress these systems further.
I agree, I wish we would target our housing crisis at the root, our outdated zoning laws. The laws only allow low density single family housing.
The ensures car dependency and adds additional cost.
Car dependancy is bleeding many cities dry. It is simply too expensive abd destructive to maintain at this scale.
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They've been told it's the fault of the others, the immigrants. And they believed that.
It's the same crew who supported the Karen Convoy of Needle-weenie Arsonists, those who flew the racist flags and blocked parliament and held up trade. Guns? Yep. Bigotry? Yep. Supported by the Conservative Party members? Yep.
Economics Explained recently did a video reviewing Canada's immigration policies. Most advanced economies have low birthrates and make up for it with immigration. Accepting an immigrant is (economically) much better than someone having a baby. A baby needs decades before it contributes to the economy. An immigrant is often educated and skilled in a desired field and will immediately contribute to the economy.
However, Canada might be the first country to stumble upon some downsides to immigration. Mainly, student visas might not contribute as much to the economy as once thought, Canadian immigrants leave to work in the US at incredibly high rates, and Canadian metropolitan cities are some of the most expensive to live in worldwide and immigration is exacerbating the issue (the issue isn't immigration though, it's a focus on building single detached family homes over high density housing).
Just don't scroll down into the comment section. It's mostly just people being racist. I sincerely hope those comments aren't coming from Canadians. (The channel also did a video on why African countries struggle economically a few days later and the comment section was even worse)
I don't disagree with the general claims you made, and I'm not commenting on the veracity of the specific linked video, but in general EE isn't a reputable source for economics knowledge or analysis. If that's news, check Money & Macro's critique on a couple of EEs videos. It's a clown show.
Unfortunately we have what is basically a MAGA crowd too. In fact, some of them are dumb enough to actually use the term and wear stuff with MAGA on it. Yes, technically Canada is part of America, but I bet if you ask them if it covers Mexico or South America, they would either have not even thought of that or be unsure how to answer, as it wasn't part of the videos they watched that made them mad.
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Since 1 in 4 Canadians is a first generation immigrant themselves, I'm wondering if this 50% figure represents 2/3 of all Canadian-born Canadians.
Or maybe some leopards eating faces is going on?
lol the irony
Fucking idiots.
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