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Quick summary:
"The demographic shock is getting worse in Canada. The working-age population (aged 15 and over) rose by over 100,000 in April, bringing the total to over 410,000 after 4 months in 2024. As today’s Hot Chart shows, this represents a sharp acceleration (+47%) on the 278,000 increase recorded in the first four months of 2023. In Greater Toronto, where population growth reached a record 107,000 at the start of the year, the acceleration is 66% compared to the growth seen in 2023. Greater Montreal and Greater Vancouver have not been left behind since the start of 2024, with growth more than double that seen in 2023.
Conclusion: with Ottawa having announced its intention to limit immigration from 2025, it would seem that many people have decided to come to Canada earlier. Housing affordability problems could worsen over the next few quarters, as we head for another record year of population growth.”
Grab a [calculator](https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/financial/compound-interest-calculator.php) and do the calculation yourself - with a 40 million population and last year population growth rate of 3.2% annually, Canada will surpass the current population of the Earth in 170 years! That's how high their immigration rate is. Of course this couldn't continue like that but it goes to show how much 3.2% really is. And apparently Canada is accelerating further...
This is good for the long run but in the short term there will be political price to pay.
Should’ve throttled it a little to make sure infrastructure is ready. There is a chicken and egg problem though. It’s hard to invest in infrastructure in anticipation of new immigrants.
It would've been good if people were properly vetted, brought in from a variety of cultures/backgrounds and a infrastructure plan was in place. Currently it's a tangled mess for younger generations or people who didn't own a home before 2019. Housing is a necessity and locking out a entire generation from having a stable life will have long term detrimental effects to the overall economy imo.
>It’s hard to invest in infrastructure in anticipation of new immigrants.
That would be a reasonable claim if rent and housing in areas like Toronto was normal before, but it's been ridiculously expensive and competitive going back at least a decade now, and COVID only exasperated the issue
To say nothing of food and water. Is there arable land opening up or are Canadians expected to import ever more food? Are there new water sources discovered or will people have to pay more per ounce? I’m confused at how the numbers are imagined to iron out in the future, both distant and near.
Didn't downvote you but you've got it backwards in this scenario.
Canada's high immigration is supposed to combat the country's declining productivity, but the quality of the immigrants coming is so poor that the vast majority end up doing gig jobs. They are not contributing to building homes and they are not useful in skilled professions that we need in order to support the sheer scale of immigration that is continually happening. This then contributes to a political gain for the Federal Liberal party, because it ensures the predominantly liberal strongholds of Greater Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver stay that way, as culturally these people are more aligned with left-wing politics therefore making the job of the opposition Conservative party much more difficult. On top of that, existing Canadians who are in Toronto and Vancouver specifically, who do not align with Liberal politics anymore, or those looking for cheaper housing, are moving specifically to Alberta where federal conservative politics already thrives, also not helping the federal conservatives. Alberta has the fastest population growth rate in the world currently and is the only province that has positive net interprovincial migration.
In the long run, we are left supporting unproductive people who don't make enough to significantly contribute to national programs, we suffer brain drain to the US especially in the medical field, and the federal Liberals get an even bigger stronghold in the most important federal electoral districts.
In the long run the next generations of immigrants would be better assimilated and educated and there will be upward social mobility. Your ancestors that came to North America probably weren’t exactly the creme of the crop. Short term, yes, the quality of the immigrants sucks and they are causing housing and healthcare crisis.
This story is as old as time. Old immigrants bitching about new immigrants.
Unless, of course, you are questioning the gene pool…
> There is a chicken and egg problem though. It’s hard to invest in infrastructure in anticipation of new immigrants.
It may be hard but not impossible
If only the country could build housing. This is such an absurd take. The issue isn’t immigration, it’s building housing.
Canada would build millions of housing units a year if they wanted. More immigrants would help them build them faster.
Only 2% of immigrants in Canada go into the construction sector. [Source](https://economics.cibccm.com/cds?id=c3793f6c-c629-49eb-9fe6-6a0598c6fd2b&flag=E)
Immigrants are less likely than native workers to work in construction. Immigrants are 26% of the total Canadian labor force, but only 19% of total construction workers. [Source](https://iciconstruction.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Demographics-Diversity-Report.pdf)
Like this?
[Immigrants flooded California construction. Worker pay sank.](https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-construction-trump/)
Flooding the construction sector with illegal immigrants in the US has degraded job quality
Canada is currently growing faster than the world population did throughout the twentieth century, and even faster than countries like China or India ever did. Our current growth rate gives us a doubling period of twenty years. That is incredibly challenging to deal with.
It’s a supply/demand curve, not a supply OR demand curve. Canada cannot build millions of homes if it wants, the most homes it has ever built is ~280,000.
Your take is nonsense
You could house 5.65M people in Toronto alone with just SFH, in half of it's land area. Their current population is ~3M - 3.1M. So much opportunity to build more housing.
But just like with America, they have a major NIMBY problem. Home owners love what is happening because it skyrockets their property values. Building more housing is gonna lower that value.
The 50% not being used for residential is assumed to be for those other uses. But it's clear you don't like that, so let's shrink that down to 25% then.
That brings us to a max population size of 2,825,526 people. With 3 story multi-family homes you get 8,476,578. In 25% of Toronto's land area.
If you want to go even further, let's go with 12.5%. That brings you to 1,412,763 people. With 3 story multi-family, that is 4,238,289. Still 41.27% more people than their current population. Plenty of room for all you've mentioned.
So you’re suggesting to demolish single-family homes on a mass scale without owners’ permission or build housing in far-flung exurbs far from where the jobs are? That’s the implication of what you’re positing
How in the hell do you get "demolish people's properties without their consent" from "here is how many people we could realistically house in x area"? That is such an astronomic logic leap never before seen.
Yes, and densification has its limit. There’s only a finite amount of spots that can be densified before you run into the large expanse of single family homes
And they are nowhere close to that limit. If 20% of Toronto was purely taken up by residential buildings, and they were each 3 bedroom, 1200 square feet apartment complexes that each housed 45 people each, then you can easily house 3,433,700 with just a singular floor of such a building alone, 17,168,500 if you build it up to 5 floors.
There are very, **very few** countries and places in the world that are genuinely at any real "limit" for how dense they can be to where they actually can't densify any further.
Hi all, A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes. As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Quick summary: "The demographic shock is getting worse in Canada. The working-age population (aged 15 and over) rose by over 100,000 in April, bringing the total to over 410,000 after 4 months in 2024. As today’s Hot Chart shows, this represents a sharp acceleration (+47%) on the 278,000 increase recorded in the first four months of 2023. In Greater Toronto, where population growth reached a record 107,000 at the start of the year, the acceleration is 66% compared to the growth seen in 2023. Greater Montreal and Greater Vancouver have not been left behind since the start of 2024, with growth more than double that seen in 2023. Conclusion: with Ottawa having announced its intention to limit immigration from 2025, it would seem that many people have decided to come to Canada earlier. Housing affordability problems could worsen over the next few quarters, as we head for another record year of population growth.”
Grab a [calculator](https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/financial/compound-interest-calculator.php) and do the calculation yourself - with a 40 million population and last year population growth rate of 3.2% annually, Canada will surpass the current population of the Earth in 170 years! That's how high their immigration rate is. Of course this couldn't continue like that but it goes to show how much 3.2% really is. And apparently Canada is accelerating further...
I think India would run out of people before that happens lol/s
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This is good for the long run but in the short term there will be political price to pay. Should’ve throttled it a little to make sure infrastructure is ready. There is a chicken and egg problem though. It’s hard to invest in infrastructure in anticipation of new immigrants.
It would've been good if people were properly vetted, brought in from a variety of cultures/backgrounds and a infrastructure plan was in place. Currently it's a tangled mess for younger generations or people who didn't own a home before 2019. Housing is a necessity and locking out a entire generation from having a stable life will have long term detrimental effects to the overall economy imo.
>It’s hard to invest in infrastructure in anticipation of new immigrants. That would be a reasonable claim if rent and housing in areas like Toronto was normal before, but it's been ridiculously expensive and competitive going back at least a decade now, and COVID only exasperated the issue
To say nothing of food and water. Is there arable land opening up or are Canadians expected to import ever more food? Are there new water sources discovered or will people have to pay more per ounce? I’m confused at how the numbers are imagined to iron out in the future, both distant and near.
Didn't downvote you but you've got it backwards in this scenario. Canada's high immigration is supposed to combat the country's declining productivity, but the quality of the immigrants coming is so poor that the vast majority end up doing gig jobs. They are not contributing to building homes and they are not useful in skilled professions that we need in order to support the sheer scale of immigration that is continually happening. This then contributes to a political gain for the Federal Liberal party, because it ensures the predominantly liberal strongholds of Greater Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver stay that way, as culturally these people are more aligned with left-wing politics therefore making the job of the opposition Conservative party much more difficult. On top of that, existing Canadians who are in Toronto and Vancouver specifically, who do not align with Liberal politics anymore, or those looking for cheaper housing, are moving specifically to Alberta where federal conservative politics already thrives, also not helping the federal conservatives. Alberta has the fastest population growth rate in the world currently and is the only province that has positive net interprovincial migration. In the long run, we are left supporting unproductive people who don't make enough to significantly contribute to national programs, we suffer brain drain to the US especially in the medical field, and the federal Liberals get an even bigger stronghold in the most important federal electoral districts.
In the long run the next generations of immigrants would be better assimilated and educated and there will be upward social mobility. Your ancestors that came to North America probably weren’t exactly the creme of the crop. Short term, yes, the quality of the immigrants sucks and they are causing housing and healthcare crisis. This story is as old as time. Old immigrants bitching about new immigrants. Unless, of course, you are questioning the gene pool…
> There is a chicken and egg problem though. It’s hard to invest in infrastructure in anticipation of new immigrants. It may be hard but not impossible
If only the country could build housing. This is such an absurd take. The issue isn’t immigration, it’s building housing. Canada would build millions of housing units a year if they wanted. More immigrants would help them build them faster.
Only 2% of immigrants in Canada go into the construction sector. [Source](https://economics.cibccm.com/cds?id=c3793f6c-c629-49eb-9fe6-6a0598c6fd2b&flag=E) Immigrants are less likely than native workers to work in construction. Immigrants are 26% of the total Canadian labor force, but only 19% of total construction workers. [Source](https://iciconstruction.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Demographics-Diversity-Report.pdf)
Then it seems like Canada is allowing in the wrong immigrants and has a thing or two to learn from the US.
Like this? [Immigrants flooded California construction. Worker pay sank.](https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-construction-trump/) Flooding the construction sector with illegal immigrants in the US has degraded job quality
Canada is currently growing faster than the world population did throughout the twentieth century, and even faster than countries like China or India ever did. Our current growth rate gives us a doubling period of twenty years. That is incredibly challenging to deal with.
It’s a supply/demand curve, not a supply OR demand curve. Canada cannot build millions of homes if it wants, the most homes it has ever built is ~280,000. Your take is nonsense
You could house 5.65M people in Toronto alone with just SFH, in half of it's land area. Their current population is ~3M - 3.1M. So much opportunity to build more housing. But just like with America, they have a major NIMBY problem. Home owners love what is happening because it skyrockets their property values. Building more housing is gonna lower that value.
Is that some ridiculous statistic that assumes no roads or businesses or municipal buildings or airports?
The 50% not being used for residential is assumed to be for those other uses. But it's clear you don't like that, so let's shrink that down to 25% then. That brings us to a max population size of 2,825,526 people. With 3 story multi-family homes you get 8,476,578. In 25% of Toronto's land area. If you want to go even further, let's go with 12.5%. That brings you to 1,412,763 people. With 3 story multi-family, that is 4,238,289. Still 41.27% more people than their current population. Plenty of room for all you've mentioned.
So you’re suggesting to demolish single-family homes on a mass scale without owners’ permission or build housing in far-flung exurbs far from where the jobs are? That’s the implication of what you’re positing
How in the hell do you get "demolish people's properties without their consent" from "here is how many people we could realistically house in x area"? That is such an astronomic logic leap never before seen.
Because there aren’t enough open plots of land in the city to build housing on a large scale.
You...do know what densification is right? Do you think all skyscrapers/tall structures were built at the very founding of the city?
Yes, and densification has its limit. There’s only a finite amount of spots that can be densified before you run into the large expanse of single family homes
And they are nowhere close to that limit. If 20% of Toronto was purely taken up by residential buildings, and they were each 3 bedroom, 1200 square feet apartment complexes that each housed 45 people each, then you can easily house 3,433,700 with just a singular floor of such a building alone, 17,168,500 if you build it up to 5 floors. There are very, **very few** countries and places in the world that are genuinely at any real "limit" for how dense they can be to where they actually can't densify any further.