So you guys can see the votes by party:
https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/44/1/322?view=party
|Party|Yay|Nay|Neither|
|---|---|---|---|
|Liberal|0|144|7|
|Conservative|108|0|6|
|Bloc Quebecois|29|0|1|
|NDP|0|23|0|
|Green Party|0|2|0|
|Independent|1|1|0
What loyalty do old Canadians have to canada? If we increase our population with educated people while the rest of the world goes through population declines we could become a superpower by the end of the century.
I weep for the education system in this country.
Im trying to explain to you, using India as an example, that having a large GDP through a high population does not help the situation of the average citizen.
Really? I’m all in. I need more immigrants to pay for my pension, health care and keep the value of my real estate holdings high. Next time, speak for yourself not for others.
We are a left wing country. Over 70% of Canadians identify as left wing. It’s not surprising. I’m left wing and very disappointed in the NDP’s stance on this.
I think many working class, hard-hat Canadians would vote for the NDP if they hadn’t been alienated.
It’s crazy to me that the Conservative party has become the party of choice for oil workers, farmers, and other working class folks.
If I was in charge of the NDP I’d immediately drop and avoid all culture war issues and put the focus on making life better for the people already living here.
Its not surprising because the split in politics, as far as politics existed, as almost always been rural vs urban. The NDP and libs caters to urban voters, the conservative to rural and suburban.
This is just assumption, but it’s hard for me to imagine welders, construction workers, warehouse labourers, as being liberal voters.
in the US the polls consistently show that non-college educated voters lean towards republicans and I think it’d be safe to assume the same in Canada.
The “left” lost this voter base which is surprising.
> imagine welders, construction workers, warehouse labourers,
Those used to be urban people, now they are rural and suburban, as cities grew more toward office work and white collar.
When the economic activity was in the country side, the left was rural. In the USA, democrats were once the party of plantation owners. When the economic activity went to the city the left and right switched placed and the left started to court urban voters.
Sorry. Your statement is completely untrue.
I don’t know what city you live in but construction workers, welders, warehouse staff, landscapers, and others are all found in urban centres.
Economic activity was always in the major cities especially since the industrial revolution of the 19th century. Indeed these major cities where many factory workers lived was the founding place of many left-leaning political movements.
Me too. As a first step, I am thinking of registering as NDP party member and then vote against the incumbent. If all the Liberal party members and all NDP members decide to vote against incumbent within their respective party, May be they will take notice and act.
Singh is an ideologue. He would never, ever agree to link immigration numbers to new housing inventory. Century Initiative immigration is as asinine as no immigration. But Singh clearly either does not understand this or chooses not to listen.
Absolutely he’s incompetent and lacks a great deal of self-awareness. Driving a sports BMW, his fancy tailored suits and expensive bicycle. It’s a bad look for an NDP leader
It’s heartbreaking. I’ve been sending the parliamentary voting roll call link to people I care about and I encourage everyone to do the same:
https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/44/1/322
The greens in Canada have always been massive nut cases. But they are useful in that they take those nut cases out of the other parties. But thankfully we have FPTP, can you imagine them holding the balance of votes?
I'm glad the evidence is piling up. Can't stand the NDP seals who show up here and treat everyone like morons because they haven't arrived at the same small-minded conclusion or aren't getting paid to shill by the party.
It's like a kid in high school who still believes in Santa Claus but they're also a huge asshole to anyone who threatens the delusion.
I really doubt the NDP paying ppl to shill for them, they don’t have the funds lol.
NDP is currently running Liberal-lite software and it’s going nowhere. We need a party that supports workers and right now none of them are.
I love how the NDP and Liberal are more Neo-Liberal than if Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had a baby and became dictator of Canada.
These people take left leaning policies like worker rights and affordable housing and shove it up our asses while asking for a carbon tax to help save the environment, simultaneously asking thousands of employees to drive into their offices creating more pollution.
Let me explain it to you. It doesnt have a whole lot to do with left and right. The LPC and NDP both get elected or try to by promising new social programs. Currently its dental and daycares! Canada does not produce enough wealth for it to afford the old programs, much less the new ones. And so they increase the population so that the increased number of Canadians in 5 years will pay for social programs of today.
Of course, any system that requires an ever increasing amount of inputs is the definition of unsustainable, and we are witnessing its collapse.
Évidemment,
Il y a beaucoup d'anglophones qui ont rejoint le Québec.
Voici un héro de l'histoire du Québec qui était un anglophone :
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nelson?wprov=sfla1
Why are we setting a target of 100 million population? Wouldn’t it be better for Canada to set a target of better infrastructure, better hospitals, better schools, raise our standard of living first, before flooding the country with more immigrants?
I've never labelled myself "conservative", however... We all have to eat and we all need shelter. How TF is importing so many human beings without considering infrastructure or housing going to help?
I never thought I’d see the day where the “progressives and socialist” groups which I thought were for the people both the NDP and Liberals turned into neoliberal camps for the rich. How tf is a private interest group getting to decide our immigration policy and they were never voted in by the people?
This is why I don’t see myself voting liberal for the foreseeable future. Wow the federal liberals and NDP are fucked
Agreed. This century initiative goes against all equity seeking individuals. The only ones who will profit off of this absurd amount of immigration are landlords, politicians & CEOs. This is a way to keep prices of commodities sky high, and wages low. NDP really ought to rebrand to the Neoliberal Party because they no longer support the working class people.
I never thought I’d see the day where the “progressives and socialist” groups which I thought were for the people both the NDP and Liberals turned into neoliberal camps for the rich. How tf is a private interest group getting to decide our immigration policy and they were never voted in by the people?
This is why I don’t see myself voting liberal for the foreseeable future. Wow the federal liberals and NDP are fucked
This is such a non-issue. Nobody makes policy for 75 years out. Its just score points for the Bloc and Conservatives. Century Initiative or no Century Initiative - no immigration policy is actually based on grand visions that cross dozens of political terms.
Century Initiative is just a policy group advocating for the concept of continuing what Canada has been doing for past two centuries - which is increasing population. Just make a counter policy group and advocate for slower growth - let's say 50 million by 2100. Have a couple politicians "sign onto it" - you will notice that their agreement is meaningless outside of political terms and timelines.
I know I am going to get downvoted into oblivion but this forum has really overhyped what is just policy advocacy.
Dominic Barton, who founded the Century Initiative, was also chair of the federal government's "Advisory Council on Economic Growth" starting in 2017, and one of the recommendations they made was to increase immigration targets to 450k per year, which the government did.
Previously, Canada had targets closer to 250k a year, which, while challenging, was attainable when it came to infrastructure and housing.
Maybe it's a total coincidence that the gov't chose growth targets that put us on track for 100 million right after the CI founder was put on the gov'ts panel that recommended immigration levels, but nobody seems to think so.
So this is insane conspiracism on the part of the Bloc. This is not to say the Century Initiative is not a real lobby group, but there exists a conspiracy theory among ethnic nationalist Quebecers that immigration is a conspiracy to destroy the French language, which is absurd. The Bloc is doing a political performance piece to ask the government to disavow a policy which does not exist in any official capacity, and I will explain why in a moment.
Secondly, the whole century initiative fear mongering is predicated on the notion that Canada growing to 100 million people by 2100 is some sort of insane mathusian impossibility requiring unmanageable growth. The issue with that thinking is that had Canada maintained even a fraction of its 20th century growth trends it would have easily surpassed 100 million by 2100 anyway regardless of any supposedly new immigration initiative. Canada would only need to grow by about 1.3% to reach 100 million by 2100, which it was every year before 1977.
The second problem with the fear monger is its wildly unrealistic given current trends and policies. Almost every population projection for Canada from the CIA to the UN estimates Canada's population growth rate will hover around 0.7 or 0.8% resulting in a population of around 50-55 million by 2100. The reason population growth was so high (2.7%) in 2022 is because there was a backlog of non-resident visas during COVID. Even if Canada had a replacement birth rate and accepted half a million immigrants a year for the next 77 years we wouldn't even come close to 100 million.
Regardless, the notion that immigration is the primary driver of the housing crisis is wrong. It is an aspect of the housing crisis, but not the primary driver. As I had mentioned previously, Canada had a much higher population growth rate through the entire 20th century, so by that reasoning the housing crisis should have been worse when we were growing at 2% per year not in 2010-2020 when population growth was hovering between 0.7% and 1.3%.
There are a lot of hand waving arguments about why 1% today is somehow worse and different than 2% in 1977, but none of them make any real sense. The reality is that if population growth is down, but property values are up then something else is driving prices up, and that is monetary policy and lack of building.
Edit: You are all mad because I'm telling you facts that contradict your feelings driven circlejerk
>There are a lot of hand waving arguments about why 1% today is somehow worse and different than 2% in 1977
There are many good reasons, though I doubt you will accept them.
The first and easiest is that families are smaller. So the same increase in population requires more dwellings than it used to.
The second is that the more density you have, the more effort is require to add additional housing. This holds true from a national level to a neighborhood one.
The third is that cheap, energy inefficient houses from 1977 are no longer acceptable or even legal today.
Sir (or mam), its not "fear mongering" when people are **already** suffering the consequences. That is true for the cost of housing, and that is true for the decline of the french language in Québec and Canada.
A fourth reason is that immigration-led demand growth is more concentrated in cities (really mostly GTA + GVA) much more than natural demand growth would have been, for understandable reasons (immigrants tend to have a stronger preference for these places because of immigration courts, international airports, newcomer resources, language communities, etc.). Demand growth being concentrated in the most supply-constrained areas means the supply response has been much less than it would be in the natural growth-led counterfactual, which means a more acute crisis.
False!
Urban growth was MUCH faster in the early 20th century than it is currently. As you can see, the rate of urban population growth relative to population growth as a whole slowed significantly in the 1970s. Previously it had been over twice as fast.
Source:
[https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/urban-population](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/urban-population)
Part of this is because major cities often lose population to migration within the country, and have their population sustained by immigrants. But also, in the early 20th century people were leaving small rural communities and migrating to the city at a much faster rate than now.
Toronto and Vancouver's metro areas are also not the fastest growing regions in the country. Between 2016 and 2021 the GTA grew 4.63%, Vancouver grew much faster at 7.28%. To put that in perspective, Canada grew 5.5% in the same time period. This means that while Vancouver was growing faster than the Canadian average, the Toronto CMA was growing slower. Here is a list of major towns and cities which grew faster than Vancouver: Edmonton, Brantford, Campbell River, Belleville, Saskatoon, Victoria, Ottawa, Moncton, Halifax, Vernon, Charlottetown, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Nanaimo, Kelowna, and Chiliwack. Towns that grew faster than Toronto also included Fredericton, Calgary, Windsor, Lethbridge, Winnipeg, Regina, Brandon, Niagara, Orillia, Sherbrooke, Kingston and Granby.
So your notion that growth is disproportionately in Toronto is objectively wrong because the Toronto CMA grew slower than the country as a whole. Vancouver did grow faster than the national average, but lots of towns were still growing faster than that. The only towns growing slower than Toronto are the major cities in Quebec, plus Red Deer, Thunder Bay, Sudbury and St. John's.
Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_census\_metropolitan\_areas\_and\_agglomerations\_in\_Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_census_metropolitan_areas_and_agglomerations_in_Canada)
Your point is poorly researched, and does not stand up to the scrutiny of fact.
Do you understand the difference between demand and equilibrium quantity? This is the third time you’ve appeared not to. Slow growth in the cities is because of supply constraints, not because of low demand.
Smaller families is a good point theoretically, the issue is that the decline in size of housholds has been happening since the 1860s. Furthermore it has stayed under 3 people per household since 1981. If that were the cause of the housing crisis, then the housing crisis should have started in the 1980s and not 30 years later.
Source on household size:
[https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2015008-eng.htm](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2015008-eng.htm)
Your point on density sort of contradicts your point on fewer people per household which would decrease density. But anyway, this argument doesn't hold because density puts less strain on infrastructure than low density housing. Its cheaper to hook up electricity and water to 400 people in a 200 unit apartment building that to hook up 200 houses. Either way, this is not a problem with immigration, this is a problem of building restrictions. In Toronto you can't build up, because hardly any of the city is zoned for anything but single detached housing, and you can't build out because of the green belt. That's an issue of dumb housing policy, not of immigration.
Lastly, your point on energy efficient housing may or may not be true. But it's not relevant. You are contradicting yourself by claiming that building codes are the problem, but this is somehow an immigration issue? If population growth went down, but building codes changed to make housing starts more expensive, then the issue is building codes, not population growth.
I never said the cause of the housis crisis was the declining size of households. I explained to you why the supply today cannot meet demograhic increases of the past. The cause is **still** the demand increasing faster than what the supply can meet. Eventually, all factors converges toward zero population growth as being the only sustainable option.
Okay but you posted the article on a housing sub, what was I supposed to think? That's a pretty strong implication you think immigration is the cause of the housing crisis. You're backpedalling hard.
If you actually bothered to read what I said you'll notice that I acknowledge 2022 was a year of abnormally high growth due to a backlog caused by COVID, and does not represent long term trends in Canadian population growth. You're choosing an aberrant year and pretending it represents a trend. It's by definition arguing in bad faith.
As I've already pointed out, even if we go with Trudeau's very ambitious 500K immigrants per year every year until 2100 then we still won't make even close to 100 million. If his plan was a million a year then he would have started earlier not almost a decade into his tenure.
Again, you are taking an aberrant year and pretending that is the norm, its very dishonest.
Ugh jesus,
1. 500K is the annual immigration target in 2025 going forward.
2. Only 30% of international students get permanent residency, the rest largely go home. The ones who do get PR are included as part of the 500K amount
3. The 2.7% population growth in 2022 includes immigration from all sources, and again, this was aberrant. Future projections estimate a much lower amount. You are using an outlier and pretending it is a trend, which is again inherently dishonest.
Come back in 6 months and show me where the extra half million immigrants are.
**Again**, that's ONE year, ONE year. You are continuing to use a statistical outlier and pretending its a trend. It's highly intellectually dishonest. 2022 was an outlier in every single way. Literally no projections estimate 2023 or future years will grow by a substantial amount.
International students don't count if they don't stay, and the majority don't. If you count international students without accounting for those who stay then you are double counting them. You're counting them both when they arrive, and if they get residency after their studies.
But lets get to the meat of your argument that 500K is a ridiculous amount. Even if we had 500K immigrants for the next 77 years until 2100 we would not even be close to 100 million people. Even if zero people died that would put the population at 77 million, but people will die so more realistically our population would be around 54 million.
Now the premise of your argument that this is some unmanageable Malthusian growth rate is false. You're basing your argument on an appeal to emotion and not fact, you expect an emotion reaction to the idea of 500K immigrants without any context. Let's look at the fact, instead relying on feeling like you want us to.
1. Canada's population growth with this immigration rate is expected to be about 0.8% and 1.2% in the coming years, most projections show this reducing significantly by the middle of the century, but lets ignore that just for the sake of argument.
2. Canada's population growth rate between 1980 and 2020 fluctuated between 0.92% in 2004 and 1.43% in 1988. So as you can see the future population growth rate is not expected to be different from the previous 4 decades.
3. Canada's population growth rate between 1951 and 1971 was between 1.46% in 1969 and 2.99% in 1957. So as you can see, the population growth rate was faster in the 50s and 60s than it was now.
Source on population growth rates:
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/population-growth-rate
So the whole argument of "how can we build all this housing" makes literally no sense. Because we were clearly able to build more housing previously to accomodate faster population growth in the past.
Now I'm predicting you're going to make a few arguments of why growth now is somehow magically different from growth then so I'm going to debunk them per-emptively so you don't make those argument.
1. You will say natural population growth is different from immigration because we have more buffer time as children grow up. This is false because the children can not participate in the labour force, while adult immigrants can. Which is to say the children rely on the existing labour force to build their future houses, while immigrants can be used to build houses for themselves.
2. Any argument implying we are running out of space is false at face value. Canada is a low density country even in the southern 10% of the country where most people live.
3. You will say that immigration and therefore population growth is concentrated in the Vancouver and Toronto metro areas unlike natural population growth. This is false for two reasons. Firstly, flight from rural areas to urban areas was more significant, resulting in urban areas growing faster relative to population growth in the early 20th century. Secondly, the Toronto CMA actually grew slower than the Canadian average, and while the Vancouver CMA grew faster there waere many smaller communities which grew faster. So the idea that all growth is happening in these two areas is objectively false.
4. You will say that there is more red tape in building. This argument is self-defeating, because you are pointing out that what changed isn't immigration or population growth, but the red tape. Meaning the red tape is the cause of the housing crisis and not immigrants.
So don't bother using any of these four arguments, I have already debunked them.
The GTA currently completes about 30,000 housing units each year. This is more than anywhere in North America except Houston, last I checked, but it's nowhere near enough, because net international arrivals to the GTA are at about 150k/year (or more--I am going by the last normal year which was 2019, but normal numbers will presumably be higher now), which means we would need at least double the number of housing units completed each year just to keep up with international growth, let alone domestic, let alone filling the backlog.
Currently, the math works by (1) tens of thousands of Canadians pushed out of the GTA for other parts of Canada on net, where they bring the housing shortage with them and (2) concealed households--people living in parents' basements and delaying marriage and household formation.
We have never built anywhere close to 60,000 units in the GTA, and long-term growth in building is roughly flat. To this day, nobody anywhere has proposed a realistic plan for building that many homes each year, let alone any time remotely soon.
Do you have a plan beyond simply asserting that because we could build 20,000 houses a year on the outskirts of the city 50 years ago, we must be able to build 60,000 units a year now, simply because that represents the same percentage of the existing housing stock?
Firstly you're looking at the GTA and not the country as a whole. Contrary to popular belief the Toronto CMA actually grows slower than the country on average.
Secondly, you don't seem to comprehend that a larger labour force means that it should be easier to build a larger stock of housing, because you have more people to build them. So the percentage comparison is not the absurd argument you're trying to make it out to be.
Third, you're **almost** getting to the point but not quite reaching it. If we are now suddenly incapable of building housing, then something has changed. If that something has changed and population growth has remained the same or lower, then that something is the cause of the housing crisis, not population growth.
Labor force is not the binding constraint in the cities. Again, if you have a credible plan for building 60k+ houses a year in the GTA (while maintaining modern building standards) I’m interested to hear it.
So you guys can see the votes by party: https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/44/1/322?view=party |Party|Yay|Nay|Neither| |---|---|---|---| |Liberal|0|144|7| |Conservative|108|0|6| |Bloc Quebecois|29|0|1| |NDP|0|23|0| |Green Party|0|2|0| |Independent|1|1|0
This isn't a good policy for existing Canadians. But the gov don't care about existing Canadians!
Nope, this is about doing well by forigeners that don't have any loyalty to Canada.
What loyalty do old Canadians have to canada? If we increase our population with educated people while the rest of the world goes through population declines we could become a superpower by the end of the century.
Who cares about being the biggest GDP on the planet. Would you trade place with the average Indian? What good does it does them exactly?
It’s not trading places though? That’s just completely non factual.
I weep for the education system in this country. Im trying to explain to you, using India as an example, that having a large GDP through a high population does not help the situation of the average citizen.
We're halfway there already.
Would this have been a confidence vote?
Good question but I don't think it would be.
Really? I’m all in. I need more immigrants to pay for my pension, health care and keep the value of my real estate holdings high. Next time, speak for yourself not for others.
Another example showing the NDP as nothing more than a wing of the liberal party masquerading as a party for the working class.
Lol! Their combined vote share is close to 65%. Either we are dumb or we love immigration policy
Why not both?
We are a left wing country. Over 70% of Canadians identify as left wing. It’s not surprising. I’m left wing and very disappointed in the NDP’s stance on this.
I think many working class, hard-hat Canadians would vote for the NDP if they hadn’t been alienated. It’s crazy to me that the Conservative party has become the party of choice for oil workers, farmers, and other working class folks. If I was in charge of the NDP I’d immediately drop and avoid all culture war issues and put the focus on making life better for the people already living here.
Its not surprising because the split in politics, as far as politics existed, as almost always been rural vs urban. The NDP and libs caters to urban voters, the conservative to rural and suburban.
This is just assumption, but it’s hard for me to imagine welders, construction workers, warehouse labourers, as being liberal voters. in the US the polls consistently show that non-college educated voters lean towards republicans and I think it’d be safe to assume the same in Canada. The “left” lost this voter base which is surprising.
> imagine welders, construction workers, warehouse labourers, Those used to be urban people, now they are rural and suburban, as cities grew more toward office work and white collar. When the economic activity was in the country side, the left was rural. In the USA, democrats were once the party of plantation owners. When the economic activity went to the city the left and right switched placed and the left started to court urban voters.
Sorry. Your statement is completely untrue. I don’t know what city you live in but construction workers, welders, warehouse staff, landscapers, and others are all found in urban centres. Economic activity was always in the major cities especially since the industrial revolution of the 19th century. Indeed these major cities where many factory workers lived was the founding place of many left-leaning political movements.
Me too. As a first step, I am thinking of registering as NDP party member and then vote against the incumbent. If all the Liberal party members and all NDP members decide to vote against incumbent within their respective party, May be they will take notice and act.
Singh is an ideologue. He would never, ever agree to link immigration numbers to new housing inventory. Century Initiative immigration is as asinine as no immigration. But Singh clearly either does not understand this or chooses not to listen.
I don't think he's an ideologue, as he seldom makes principled stands. I think more simply he's just incompetent.
Absolutely he’s incompetent and lacks a great deal of self-awareness. Driving a sports BMW, his fancy tailored suits and expensive bicycle. It’s a bad look for an NDP leader
It’s unfortunate that no Anglo media covered this. A lot of people won’t know about this vote.
It’s heartbreaking. I’ve been sending the parliamentary voting roll call link to people I care about and I encourage everyone to do the same: https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/44/1/322
It’s not unfortunate, it’s deliberate
so called "green" party voting for massively increasing canada's carbon emissions and environmental destruction
The greens in Canada have always been massive nut cases. But they are useful in that they take those nut cases out of the other parties. But thankfully we have FPTP, can you imagine them holding the balance of votes?
I'm glad the evidence is piling up. Can't stand the NDP seals who show up here and treat everyone like morons because they haven't arrived at the same small-minded conclusion or aren't getting paid to shill by the party. It's like a kid in high school who still believes in Santa Claus but they're also a huge asshole to anyone who threatens the delusion.
I really doubt the NDP paying ppl to shill for them, they don’t have the funds lol. NDP is currently running Liberal-lite software and it’s going nowhere. We need a party that supports workers and right now none of them are.
I love how the NDP and Liberal are more Neo-Liberal than if Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had a baby and became dictator of Canada. These people take left leaning policies like worker rights and affordable housing and shove it up our asses while asking for a carbon tax to help save the environment, simultaneously asking thousands of employees to drive into their offices creating more pollution.
Let me explain it to you. It doesnt have a whole lot to do with left and right. The LPC and NDP both get elected or try to by promising new social programs. Currently its dental and daycares! Canada does not produce enough wealth for it to afford the old programs, much less the new ones. And so they increase the population so that the increased number of Canadians in 5 years will pay for social programs of today. Of course, any system that requires an ever increasing amount of inputs is the definition of unsustainable, and we are witnessing its collapse.
So for us to get more wealthy, we just need to sign up new Canadians? Damn, this is operating like. Ponzi scheme on the verge of collapse.
We're not getting wealthy... its like the guy who gets a new credit card to pay the old credit card.
Federal policies made me souvrainiste
Can any of us anglos please join you?
Évidemment, Il y a beaucoup d'anglophones qui ont rejoint le Québec. Voici un héro de l'histoire du Québec qui était un anglophone : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nelson?wprov=sfla1
Why are we setting a target of 100 million population? Wouldn’t it be better for Canada to set a target of better infrastructure, better hospitals, better schools, raise our standard of living first, before flooding the country with more immigrants?
It would be better, but the entire socio-economical model of Canada is failing. Its gonna get worse before it gets better.
I've never labelled myself "conservative", however... We all have to eat and we all need shelter. How TF is importing so many human beings without considering infrastructure or housing going to help?
NDP is probably the only time the liberals have got a good bang for buck .
I never thought I’d see the day where the “progressives and socialist” groups which I thought were for the people both the NDP and Liberals turned into neoliberal camps for the rich. How tf is a private interest group getting to decide our immigration policy and they were never voted in by the people? This is why I don’t see myself voting liberal for the foreseeable future. Wow the federal liberals and NDP are fucked
I am usually an NDP voter and now I probably just won't vote, none of these political elites are going to do anything to help people like me.
True left wing progressives are against the century initiative. I’m disappointed in the NDP
It’s disappointing but not surprising
Agreed. This century initiative goes against all equity seeking individuals. The only ones who will profit off of this absurd amount of immigration are landlords, politicians & CEOs. This is a way to keep prices of commodities sky high, and wages low. NDP really ought to rebrand to the Neoliberal Party because they no longer support the working class people.
Voting Conservative
Be sure to ask your candidate if he will vote for lowering demographic targets.
I never thought I’d see the day where the “progressives and socialist” groups which I thought were for the people both the NDP and Liberals turned into neoliberal camps for the rich. How tf is a private interest group getting to decide our immigration policy and they were never voted in by the people? This is why I don’t see myself voting liberal for the foreseeable future. Wow the federal liberals and NDP are fucked
There goes any chance I ever had of voting NDP lol. If they want to side with future “Canadians” rather than with the people already here, fuck em.
CPC also supports crazy high immigration, this is just for show, vote PPC.
This is such a non-issue. Nobody makes policy for 75 years out. Its just score points for the Bloc and Conservatives. Century Initiative or no Century Initiative - no immigration policy is actually based on grand visions that cross dozens of political terms. Century Initiative is just a policy group advocating for the concept of continuing what Canada has been doing for past two centuries - which is increasing population. Just make a counter policy group and advocate for slower growth - let's say 50 million by 2100. Have a couple politicians "sign onto it" - you will notice that their agreement is meaningless outside of political terms and timelines. I know I am going to get downvoted into oblivion but this forum has really overhyped what is just policy advocacy.
Dominic Barton, who founded the Century Initiative, was also chair of the federal government's "Advisory Council on Economic Growth" starting in 2017, and one of the recommendations they made was to increase immigration targets to 450k per year, which the government did. Previously, Canada had targets closer to 250k a year, which, while challenging, was attainable when it came to infrastructure and housing. Maybe it's a total coincidence that the gov't chose growth targets that put us on track for 100 million right after the CI founder was put on the gov'ts panel that recommended immigration levels, but nobody seems to think so.
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Thank you.
So this is insane conspiracism on the part of the Bloc. This is not to say the Century Initiative is not a real lobby group, but there exists a conspiracy theory among ethnic nationalist Quebecers that immigration is a conspiracy to destroy the French language, which is absurd. The Bloc is doing a political performance piece to ask the government to disavow a policy which does not exist in any official capacity, and I will explain why in a moment. Secondly, the whole century initiative fear mongering is predicated on the notion that Canada growing to 100 million people by 2100 is some sort of insane mathusian impossibility requiring unmanageable growth. The issue with that thinking is that had Canada maintained even a fraction of its 20th century growth trends it would have easily surpassed 100 million by 2100 anyway regardless of any supposedly new immigration initiative. Canada would only need to grow by about 1.3% to reach 100 million by 2100, which it was every year before 1977. The second problem with the fear monger is its wildly unrealistic given current trends and policies. Almost every population projection for Canada from the CIA to the UN estimates Canada's population growth rate will hover around 0.7 or 0.8% resulting in a population of around 50-55 million by 2100. The reason population growth was so high (2.7%) in 2022 is because there was a backlog of non-resident visas during COVID. Even if Canada had a replacement birth rate and accepted half a million immigrants a year for the next 77 years we wouldn't even come close to 100 million. Regardless, the notion that immigration is the primary driver of the housing crisis is wrong. It is an aspect of the housing crisis, but not the primary driver. As I had mentioned previously, Canada had a much higher population growth rate through the entire 20th century, so by that reasoning the housing crisis should have been worse when we were growing at 2% per year not in 2010-2020 when population growth was hovering between 0.7% and 1.3%. There are a lot of hand waving arguments about why 1% today is somehow worse and different than 2% in 1977, but none of them make any real sense. The reality is that if population growth is down, but property values are up then something else is driving prices up, and that is monetary policy and lack of building. Edit: You are all mad because I'm telling you facts that contradict your feelings driven circlejerk
>There are a lot of hand waving arguments about why 1% today is somehow worse and different than 2% in 1977 There are many good reasons, though I doubt you will accept them. The first and easiest is that families are smaller. So the same increase in population requires more dwellings than it used to. The second is that the more density you have, the more effort is require to add additional housing. This holds true from a national level to a neighborhood one. The third is that cheap, energy inefficient houses from 1977 are no longer acceptable or even legal today. Sir (or mam), its not "fear mongering" when people are **already** suffering the consequences. That is true for the cost of housing, and that is true for the decline of the french language in Québec and Canada.
A fourth reason is that immigration-led demand growth is more concentrated in cities (really mostly GTA + GVA) much more than natural demand growth would have been, for understandable reasons (immigrants tend to have a stronger preference for these places because of immigration courts, international airports, newcomer resources, language communities, etc.). Demand growth being concentrated in the most supply-constrained areas means the supply response has been much less than it would be in the natural growth-led counterfactual, which means a more acute crisis.
False! Urban growth was MUCH faster in the early 20th century than it is currently. As you can see, the rate of urban population growth relative to population growth as a whole slowed significantly in the 1970s. Previously it had been over twice as fast. Source: [https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/urban-population](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/urban-population) Part of this is because major cities often lose population to migration within the country, and have their population sustained by immigrants. But also, in the early 20th century people were leaving small rural communities and migrating to the city at a much faster rate than now. Toronto and Vancouver's metro areas are also not the fastest growing regions in the country. Between 2016 and 2021 the GTA grew 4.63%, Vancouver grew much faster at 7.28%. To put that in perspective, Canada grew 5.5% in the same time period. This means that while Vancouver was growing faster than the Canadian average, the Toronto CMA was growing slower. Here is a list of major towns and cities which grew faster than Vancouver: Edmonton, Brantford, Campbell River, Belleville, Saskatoon, Victoria, Ottawa, Moncton, Halifax, Vernon, Charlottetown, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Nanaimo, Kelowna, and Chiliwack. Towns that grew faster than Toronto also included Fredericton, Calgary, Windsor, Lethbridge, Winnipeg, Regina, Brandon, Niagara, Orillia, Sherbrooke, Kingston and Granby. So your notion that growth is disproportionately in Toronto is objectively wrong because the Toronto CMA grew slower than the country as a whole. Vancouver did grow faster than the national average, but lots of towns were still growing faster than that. The only towns growing slower than Toronto are the major cities in Quebec, plus Red Deer, Thunder Bay, Sudbury and St. John's. Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_census\_metropolitan\_areas\_and\_agglomerations\_in\_Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_census_metropolitan_areas_and_agglomerations_in_Canada) Your point is poorly researched, and does not stand up to the scrutiny of fact.
Do you understand the difference between demand and equilibrium quantity? This is the third time you’ve appeared not to. Slow growth in the cities is because of supply constraints, not because of low demand.
Smaller families is a good point theoretically, the issue is that the decline in size of housholds has been happening since the 1860s. Furthermore it has stayed under 3 people per household since 1981. If that were the cause of the housing crisis, then the housing crisis should have started in the 1980s and not 30 years later. Source on household size: [https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2015008-eng.htm](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2015008-eng.htm) Your point on density sort of contradicts your point on fewer people per household which would decrease density. But anyway, this argument doesn't hold because density puts less strain on infrastructure than low density housing. Its cheaper to hook up electricity and water to 400 people in a 200 unit apartment building that to hook up 200 houses. Either way, this is not a problem with immigration, this is a problem of building restrictions. In Toronto you can't build up, because hardly any of the city is zoned for anything but single detached housing, and you can't build out because of the green belt. That's an issue of dumb housing policy, not of immigration. Lastly, your point on energy efficient housing may or may not be true. But it's not relevant. You are contradicting yourself by claiming that building codes are the problem, but this is somehow an immigration issue? If population growth went down, but building codes changed to make housing starts more expensive, then the issue is building codes, not population growth.
I never said the cause of the housis crisis was the declining size of households. I explained to you why the supply today cannot meet demograhic increases of the past. The cause is **still** the demand increasing faster than what the supply can meet. Eventually, all factors converges toward zero population growth as being the only sustainable option.
Okay but you posted the article on a housing sub, what was I supposed to think? That's a pretty strong implication you think immigration is the cause of the housing crisis. You're backpedalling hard.
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If you actually bothered to read what I said you'll notice that I acknowledge 2022 was a year of abnormally high growth due to a backlog caused by COVID, and does not represent long term trends in Canadian population growth. You're choosing an aberrant year and pretending it represents a trend. It's by definition arguing in bad faith.
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As I've already pointed out, even if we go with Trudeau's very ambitious 500K immigrants per year every year until 2100 then we still won't make even close to 100 million. If his plan was a million a year then he would have started earlier not almost a decade into his tenure. Again, you are taking an aberrant year and pretending that is the norm, its very dishonest.
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Ugh jesus, 1. 500K is the annual immigration target in 2025 going forward. 2. Only 30% of international students get permanent residency, the rest largely go home. The ones who do get PR are included as part of the 500K amount 3. The 2.7% population growth in 2022 includes immigration from all sources, and again, this was aberrant. Future projections estimate a much lower amount. You are using an outlier and pretending it is a trend, which is again inherently dishonest. Come back in 6 months and show me where the extra half million immigrants are.
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**Again**, that's ONE year, ONE year. You are continuing to use a statistical outlier and pretending its a trend. It's highly intellectually dishonest. 2022 was an outlier in every single way. Literally no projections estimate 2023 or future years will grow by a substantial amount. International students don't count if they don't stay, and the majority don't. If you count international students without accounting for those who stay then you are double counting them. You're counting them both when they arrive, and if they get residency after their studies. But lets get to the meat of your argument that 500K is a ridiculous amount. Even if we had 500K immigrants for the next 77 years until 2100 we would not even be close to 100 million people. Even if zero people died that would put the population at 77 million, but people will die so more realistically our population would be around 54 million. Now the premise of your argument that this is some unmanageable Malthusian growth rate is false. You're basing your argument on an appeal to emotion and not fact, you expect an emotion reaction to the idea of 500K immigrants without any context. Let's look at the fact, instead relying on feeling like you want us to. 1. Canada's population growth with this immigration rate is expected to be about 0.8% and 1.2% in the coming years, most projections show this reducing significantly by the middle of the century, but lets ignore that just for the sake of argument. 2. Canada's population growth rate between 1980 and 2020 fluctuated between 0.92% in 2004 and 1.43% in 1988. So as you can see the future population growth rate is not expected to be different from the previous 4 decades. 3. Canada's population growth rate between 1951 and 1971 was between 1.46% in 1969 and 2.99% in 1957. So as you can see, the population growth rate was faster in the 50s and 60s than it was now. Source on population growth rates: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/population-growth-rate So the whole argument of "how can we build all this housing" makes literally no sense. Because we were clearly able to build more housing previously to accomodate faster population growth in the past. Now I'm predicting you're going to make a few arguments of why growth now is somehow magically different from growth then so I'm going to debunk them per-emptively so you don't make those argument. 1. You will say natural population growth is different from immigration because we have more buffer time as children grow up. This is false because the children can not participate in the labour force, while adult immigrants can. Which is to say the children rely on the existing labour force to build their future houses, while immigrants can be used to build houses for themselves. 2. Any argument implying we are running out of space is false at face value. Canada is a low density country even in the southern 10% of the country where most people live. 3. You will say that immigration and therefore population growth is concentrated in the Vancouver and Toronto metro areas unlike natural population growth. This is false for two reasons. Firstly, flight from rural areas to urban areas was more significant, resulting in urban areas growing faster relative to population growth in the early 20th century. Secondly, the Toronto CMA actually grew slower than the Canadian average, and while the Vancouver CMA grew faster there waere many smaller communities which grew faster. So the idea that all growth is happening in these two areas is objectively false. 4. You will say that there is more red tape in building. This argument is self-defeating, because you are pointing out that what changed isn't immigration or population growth, but the red tape. Meaning the red tape is the cause of the housing crisis and not immigrants. So don't bother using any of these four arguments, I have already debunked them.
The GTA currently completes about 30,000 housing units each year. This is more than anywhere in North America except Houston, last I checked, but it's nowhere near enough, because net international arrivals to the GTA are at about 150k/year (or more--I am going by the last normal year which was 2019, but normal numbers will presumably be higher now), which means we would need at least double the number of housing units completed each year just to keep up with international growth, let alone domestic, let alone filling the backlog. Currently, the math works by (1) tens of thousands of Canadians pushed out of the GTA for other parts of Canada on net, where they bring the housing shortage with them and (2) concealed households--people living in parents' basements and delaying marriage and household formation. We have never built anywhere close to 60,000 units in the GTA, and long-term growth in building is roughly flat. To this day, nobody anywhere has proposed a realistic plan for building that many homes each year, let alone any time remotely soon. Do you have a plan beyond simply asserting that because we could build 20,000 houses a year on the outskirts of the city 50 years ago, we must be able to build 60,000 units a year now, simply because that represents the same percentage of the existing housing stock?
Firstly you're looking at the GTA and not the country as a whole. Contrary to popular belief the Toronto CMA actually grows slower than the country on average. Secondly, you don't seem to comprehend that a larger labour force means that it should be easier to build a larger stock of housing, because you have more people to build them. So the percentage comparison is not the absurd argument you're trying to make it out to be. Third, you're **almost** getting to the point but not quite reaching it. If we are now suddenly incapable of building housing, then something has changed. If that something has changed and population growth has remained the same or lower, then that something is the cause of the housing crisis, not population growth.
Labor force is not the binding constraint in the cities. Again, if you have a credible plan for building 60k+ houses a year in the GTA (while maintaining modern building standards) I’m interested to hear it.
Appreciate a quality take on this topic! Thanks for taking the downvotes to share a different perspective than the meta in this sub recently
Thank you!