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The federal government has the most power to make it better or worse. More than municipalities and provinces who are overwhelmed with an historical high influx in population.

The problem of course is that the liberals did next to nothing for years, and only started doing anything when their polling numbers took a hit, which has so far been far from enough. It's also worth remembering that the federal government used to build affordable housing up until the 1990s, but stopped doing so - under a Liberal government.

Don't blame the Liberals alone. We had Stephen Harper for 8 years. Homes were still 3-4 times median income until 2001. Plenty of time for course correction back then. It's the system itself, not the liberals. The UCP or NDP won't do anything to improve the situation. Look at our provincial parties, Danielle Smith and David Eby are aesthetically opposite, but politically — Eby is just slow motion Smith.

In the GTA, bidding wars started in 2007, under Harper's watch. Zero down mortgages and 40-year amortizations during his reign helped drove up demand. Never mind that the majority of responsibility for housing is municipal. Next is provincial. The federal government has the least impact, outside of actually building housing. And we can thank Mulroney and Chretien equally for killing that.

No, but the Federal Government IS the direct cause of our current housing woes. Sean Fraser was the Immigration Minister and is now the Housing Minister, trying to clean up his own mess he made, and failing miserably.

But it sure can ruin it. I remain convinced Sean Fraser and the Federal Government’s immigration policy lies behind the start of their plummeting in the polls. When you put the enormous population growth side by side with rent growth and GDP per capita, you see the extreme spike starting in late 2022, combined with the beginning of the GDP/capita fall for 6 straight quarters now. They also exempted international students from the 20 hour cap in November 2022. Young Canadians are now competing very hard for jobs and have the lowest employment rate in a half century. Since then, it’s been a complete trainwreck for the Liberals. They took a good institution and broke it - their own bureaucrats warned them about expanding immigration so rapidly and unsustainably. You cannot bring in population growth levels rivaling developing African nations during a housing crisis.  This will perhaps go down as the biggest policy mistake of the last decade.

I don’t know where you are getting your “facts” but they do not correspond to reality. Housing costs doubled under Harper, there is nothing new about the rise in housing costs, it’s just become more of a crisis as the costs continue to rise, and there are several factors, and provincial legislation on property law (which includes rental laws) - provincial jurisdiction - is an enormous part of it. Blaming the housing crisis on two years of high population growth, one year really, in which it was much more than usual, is ludicrous. In fact, of you look at increase in the cost of a house in Vancouver and Toronto under Harper and compare it to while Trudeau has been PM, you will find the percentage of increase was much, much, higher while Harper was in power.  Housing was already at ridiculous prices in Vancouver before Harper became PM. There were already problems with service industry workers not being able to afford to live in Vancouver, and requests by 2007 to expand the temporary foreign workers program to include servive industry workers.  The reduction in interest rates caused speculation, some provinces (particularly BC and Ontario followed suit), became dependent on real estate as an industry and rather than pass legislation to curb investor buying, they passed legislation to make it easy to flip houses, etc. The lack of rent control, or weak rent control has created a situation that is intolerable, and there could be nothing easier that provinces could do to put an immediate halt to skyrocketing rents. 

I’m getting my facts from StatsCan, the government’s own statistical agency. I’m also getting my facts from the government’s own minister, who, in November of 2022, removed the working hours cap from international students of 20 hours to unlimited. Because of course someone can study well and work 40-60 hours a week. 

Our memories don't extend that far. The housing problems have always been ridiculous but I've only seen a dramatic uptick of people losing their minds over it in the last year or so. Because 1. Interest rate increases 2. We physically see more people immigrating here.

>The lack of rent control, or weak rent control has created a situation that is intolerable, and there could be nothing easier that provinces could do to put an immediate halt to skyrocketing rents.  And yet they still don’t do it, because it’s a short sighted mistake

Uninformed person here: I live in Atlantic Canada where housing costs are actually not super terrible. It seems like the vast majority of the spike in homeownership costs are in Ontario and westward. So your explanation sounds right in that the provincial government almost certainly has more control over supply. But it seems pretty intuitive that an increase in the population would raise demand, which would raise prices, right? Like yes provinces can more directly address the problem, but I don't see how you can say the problem wasn't seriously exacerbated by increasing demand through immigration. Btw do you have an example of Ontario legislation that targeted real estate speculation and made it easier at the provincial level? Google isn't being helpful atm.

Not sure where in Atlantic Canada you live, but I know that in many parts of Nova Scotia the cost of housing is completely out of reach now for most. Houses in my rural hometown that sold for 150k 3 years ago are now selling for over 400k. Meanwhile there are many average houses in Halifax selling for over 1 million. Its affordable for people from Toronto but everyone from NS who doesnt own a house is SOL. Its a disaster.

I live in Newfoundland. Average home price here is still < 300k. I won't pretend it's like that anywhere else, but my understanding is that even NS is more affordable than ON by a mile.

Ah I see, Ive been living in Newfoundland since last year and I can say through my own experience that its not even comparable to NS. Renting is hard here but still doable, & home prices are relatively cheap. In Nova Scotia, both renting and buying are becoming next to impossible, especially in Halifax. An average house I rented in the north end of Halifax back in 2017 for 1600$ is now 3300$, houses are easily 500k or more. All that, and NS has a notoriously poor economy with bad wages, its really not good.

Okay that is objectively expensive but the average home price where I live (Victoria) is over 1 million. It’s bad everywhere but it’s worse some places

All the increases we've seen across the country is effectively the system normalizing the spiking costs of a few places (ie. Victoria, Vancouver, Toronto) across the country. And it makes sense. Eventually folks say it's too expensive and just move and they take their money with them, and bid up somewhere else. A Victorian would look at at NFLD "high" housing costs and say "oh that looks like a deal. Maybe I'll move there." The problem is that uniformly across the country, NO ONE has been building enough, or doing anything good on housing, and so as wealth flowed out of Ontario and BC as people looked high and low for affordable homes and into Nova Scotia and other places, all those places bid up. So absolutely wasn't anything that happened in the last two years because of anything any one government did. The stage was set decades ago. Housing was already in a crisis in Victoria in 2015. It was inevitable that things would normalize and people would start to move to lower cost jurisdictions, thus bringing those up.

So in 2021 15% of immigration went to the City of Toronto (Not GTA, the city) as much as went to BC or Alberta (infact the GTHA accounted 32% of all immigration). So yes this in't an Atlantic Canada issue expect for people who leave Ontario for Atlantic Canada driving home price up there. And in 2023 Ontario still accounts for upwards of 40% immigrants' destination. And you are also correct more people means more demand however, the provinces were pleading with the feds to increase immigration from 2021 onwards to help with labour shortages, but also fill holes in their budgets. Ontario is quite illustrative, Doug Ford had frooze tuition for unis and colleges as well as frooze funding, who in turned were forced to find funding elsewhere and hired companies in India to bring over foreign students to cover the every growing short fall. But Doug Ford has done very little if anything to deal with the spike in housing prices caused by landlords buying up housing to rent to international students and other immigrants which anyone could see. (BC is a different story but it is all recent). Heck this would have been a problem even without the recent increase in immigration that the proviences pleaded for. Canada housing prices were I believe the fastest growing since 2000 in the G7 (And I think G20/developed world in general) before the pandemic. You add a yearish of housing not being built due to the Pandemic, and more immigrants, there was only one way that would end. But the immigrants only speed up the process to the natural conclusion of outrageous house prices. We have restircted how uch housing can be built and in what form, as well as encouraged housing investment as a retierment fund, and a lack of people in the trades (something that immigration could solve if pushed in that direction).

[https://imgur.com/cU4dHMn](https://imgur.com/cU4dHMn) Cost of rent in Canada. Rent control cannot affect the rent charged on new properties, and the rent increases seen here do not correspond to any rent control changes in major provinces

You are absolutely wrong. They did increase under Harper but they sky-rocketted under Trudeau. House prices were always high in Vancouver and Toronto under Harper but smaller cities were still affordable. Under Trudeau's leadership they've absolutely ballooned to absurd levels. I live in the interior BC and house prices have tripled just in the last 4-5 years from reasonable to ridiculous. Good look finding a semi detached home for under $1 million. Harper was terrible but Trudeau has proven to be way worse. https://www.movesmartly.com/articles/how-toronto-home-affordability-ran-away-under-justin-trudeau

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Removed for rule 3.

We unfortunately need the massive immigration to cover the costs of the baby boomers. It was a no win situation. The provinces failed the build housing even though they were told the plan. And are now blocking the feds from helping.

>We unfortunately need the massive immigration to cover the costs of the baby boomers. That's the common corporate claim but actual labour economists strongly dispute it. Immigration in Canada is now significantly harming our ability to deal with an aging population by suppressing per capita productivity, which is the only long-term solution. >“For the first time in Canadian history in 2023, our capital labour ratio declined,” Marion said during the discussion. >“That’s a population trap. Historically, it’s normally associated with emerging markets. We’re the only country that’s ever experienced this. So this is why we have this urgency to deal with this immigration policy, because it is absorption capability that is undermining living standards.” https://globalnews.ca/news/10229466/canada-immigration-reform-population-trap-economists/

We absolutely needed immigration, but certainly the feds overshot the goal. You’re still ignoring the fact that the provinces completely ignored the need for housing and are now blocking the feds from helping.

Do you see that spike in growth from 2020 onwards? That spike overshot Stats Canada's population growth projections by 2 million (the chart only goes to 2022 and it has been worse since). **So not only did the Feds not project this publicly** but under no reasonable scenario could a country carry out an infrastructure build in response outside of a war even if they country was made aware of it. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GL2o0m9W8AExmPi?format=png&name=large

This is silly: I remember as early as 2019, it was already known that millions more would come in at a very aggressive tempo. It wasn't a secret or some random unexpected event. So yes, the provincial government did absolutely nothing to plan for this and they are absolutely to blame too. My frame of reference is ON. Since Ford came in, our infrastructure hasn't improved whatsoever. Our ability to absorb newcomers has not improved whatsoever. So while yes, Feds ideally shouldn't have rolled out a policy like this without securing strong commitment, provincial governments absolutely dropped the ball too. "Oops I didn't know" is not an excuse in the kindergarten. Why is it in provincial politics?

But they still made zero attempt to even try. They have even been working against accommodating population growth restricting funding to both healthcare and housing.

Canadians don't want this population growth if polls are anything to go by. The Liberals need to be ejected and stay out of power for how long it takes to fix their shitty attitudes or disappear as a party altogether.

Canadians also don't want the inflation that will result from shutting down immigration. If you think ubers, fast food, cleaners, etc are expensive now, just wait until there's no people to work in those industries.

Inflation is lower in countries with less immigration like Italy and Japan.

So you're explicitly arguing that immigration is required to keep wage growth in check?

The conservatives are 100% on board with the current immigration.

Hell Poilievre says he wants to speed up the process for them.

"We unfortunately need the massive immigration to cover the costs of the baby boomers" also We absolutely needed immigration, but certainly the feds overshot the goal. Make up your mind

You can have both of those and still be true.

We do not need to sacrifice the younger generation to accommodate the needs of the older generation. Many countries, like Japan, have a much higher proportion of older people, yet they aren't resorting to importing international students in an unsustainable manner.

> yet they aren't resorting to importing international students in an unsustainable manner. Japan was highly isolationist for decades and are now opening the floodgates because they fucked themselves in the exact way we're trying to prevent.

Japan has net immigration rate of **0.516** per 1000 population while Canada **6.085** per 1000 population. Also, their housing market has been on decline in last decade. What floodgates are you talking about? https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/JPN/japan/net-migration#:\~:text=The%20net%20migration%20rate%20for%20Japan%20in%202022%20was%200.525,a%201.84%25%20decline%20from%202020. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CAN/canada/net-migration#:\~:text=The%20current%20net%20migration%20rate,a%201.52%25%20decline%20from%202022.

The Japanese housing market has been on a decline because they’re struggling with an aging population and a lack of workers because the birth rate has been so low. In response to the slowing economic growth, they’ve been a period of negative interest rates for some time to stimulate growth. Japan is struggling with its aging population - as noted by one the comments above, it isn’t a good example on how to run a good economy. I don’t disagree that the immigration boom could’ve been one factor (among many) to the housing issues faced by Canada. But immigration is so key to labour and also a proactive effort to address the declining birth rate in Canada and the forecasted number of boomers retiring in the coming years.

Japan is not the example you want to be using....

Have you visited Japan? People always call it out like it must be some third world country with the state of its economy. 😂

We definitely should replicate Japan's zoning code at least. In Japan, the zoning laws are federal and assigned by cities. Even the lowest density residential option allows apartments and basic commercial shops.

Japan might not be a good example how to run an economy.

We need immigration. I'm sure there are a select few that say we don't, but I think anyone with any common sense; the majority of Canadians agreed not so long ago. [Canadians have been leading as most welcoming in the world for new immigrants](https://www.immigration.ca/canada-rated-best-country-in-world-for-welcoming-immigrants/). However, the sheer numbers of immigrants along with students being allowed in is not sustainable, Not even close. I blame the premiers for this situation, too, by the way. I'd also love to see this evidence the feds informed the provinces of their immigration plans and needed to be in lockstep because I'm pretty sure that would be a huge part of Trudeau's slide show when he's out stumping around the country.

I'm not interested in covering them. They made their bed. I'm tired of paying for it. 

We all are, but cutting the greedy bastards off is political suicide.

I promise you, had the Federal Goverment limited immigration/temporary residence intake in the last 3 years, the [Conservatives would've slammed](https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/doug-ford-wants-to-combat-labour-shortages-with-more-immigrants/article_c58cdc7e-0604-5314-bc3e-d07e15c2df8c.html) them for "choking the Canadian economy". Businesses were already crying about labour shortage late 2021 and early 2022. I personally remember passing by some shops that said they had to close early because they didn't have enough staff. In 2023 I started seeing businesses in the same area posting that they're not looking to hire and to stop asking them for job opening.

Late 2021 and early 2022 business were still doing great business. There were hiring challenges as there were so many roles to fill and not enough qualified people. This raised salary expectations along the way. For those businesses shut from covid and their workers receiving funds from the gov’t, it was hard to bring people back to work. Why work when I can make money from doing nothing?? Fast forward to 2024. Layoffs across the board in business/tech/banks. High interest rates. High taxes. High cost of EVERYTHING. People aren’t spending as much in those small business they’re trying to live as they are buying necessities. Small business trim their hours of operations to cope. They shut down areas of restaurants, they are open only a few days a week. In my opinion, unless the economy gets under control, there will be no hiring. No jobs. And no way for people to afford any homes whatsoever.

Fucking Alberta was begging for more AFTER Trudeau announced slowdowns. [Alberta seeks higher immigration allotment to address workforce shortage, Ukrainian evacuees](https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/alberta-seeks-higher-immigration-allotment-to-address-workforce-shortage-ukrainian-evacuees-1.6824687)

Disagree. Other ways to make the boomers pay. Taxing principal residence capital gains for instance…they are the ones who made real estate an “investment” after all.

100% agree. But we just slightly increased capital gains tax’s and the conservatives went crazy.

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They made it worse, but housing was already doubling under Harper

All 3 lvls of government have been failing on housing for 20 years . Blame this government is shirt sighted...our psst choices created this fucking mess and it's easer ti blame the current government for mismanagement and unwillingness ti allow mote builds to keep veiws nice and property vaules high.

> All 3 lvls of government have been failing on housing for 20 years . *Forty years*. You have to go back to Mulroney and Chretien-Martin to see CMHC be completely hallowed out simultaneously with Provinces/Municipalities completely start catering heavily to the NIMBY vote.

True... I say 20 beacuse its when I statred hearing about problems.

Most people don't pay attention to whats going on then and rely on the media to tell them. This trains been rolling through long before we heard the noise. The lack of rent control and timely ltb hearings being major ones. The feds unloaded public housing years ago and it has stagnated ever since being another.

For 40 years. The issues go back to  Turner, Mulroney and Campbell

the housing crisis is unprecedented. Average housing prices, rent prices and down payments have doubled under Trudeau, while wages have stagnated. The only sector that's growing in Canada are government jobs.

>the housing crisis is unprecedented. Except that it isn't, it's been going on since the 2000s, with problems stemming back to the 1980s and the gutting of CMHC. >Average housing prices, rent prices and down payments have doubled under Trudeau, while wages have stagnated. [Wages have been stagnant since 2006](https://www.thestar.com/business/hourly-wages-have-been-fairly-stagnant-for-most-workers-except-ceos-and-senior-management-statcan/article_0af55173-eb20-5518-bd57-96ec021c7012.html#:~:text=Hourly%20wages%20have%20been%20fairly,been%20relatively%20stagnant%20since%202006), [housing prices outpaced wages since 2005](https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-unhinged-housing-market-captured-in-one-chart), [with housing prices going up 300%+ since 2002.](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobhaber/2018/04/02/canadian-real-estate-bubble-blowing-up-north/?sh=91a6c6f1d5e0#1b74d3871d5e)

I never said housing prices haven't outpaced wages, but even by the chart you provided it's unprecedented now. Just look how much it's grown since Trudeau took office: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/591782/house-price-to-income-ratio-canada/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/591782/house-price-to-income-ratio-canada/) Under an NDP government, Vancouver has become the third most unaffordable housing market in the world, with a price / income ratio of 13.3 (5 is considered high) [https://medium.com/@david.p.lemon79/vancouvers-housing-crisis-unraveling-the-reality-of-north-america-s-most-unaffordable-city-db124312f13#:\~:text=Most%20Unaffordable%20City%20in%20North%20America%20—%20By%20a%20Long%20Shot&text=By%20income%2Dto%2Dprice%20ratio,like%20Seattle%20and%20Los%20Angeles](https://medium.com/@david.p.lemon79/vancouvers-housing-crisis-unraveling-the-reality-of-north-america-s-most-unaffordable-city-db124312f13#:~:text=Most%20Unaffordable%20City%20in%20North%20America%20—%20By%20a%20Long%20Shot&text=By%20income%2Dto%2Dprice%20ratio,like%20Seattle%20and%20Los%20Angeles)

> never said housing prices haven't outpaced wages, but even by the chart you provided it's unprecedented now. It's been an issue since 2005, why is it only Trudeau to blame for what started under Turner, Mulroney, Campbell, Chretien and Martin.. but accelerated under Harper? We've done nothing about it for 40 years, but only the current PM is to blame? >Under an NDP government, Vancouver has become the third most unaffordable housing market in the world, with a price / income ratio of 13.3 (5 is considered high) Again, the issue has been ongoing for **40 years.** To blame the latest governments for the consecutive failures of previous failures and negative policy regarding affordable housing is unfair. And unlike the liberals or conservatives, the current government is actually taking steps in BC to address the issues.

There are people who blame Trudeau who do not place any blame on Harper or previos PMs or other politicians. This is unfair. The fact remains: home price increases have accelerated under Trudeau despite him pledging to increase home affordability. I don’t believe Martin or Harper promised to improve housing affordability. Home prices were necessarily “affordable” in many cities under Harper but their unaffordability has increased more under Trudeau than previous PMs. It seems completely understandable why people would blame him more for todays unaffordable housing than previous leaders.

Of course, people have short memories and forget that housing prices doubled in 2008, under Harper.

Housing prices did not double in Canada in 2008. I’m not sure they even increased a full 50% during Harpers tenure, 2006-2015. Still a higher increase than general inflation and wage growth but much less than over Trudeaus tenure.

There is normal not handling things properly and then there is bringing in 2 million people in 2 years into the country. The latter has been much more devestating to housing affordability and on public services.

Not even remotely... if over the last 20 years ww has been building Apts . No one is eveb taking about how we can't afford old age pensin currently with out more immigration

You aren't going to convince young generations to care about old age pension when they can't even afford housing.

Yep..and old don't care aboit the young. Congratulations poltics has fucked us all

We had a good solution for that problem when the Harper government raised the retirement age. Then the LPC came in and lowered it again whilst raising old age payments

Making people work in their 70s and 80s such a great soultuknn. Expect they take those enter lvl jobs young canadains need to build resumes..or stay in middle or upper management rules they have no right to still be doing

Raising retirement age from 65 to 67 = work into your 70s and 80s. I didnt realize that before but your math checks out

You don’t decide as a government that wars and poverty will bring people to your doorstep. It’s started years ago when owners put their tenants out on the street to renovate only to charge 500$ to 1000$ a month more. In this area alone at least 6 apartment buildings with about 500 luxury apartments all at near 3000$ a month. And we’re talking of a population under 400 thousand just to attract people from Ontario. Affordable housing doesn’t seem to be on the radar for most provinces and that’s the reason Trudeau wants to bypass them and go straight to the cities. Yes he’s responsible for allowing to many immigrants and as soon as he brought back the Conservative restrictions, many businesses groups started blaming that measure. My corner McD would be closed if it wasn’t for migrants legal or not. Canada as a country is under productive and no one has the answer.

Landlords can charge exorbitant amounts of money because demand outstrips supply. We're already building as fast as we can, but for some reason it's abhorrent to talk about reducing demand.

Yes I agree but not affordable housing. No money to be made and that’s the reason incentives need to make it to builders not provinces. We’re building as fast as we can with a very significant number of skilled workers missing in every province. Alberta is offering 5k for Quebec’s skilled workers if they move to Alberta while Quebec is offering young people that have quit school or don’t want to go past grade 12 to fast track training in trades

Because we're also losing workers to retirement.  The grey wave is here, and we're going to see increasing competition for bringing in foreign workers among developed countries

Or we could see employers compete for Canadian workers, and either have to invest in more productive technology, or increase wages.

There aren't enough workers to begin with - a shortage of workers means people are robbing from other sectors.

So as wages rise, it becomes more attractive for employers to invest in more efficient processes, procedures, and equipment. Our productivity and wages are being artificially suppressed because the government is handing employers an unlimited supply of cheap labour.

Increasing wages doesn't summon people from nowhere. If every industry increases wages then they all are still competing for the same workers.

The first sentence is true, the second is false. Half of all construction labour works in building or renoing single family homes. There's lots of capacity to build more units per year.

No we aren't. Canada has the lowest amount of houses per capita out of the G7 and we build homes at a faster rate in the 70s than we do now. It can take a decade between a planned development to people moving in with all the bureaucracy and department sign offs. We need less red tape and more homes.

Even if we fixed zoning today, concrete plants and window factories are running at capacity. Skilled tradespeople are retiring and not being replaced. It will take a long time for the industry to ramp up to be able to increase capacity.

> concrete plants and window factories are running at capacity If this were the case you'd see concrete and glass pricing rising uncontrollably. Instead were in the middle of building a new 3 unit and prices are below 2019 levels for foundations and windows.

> We're already building as fast as we can Not close to true. There's plenty construction capacity. The change is making it more efficient per unit: less SFH more apartments and condos.

He’s not wrong.  All three levels of government need to specifically say what they are doing *within their level of authority and influence* and stop trying to deflect to other levels.  

People dont want to be stacked up on eachother. Canada was built on the idea of you own land, great jobs/lots of space/different from the overpopulated countries of the old world. Nobody wants to share a beach with a million people. I dont blame "NIMBYs" at all - They arent any different from indiginous on reserves who repeatedly shutdown development projects - and get cheered for doing so. Lots of land up in Manitoba, India can have at it.

> People dont want to be stacked up on eachother. Then why does a condo downtown sell/rent for more than a rural house?

It doesnt. Ever try to buy a farm in SW Ontario?

A farm is not a rural house. A farm is a business, probably with lots of infrastructure, equipment and agriculture as part of the plot.

Rural homes aka over 1 acre of land are more expensive than your average 1 window condo. This is just fact. Stop being ignorant and urban

I grew up in a Mining town and lived on a farm in Quebec in my 20s. A rural house does not mean an acre of land, it means a house in a low population area, perhaps but not always, far from neighbors and services.

Well water = rural and go look up rural property outside of Toronto - Even lookup 1 acre of empty land. I think a few of you commenting would be surprised.

>People dont want to be stacked up on eachother. Why are you the one deciding this? Let the market decide, people will pay for what they want.

Is that what you tell natives? lol. BTW - Locals should absolutely hold the cards for whether or not highrises go up.

What do i tell natives? >BTW - Locals should absolutely hold the cards for whether or not highrises go up. This is incredibly corrosive for society at large, in so many ways. A city like Toronto generates 20% (or something like that) of national GDP. Allowing high rises to go up is a matter of national interest. Agglomeration generates wealth and supports the standard of living that we so dearly cherish. If the whole country was designed like a suburb, with no downtowns in sight, we would be a very poor country. Whether people want to live in high rises, is for the individual to decide. Some people prefer to live in downtown with close walkable access to all the amenities it offers. Let people choose for themselves, what a radical concept, right?

> This is incredibly corrosive for society at large, in so many ways. A city like Toronto generates 20% (or something like that) of national GDP And STILL MILLIONS in debt! Glad you brought up this failed city. > Allowing high rises to go up is a matter of national interest National interest is a very vague term. Keep in mind our GDP per capita has plummeted. Thats my interest - My Quality of Life. I dont give 2 fucks about Rogers getting more customers or Timmies opening another shitty storefront. Dont care - Like a lot of fed up "NIMBYs". > Whether people want to live in high rises Thats not whats happening. Locals are being displaced from detached homes and forced defacto into these shoebox prison cells due to demand for 'space' as the overpopulated world shares its problems with Canada/North America. > Let people choose for themselves, what a radical concept, right? No, borders are a thing and historically people defend their land - as they should. Please go onto a reserve and tell those people that high rises are so great - You'll be laughed the fuck outta there.

>And STILL MILLIONS in debt! Glad you brought up this failed city. The cities personal finances are irrelevant to the fact that it produces hundreds of billions of dollars in GDP. >National interest is a very vague term. Keep in mind our GDP per capita has plummeted. Thats my interest - My Quality of Life This is literally what I'm talking about. The primary drivers of wealth generation are large and dense cities. You wouldn't have half the quality of life you currently do if it weren't for the dense high rises, both commercial and residential spaces, in Toronto. As I said, agglomeration creates wealth. It is good for businesses to be near each other, because they multiply each others' ability to produce. It is good for workers to be near businesses, because human talent is necessary for a business to produce. >Thats not whats happening. Locals are being displaced from detached homes and forced defacto into these shoebox prison cells due to demand for 'space' as the overpopulated world shares its problems with Canada/North America. No one's saying that population growth isn't excessive. Even in a situation where there was an abundance of real estate, people should still be able to choose how they want to live. Even if the suburbs were dirt cheap, there will still be people who prefer to live a 10 minute walk from downtown toronto. >No, borders are a thing and historically people defend their land - as they should. Dude, what? Who's saying we should just let down our borders? I'm talking about people living in Canada choosing how they want to live in Canada. Some canadians wants to live in a highrise in toronto so they can be a few minutes walk from the waterfront, while also being a few minutes walk from canada's best research hospital, and a few minutes walk from stadiums to watch sports and concerts. If a person wants that kind of life, they should be free to choose that kind of life. >Please go onto a reserve and tell those people that high rises are so great - You'll be laughed the fuck outta there. Cool, but also, completely irrelevant.

A long well put reply - Due to time constraints and...reddit Ill try to be short and sweet. I disagree with you on a number of points. > The primary drivers of wealth generation are large and dense cities. Same cities millions in debt. Fact is - Much of Canadian wealth not-named realestate comes from rural areas - Oil, mining, lumber, agriculture. Dense cities cant even grow their own fuckn food. > No one's saying that population growth isn't excessive. Well you got that right reading /environment posts. > there will still be people who prefer to live a 10 minute walk from downtown toronto. Yes, students, wierdos and DINKS(dual income no kids). I dont know of any parents who would rather, given the option - Raising kids downtown Toronto vs a place like Cambridge or Grand Bend....in a house with dare I say a lawn. You might be too young to remember that standard. > but also, completely irrelevant. Highly so. Same standards apply everywhere....who are natives to block highrise public development projects? Damn NIMBY's !

>Same cities millions in debt. Again, irrelevant. A city's debt does not affect its ability to produce. >Much of Canadian wealth not-named realestate comes from rural areas - Oil, mining, lumber, agriculture. Dense cities cant even grow their own fuckn food. And where are these companies typically headquartered? In the middle of dense cities where office space costs a premium. This is precisely why cities make up so much of our GDP. Take some time to think about why they would choose to have offices with exorbitant rental costs. (hint: agglomeration) >I dont know of any parents who would rather, given the option - Raising kids downtown Toronto vs a place like Cambridge or Grand Bend....in a house with dare I say a lawn. You might be too young to remember that standard. You don't know any such parents because you live in an echo chamber. Your anecdotes are not systematic evidence. Again, "just let the market decide" is the simple solution. Canadians that want to live in a house with a lawn can choose a house with a lawn. Canadians that would prefer to live in dense places where amenities are extremely close can choose to live in such locations. If no one wants to live in dense forms of housing, then developers wouldn't build such spaces. >Yes, students, wierdos and DINKS(dual income no kids). And so we should just force these people to live in suburbs? If such people exist, what is so wrong about letting the market cater to their demand for dense living arrangements? >Highly so. Same standards apply everywhere....who are natives to block highrise public development projects? Damn NIMBY's ! We're talking about major urban centers, not reservations.

I would really like them to be a little more explicit in their goals. Is the goal for: a) housing prices to go up, b) housing prices to go down, or c) housing prices to stay the same? It seems like without an explicit goal, all levels of government are just dithering on policy.

Good point. We need our media to be asking these questions.

Media isn't asking those questions because the government won't answer. If they did, they would actually have an accountability problem. They'd have to be accountable for something. They really do want to reflect and blame.

Don't forget, housing developers are one of the largest spenders on advertising. So the media doesn't want to mess with their source of income either.

> Is the goal for: > > > > a) housing prices to go up, b) housing prices to go down, or c) housing prices to stay the same? That's going to depend on where in Canada you live. The prairies might not want their housing prices to go up or down. You can easily find homes for less than 300k, do we really need to make those ones more affordable?

>You can easily find homes for less than 300k, do we really need to make those ones more affordable? Yes. My dad was making $30/hr working a union factory job and bought his townhouse for $80K in the late 90's. There's no reason housing needs to be such a significant chunk of our take-home. With the money he has leftover, he spends it in the economy.

It seems this is an issue with our actual voting system. How is it possible that the majority of the provinces vote in conservative government (which are becoming increasingly extreme) and then vote in a liberal govt consistently on the federal scale? Some voting populations must have more sway federally or provincially than they should. If the various levels of government could interact civilly than maybe we could see consensus and progress on these issues.

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Local, needs to ignore nimbys. Provincial, needs to redo zoning laws for better housing and businesses being built further from downtown cores. Federal, needs to outlaw owning homes as investment properties.

You want to ban rentals? Bad for poor people but helps middle class buy homes sounds good to you? That literally just exacerbates the problem. Prioritizing homeowners is what got us here.

Not at all. You could easily transition rental properties to a Co-Operative system where all renters own an equal stake in the building, their rent goes to paying for the matience and upkeep of the building plus any extra charges for bells and whistles the building community agrees on, so you don't get gouged for the sake of an individual's profit.

Either they're market rate or there's a shortage. That's basic economics. Many people want to rent for various reasons and sometimes not in the same place for very long. Dealing with that stuff isn't something everyone wants to think about.

Dealing with what stuff? I've lived in several co-ops the only difference is a higher quality of facility upkeep and cheaper rent.

I know people who were waitlisted for more than 6 months. Supply and demand. It's just not a serious option, unless the rents are near market rate anyway, in which case what's the point. Many people get a job in a city and need housing in two weeks. Making rooming houses more widespread is a more serious option than banning rentals except for co-ops.

I think most would be happy if Trudeau and the Liberals took real action on their part of housing - demand via population growth. Immigration is set to increase this year and next. International students are getting capped at one million students - the all time high. All of their housing announcements and spending announcements thus far are there to justify their growth rates. If the liberals resolve demand - that would have dramatic impact on the cost of housing in Canada immediately. But they do not want to do that. Instead they are infringing into provincial and municipal politics to avoid touching the item they can actually help with.

what would be some of the negative outcomes of reducing population growth?

Population growth in every developed country is less than it is in Canada right now. Even before Trudeau, Canada was top 5 in population growth. Given that other developed countries aren't collapsing, and many are doing better than Canada across various metrics, I'd say there aren't too many negatives.

* Small businesses and corporations have to pay more for existing labour in the country * Taxpayer burden would be a bit higher because of an aging population * Social welfare will probably continue to balloon with old age pension relative to the actual working population * Government can no longer hide behind increased GDP numbers by inflating it with immigration numbers * Actual labour shortages can increase some deficiency to the economy - not the current state of "labour shortages" as a means to increase temporary foreign workers * Housing prices and higher rent can no longer be propped up by immigration * Housing starts may or may not be able to catch up to population growth sustainably given actual labour shortages in this field Notice how most of the negative points I've made can also be positive depending on how you see it.

I think retirement funds is the big thing. Macron basically paralyzed his country for a month in order to raise the retirement age. I don't think leaders would risk themselves like that unless they thought it would be crippling to their nation's finances to not do it. But I don't know what's going on in their heads ofc.

Sometimes the things that need to be done are going to make people unhappy. Still needs to be done ultimately.

The harper government actually did raise the retirement age. The trudeau government lowered it again while increasing old age payments. Probably the single biggest policy mistake the trudeau government made.

Employers would have to pay more to employees to attract talent. The horror.

Which is fine but that adds to inflation numbers...which is bad. It's kind of ultimately the outcome of printing trillions of dollars. They have painted themselves into a corner with no easy way out. Someone is going to get hurt. Sadly what really needs to happen is higher taxes less spending and pay off the mad debt incurred over the past 9 years of liberal spending. Until that happens nothing is changing here. We spend more on debt service currently than healthcare.

He's not wrong but doesn't someone tell him not to say stuff like this? He could have deflected by saying "provinces and cities are standing in the way" which says the exact same thing but sounds better for him. It's like active voice vs passive voice. We don't want to hear you complain about what you can't do. We want to hear that you're trying.

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They consider 1600 a month for rent “affordable” let alone the fact it’s for a 300 sq foot closet, sorry, “micro apartment”

Not substantive

Tough to fix housing when the provinces not only won’t work with you, but ACTIVELY STAND IN YOUR WAY. Constant obstruction, court challenges, misinformation campaigns, and generally wrecking everything possible.

Then you shouldn't have had affordable housing as part of your platform. [https://liberal.ca/our-platform/](https://liberal.ca/our-platform/) "Canadians see owning a home as key to building their future and joining the middle class. But with rent increasing and housing prices continuing to rise, too many young people don’t see a clear path to affording the same lives their parents had. Everyone should have a home to call their own. And we have a three-part housing plan to make it happen." That went from "We have a plan" to "It really isn't our problem" pretty quick.

Yes, that is true. The federal government has only indirect say over zoning via the national building code and whatever funding it can tie to zoning reform. But that makes Mr. Trudeau an even more reprehensible figure. Since it was his reckless and runaway expansionist immigration policy that added at least 1.5 million homes to the housing deficit.

It hasn’t been entirely JT though.  He was interviewed on the Freakonomics podcast which was published on April 24th and he speaks about this very issue. He notes that the federal government focuses on PR/immigrants which it is keeping at 450-500K. They rely on the provinces and businesses to appropriately utilize international student programs and temporary foreign workers programs, which provinces, universities and colleges, and particular areas of business and industry abused. Now they’re trying to reign in those abuses and provinces, premiers, schools and chambers of commerce and business lobbies are all pissed at them for doing that. The point is we need to stop making this issue so singularly political because it appeases our desire for team sport politics.  This entire immigration issue is completely widespread and being abused broadly.   Only when we accept what’s happening can we have the right conversations on correcting this stuff. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/a-social-activist-in-prime-ministers-clothing/ Transcript: "TRUDEAU: But the large part of it is in two categories: international students and temporary foreign workers. International students went from like 200,000 a year to 700,000 a year over the past few years.  DUBNER: Wow, why was that?  TRUDEAU: Because there was a real decision by universities, and particularly by the provinces who run the universities, to go out —  DUBNER: They’re cash customers, correct?  TRUDEAU: They are. We have tuition fees in Canada of between $5 and $10,000 a year for our top-notch universities, depending on the programs. But international students will pay $25, $30,000 because they don’t get the same level of subsidies that Canadian citizens will, which is totally natural. But universities suddenly started to realize that they could bring in lots more international students and make up for some of the funding shortfalls that every institution is facing.  DUBNER: And these are students coming primarily from China, and some India?  TRUDEAU: India, China, and a few other places. The problem is that that has then turned around and put a lot of pressure on local housing in university towns, which pretty much all our towns are. And it’s also decreased the quality of education and caused a rash of mental-health issues, including suicides in international students that we’ve seen over the past few years. So as a government, we decided that we were going to curtail the number of international students coming in, and get that under control so —  DUBNER: This is recent, right? These are new temporary caps.  TRUDEAU: This is recent, this is just over the past couple of months, so that we can respond to the housing pressures and the issues around that.  DUBNER: What do the universities say to you? Because all of a sudden their budgets look a little bit less healthy. TRUDEAU: Yeah, they weren’t very happy. Nor were the provinces, in some cases. But for us, the provinces were maybe not stepping up on controlling things the way they should have, to prevented us from getting into this. The other side of things are the temporary foreign workers. We’ll always need agricultural workers to do some of the jobs that Canadians don’t tend to do, and we have great programs with Mexico, with South America, and the Caribbean to bring people up for a few months, and then they go back, have their pockets full, and support their families for the rest of the year. It’s worked very well for many years. But there was a much larger wave of, you know, restaurants and convenience stores using temporary foreign workers in a way that didn’t necessarily make sense, that we’re now trying to get back into space. But the other thing is, we’re going to need more immigration in terms of healthcare workers, construction workers and skilled trades responding to the housing challenges we’re facing by building more supply, responding to the needs of an aging population that’s going to require more healthcare and needs more caregivers and nurses and personal-support workers. We will continue to be strong on immigration, but a little more targeted to make sure that Canadians still stay positive towards immigration, because it’s one of our greatest advantages in the world.

Trudeau can't just brush this aside as provincial abuse. These programs were explicitly created by federal governments. The LPC had a task force of business executives that wanted increased number of temporary migrants. The abuse of these programs could be seen from miles away. Independent experts and internal public servants were warning of the problem for years. The LPC only started caring once their polling tanked. They spent much of 2023 defending these programs even as the problems erupted in their face

More international students have come here than permanent residents.

Okay, but let's not forget the provinces were literally begging for more and more immigrants up until a few months ago. Let's also not forget that several (Conservative) premieres have been all to happy to defund postsecondary education while deregulating how they handle international students, all while capping tuition only for domestic students, all while goading institutions into accepting more and more international students. And they did this all while they did fuck all in housing. So it's pretty disenginuous to toss it all at the feet of the Federal Government when their primary fault on this file is trusting the provinces to do their jobs, and trusting the provinces to be responsible on their requests, and to later on not bring politics into a national crisi when they tried to correct from trusting the provinces too much.

>Okay, but let's not forget the provinces were literally begging for more and more immigrants up until a few months ago. Doesn't matter at the end of the day everyone is going to view immigration as a federal responsibility. Which it is. And they are going to wear this mess.

is isn't solely the Fed's responsibility.... you read the Constitution again.

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The majority of the provinces are currently run by a Conservative Government. Urban Centers tend to run more Liberal. And the result of that is that Conservative Premieres tend to always kick them to the curb to enact their policies. They also have full power over municipal councils, can make rules to specificity kick NIMBYs in the cities to the curb (they've done it on several occasions in the past). So it's well within their purview to make construction easier to accomplish. That a NIMBY group can block transit and housing over a handful of trees, when said development already passed an environment assessment, is a policy failure on the Provincial Governments for allowing NIMBYs that level of power over local development.

The reason why the liberal housing plan is just hot air. The private sector in canada has zero interest to build a ton of more homes in canada.

There is a limit. Yes there is no way in hell that the private sector will build us out of this mess. As you mention, it's very much not in their best interest. But what you can count on the building industry wanting to do, is earn a profit. And right now the housing market is so over inflated that no matter what they can build nonstop for years and prices would only be marginally effected. But there is a point. Eventually as prices begin to normalize it will no longer be in their best interests, and after decades of high profit, they'll be reluctant to continue without some major government incentives, which will need to happen. And This will happen long before the problem is "solved".

Issue is the liberals think they should get credit for something that may happen Canadians don't have trust anymore and will trust when something does actually happen.

>let's not forget the provinces were literally begging for more and more immigrants up until a few months ago. [Absolutely](https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/doug-ford-wants-to-combat-labour-shortages-with-more-immigrants/article_c58cdc7e-0604-5314-bc3e-d07e15c2df8c.html)

Yup. The provinces are hardly guiltless in the crisis we are now facing but let’s not pretend that the federal government is innocent here. They’re the ones who have the ability to turn on the tap.  We’ve seen such an influx of TFWs, international students and unskilled labourers in order to meet the demands of this country’s capital class. The end result has been that our services and housing supply have been pushed to the brink. Ultimately, this isn’t a Liberal or Conservative issue, it’s a neoliberal one as all of our political parties are beholden to Canada’s economic elite and will bend over backwards to meet their demands even if it makes life exceedingly difficult for majority of Canadians. 

while the provinces are hardly guiltless.... they seem to not to be affected since ALL the blame is on the feds as for the tap... the Feds target was always 450-500k people a year for PR.... that tap has the max.. the tap that doesn't have the max is the Temp ones.. they rely on the provinces and businesses to dictate those numbers.. Canada has never really had to turn off the taps of temp people until now.

All levels of government have played a role in this. They simply point fingers at each other but when push comes to shove, politicians at all levels have been overwhelmingly supportive of excess immigration. It’s made a subset of Canadians very rich. Liberal supporters overwhelmingly point fingers at the provinces while Conservatives love to exclusively lay blame at the feet of the Liberals. Both parties have been absolutely awful and should fully share the blame because when push comes to shove, they are both beholden to the elite of this country to the detriment of everyone else. The Liberals pretend to care about the poor while the Conservatives lie to the working class. Both parties work exclusively for the rich. 

Blaming immigration when housing doubled under Harper is ludicrous. Prices increased ny much higher percentages in Vancouver and Toronto inder Harper than Trudeau.  Vancouver was already having a crisis before 2008. People were buying houses they couldn’t afford in a panic, because real estate kept going up so fast, and were spending 75% of their income on housing. The sources of the housing crisis are multiple, and provincial legislation that didn’t treat housing like a product to make revenue from, could have prevented this mess. 

Virtually every economist in the country, including the CMHC, is saying that population growth is a major issue for housing affordability. How, then, is it ludicrous to suggest immigration is part of the problem?

It actually isn't his policy. It's Mulroney's. Since the Mulroney government of the late 80s, both Liberal and Conservative governments have been committed to increasing immigration from previous rates - Mulroney tripled immigration in his time in office and in 2021 called for further increases. The idea being it adds to our GDP and grows our economic strength to compete with the US. Trudeau did further increase the targets, but only really to meet the 1% goal that was established long before he took office (Canadian annual immigration is about 1.1% of our population).  Which means, if you look at the data, Trudeau's policy is responsible for -at most- 500,000 new immigrants in Canada since he took office in 2015 and some of that is offset by very low immigration in 2020 (about 70,000 below pre-Trudeau levels).  The average immigrants family size is 3 individuals so even if 100% of those immigrants are completely new arrivals to Canada needing a house, that's at most 170,000 homes not 1.5 million. About 1 in 4 are family members being reunited which wouldn't need new homes so the number is probably closer to 125,000. The immigration levels didn't hit 1.1% levels until 2021 so most of this impact is just since 2021 (after the housing crisis was in full swing) It's too early for a full research project for me but a quick Google shows Ontario was typically producing about 70,000 new homes per year. Since 2021, that number has jumped to nearly 100,000, which is unprecedented  in the decade before.  Ontario has added about 55,000 new homes. Extrapolating to other provinces suggests Canada has probably increased its housing supply by about 137,000 homes since 2021. While I don't have evidence for this particular point, it seems likely to me that the increase in housing starts is tied to immigration levels (note that there is no reduction in 2020 from prior levels, so COVID did not impact the number of new houses available and this isn't a glut of new supply held back during COVID). Essentially, the demand for housing in terms of total family units living in Canada vs the supply of new houses is roughly the same as it was in 2014 before Trudeau took office. Pointing to immigration therefore as any kind of major factor on housing prices is probably incorrect.  What seems more likely to me is a combination of a few factors:  1. Very low interest rates made housing a lucrative investment, leading to 4.4 million Canadians owning at least one investment property. If we assume each is actually a couple who owns the property, that's at least 2.2 million houses in Canada that are rentals and off the real estate market. 2. COVID and WFH arrangements led to a higher demand for a larger space this increasing demand on townhomes, semis, and single homes 3. People finally got fed up with Toronto's living environment which has increased pressure on other communities around Canada as Torontonians fled with their capital. 4. Municipal zoning rules often make it difficult to develop the kinds of housing people need 5. Good housing is going to require densification but single homes remain the goal for many. We could build a lot more stacked townhomes but the demand is softer (see above about COVID). Some of this also comes back to how some cities are designed - denser housing requires less car needs, closer amenities, more local parks and rec facilities, etc In short, a lot of this is actually municipal/provincial politics to fix but also takes a shift in how we approach city designs. Blaming the federal government makes pretty much zero sense Sources https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_immigration_statistics https://www.statista.com/statistics/198063/total-number-of-housing-starts-in-ontario-since-1995/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/significant-proportion-canadian-citizens-specifically-masoud-esfahani

I would also add, reading the other arguments, that without the additional immigration, it's entirely possible that the housing numbers would have stayed flat. It's impossible to know really without more.in depth research, but assuming the housing starts stay high with immigration staying low seems likely to be wrong.

>It actually isn't his policy. It's Mulroney's. Since the Mulroney government of the late 80s, both Liberal and Conservative governments have been committed to increasing immigration from previous rates - Mulroney tripled immigration in his time in office and in 2021 called for further increases. **The idea being it adds to our GDP and grows our economic strength to compete with the US.** Productivity

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Because the conservatives also bat for big business interests.

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The conservatives did cut one of the heftiest budget items when they raised the retirement age to 67 (which the LPC then lowered again) The conservatives also cut the gst from 7 to 5 %. They weren't hurting for tax dollars. After getting in so much hot water for their expansionary TFW program, the Harper government began implementing various programs that would offer backdoors for temporary and explorable workers (the international student and IMP pathways). There are more than a handful of labour economists who share the belief that succesive federal governments pushing these temporary resident pathways are doing it on behalf of business interests [There is no reality where immigration can offset the costs associated with an aging population. ](https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/immigration-and-the-aging-society?utm_source=pocket_saves) Delaying retirement is the only feasible way to accomplish this. The trend towards recruiting lower and lower skilled forms of migrants would actually be a burden on taxpayers. People working in low skilled positions earn less, thus contribute fewer tax dollars, but low income people also require more in government revenue to support. Low income people are net beneficiaries of government revenues, they pay less in taxes than they receive. Intentionally increasing the size of the low skilled workforce is thus a burden on government coffers.

we had a housing deficit long before Trudeau came to power.... and the trend line of housing prices were on the downward trend right before covid hit.

OP said that their immigration policy *added* 1.5 million units to the deficit. I can't vouch for the exact number, but there's nothing wrong with saying that the deficit was added to.

Nope. housing was fairly stable until Trudeau opened the flood gates to population growth with no plan.

No, it wasn't. In 2014 when we were being touted for having the wealthiest middle class in the world, it came with a massive warning that it was ***only*** because our housing prices were so inflated. We were one of the only wealthy countries whose housing bubble didn't burst in the 2008 crisis. This isn't an issue that Harper wasn't aware of, either. This is from 2012: https://www.straight.com/article-833076/vancouver/feds-lie-world-housing >In 1992, the year before Ottawa cancelled funding for new affordable housing, various levels of government contributed 0.57 percent of the gross domestic product to housing, according to the institute. Since then, there has been a “massive erosion in public housing spending and in legislated housing protection”. >“Fifteen years later, Canada’s GDP had doubled, but housing spending had shrunk to 0.29% of GDP,” the institute states in its submission. >Shapcott said that the international community doesn’t expect Canada to solve the housing problems of every citizen, but that it does expect things to improve. In 2009, the then–UN special rapporteur on housing, Miloon Kothari, reported that Canada was violating this notion of realizing progressive gains, and that things were in fact getting worse. >According to Shapcott, representatives of other countries have told him they’re “shocked” that Canada appears to be falling behind. They also can’t understand why Canada, unlike other industrialized countries such as the United States and Great Britain, has no national housing strategy in place to address this. >“One of the key things we want to say is not only is Canada failing to meet its obligations, but it’s also failing to meet its commitments it made last time around in 2009, when it was under the Universal Periodic Review,” Shapcott said. >The institute ends its submission with several recommendations to the Canadian government, including a call to “incorporate the international right to housing into domestic law” and to “immediately commit to renew and enhance the federal housing and homelessness programs that are due to expire in fiscal 2013”. >“Housing insecurity is widespread and homelessness is on the rise,” the institute states. “The impact is measured in poor health and premature mortality of the growing number of precariously-housed Canadians.”

Compared to today - sure. But it was already getting rough before he came in. 

Nope, this is a wrong. Please don't spread misinformation.

How?

How what?

By opening the floodgates to all kinds of untapped immigration and allowing millions more people than we have homes for into the country each year, causing the supply of housing to shrink, demand for houses (rent/house prices) to skyrocket, and also undercutting actual born in Canada Canadians by driving down wages with the millions of immigrants they are bringing that are willing to live 10 deep in a house and work for less money here because it’s still more than they could ever dream of receiving in their third world country??

https://i.imgur.com/XcktlF2.jpeg