Crazy to see how the second largest country in the world by surface is so dysfunctional when it comes to housing (similar point could be made about Australia, a continent in itself).
Yes, I know that people can’t live in the Yukon Territory, but, even so, there’s a lot and lot of space to build housing further South.
Canada is committed to absurd levels of immigration relative to population. The crucial difference between population growth by birth versus by immigration is that you get ~20 years for housing supply to catch up to every new person. With growth by immigration, every new person needs housing _today_. The Canadian government isn’t creating housing at anywhere near the same rate as immigration. It’s really not complicated to understand what’s happening.
It's quite an outlier for having 500k immigrants per year, with a population of 39m. That's 1.25% per year. In 20 years, less than a generation, 25% of the population is entirely new. There's already a housing crisis and they're set to add 10 million people in 20 years? Build the housing first, otherwise you're just playing musical chairs and jettisoning people onto the street.
Updated numbers. Canada is on track to accept one million permanent residests in a year, PLUS 800,000 international students who tend to arrive and stay for years thus also need housing.
Canada passed 40 million population this year and will hit 41 in a few months.
A large percentage of immigrants are becoming pregnant the year they immigrate. Let's assume there is no interaction with the native population. For the example's sake, let's assume 500k is evenly split men and women. let's assume 40% of the immigrants have a child in the first year.
Total immigrants divided by gender times 40% percent having a child in the first year:
500k / 2 * 0.4 = 100k
That means a theoretical 500k immigration rate is actually 600k after one year.
And, in fact, for the hypothetical sake assume the same thing happens in year two as the original women have a second child in year 2 and now the original population has become 700,000.
It’s a shell game. A less informed population won’t notice that the political dynasties continue to live luxurious pompous lives off everyone’s backs, and the informed will be too busy in an unfair competition over scraps. Unless there is a huge surplus of housing, college space, and well paying jobs…your leadership is selling you out in a gambit to take in people who will gladly keep voting for them in return for 10% of the typical Canadian lifestyle. You need new leaders who put citizens first, not last.
60% of Canadians are home owners, the majority of those being baby boomers. Their retirement relies on downsizing and living off their remaining capital. The demand for buying their overly priced detached homes will exist so long as we immigrate the qualified uber-wealthy. It is a ponzi-scheme, and I have observed that anti-immigration retorts were met with racism up until recent years where the remaining 40% of Canadians renters learned they will never be able to buy
How come you construe more housing as being a government responsibility? That is strange, especially when your government is causing these issues in the first place. Housing supply normally gets built to satisfy demand. If the regulations are too stifling for construction to be profitable for builders and workers, you won’t have houses. Period. Magic funny money only works for so long before the house of cards comes crashing down.
Interesting that some in Canada respond to the problem by expecting the government to do something all the time. They serve the poison and you want their antidote too? Canada’s leaders are doing a pretty great job of setting the stage for a housing takeover so they can conveniently come up with a solution that makes them more central and more powerful.
Do they overly regulate construction and make it hard to do business?
Can't speak to Canada's situation specifically,
For your comment on housing as a government responsibility. You're correct that housing, for the most part, is privately financed and constructed.
However the limiting agent in this environment is governments willingness to zone and permit new housing construction. The aggregate supply of housing is mostly a function of government policy. One issue is that while it may be popular at federal level to boost housing supply, housing policy is mostly enacted through local government.
> However the limiting agent in this environment is governments willingness to zone and permit new housing construction.
Yep. So they cause the problem in order to be the ones who conveniently have the solution. One that has the added benefit of keeping them more and more central and overreaching over your lives.
In addition to the point made by xienze that if its government policy causing increased need for housing it makes sense for them to also help with that issue, I'd add a more general point:
Many people (including me) believe it should be government's responsibility to make sure its citizens can have a reasonable standard of living, including housing, water, food, etc.
Whether that's by directly providing it (building and managing social housing, state-run energy provider, etc.) or by managing policies that enable private companies to offer stuff to a satisfactory level, both can work and it's debatable (and the debate varies depending on the specific areas).
But if private companies aren't doing as much as is needed then it should be the government's job to fix that, regardless of whether the fix is providing services directly to the people who need it or providing support to private companies so that they can do so.
If "getting the hell out of the way" means removing red tape that was previously a case of the government causing there to be less housing then, then yes that's one way they can help.
If they're already at an ideal low of red tape (keeping in mind we probably don't want to get rid of laws that require things like making sure buildings are safe both for the occupants and for the builders), and aren't restricting the market in any foolish ways, but the market still isn't providing enough housing, then I disagree that the government shouldn't actively try to improve the situation.
Citing an example of a government apparently doing a bad job doesn't mean that every job a government does has to be bad. Otherwise seeing a private building company doing a bad job leads to also thinking private businesses shouldn't be allowed either.
At the end of the day both companies and governments are run by humans, who are capable of doing great things and terrible things, and of doing them both well and badly.
The response should be to argue about what a good government initiative could consist of, not to say that if there's a problem they should just throw their hands up in the air and pray that it improves by itself.
> How come you construe more housing as being a government responsibility?
Well, official government policy is creating immense housing demand and adversely affecting citizens. If you want population growth via infinity immigration, you as the government need to do something about creating additional housing, simple as that.
On account of the cold, I guess. And of the tundra there, kind of difficult to build lots of stuff on it, such as roads or railways. The dark during winter-time, too.
All this to say that that makes it difficult to potentially set up big human settlements in there.
Yes, I know that people can’t live in the Yukon Territory, but, even so, there’s a lot and lot of space to build housing further South.