I have two daughters who are in their early 20s. My oldest daughter, 24, has dreamed of buying a home and starting a family with her high school sweetheart of 10 years and her dream has been completely shattered.
The saddest part is, this isn't even just about buying a home. She's not going to start a family until they are no longer living with us and have a house of their own. But the longer it takes for that to happen, the more difficult and risky it becomes for her to start that family and forget about having 3+ children and starting at 35. That's even if there is a correction in the next 10 years.
So her dreams are completely shattered. She's not the only Gen Z out there that had these types of hopes and ambitions throughout their adolescence and early adulthood and are now feeling completely hopeless.
Yes, it may be true that unemployment is at a low and stocks are up. That means absolutely nothing to young adults in their 20s who are still living with their parents, not by choice but because they have absolutely no hope of ever being able to buy a home of their own.
So I wouldn't be surprised if in the coming years we see record turn-outs of young voters.
Do the young even have someone to vote for in Canada though? Only the PPC wants to stop immigration and build housing but they are a fringe party unlikely to get a single seat rather than run the country. The BQ is a decent option in Quebec, but in the rest of Canada pretty much any party that has seats currently is far too pro-immigration and far too pro-Boomer to get anything done on house prices. PP is very good at talking about how the other parties are failing while offering no real solutions himself for example.
Every party talks about lowering house prices, but the only government that has been successful at lowering prices has been David Eby's NDP government in BC.
Eby's NDP government boosted housing starts by 11%. Rental prices still went up in Vancouver and the surrounding area because an 11% increase is a pittance compared to the insane demand from current immigration policy. Assuming that's even possible nationally and that the Federal NDP will have similar policies (both of which are dubious assumptions), that's not going to be adequate to keep up with the insane surge in immigration all of the big three parties seem to be behind. The Liberals at least appear to be somewhat open to minor course corrections but the NDP has historically and is currently the most pro immigration party in the country and it's not possible to get market conditions to improve if you want the population to grow by 2,000,000 people a year.
You can't bring in enough people for 800,000 homes if you have historically built around 250,000 and the best government in the country manages an 11% increase without inflating rents and making the housing crisis worse. We need to radically slow the insane surge in demand so that building more housing has a chance to keep up. Canada has historically had 2.3 people per home so if we increase builds to 300,000/year we can support bringing in roughly 660,000 people with stable prices. If we bring in 2M everyone can guess what will happen.
I agree. And it will be interesting to see how the PPC performs (love them or hate them) because, as you said, the mainstream parties look an awful lot alike to people who are not firmly entrenched in a partisan position (i.e: many young people who are still figuring things out).
This might change, fast.
I have two daughters who are in their early 20s. My oldest daughter, 24, has dreamed of buying a home and starting a family with her high school sweetheart of 10 years and her dream has been completely shattered.
The saddest part is, this isn't even just about buying a home. She's not going to start a family until they are no longer living with us and have a house of their own. But the longer it takes for that to happen, the more difficult and risky it becomes for her to start that family and forget about having 3+ children and starting at 35. That's even if there is a correction in the next 10 years.
So her dreams are completely shattered. She's not the only Gen Z out there that had these types of hopes and ambitions throughout their adolescence and early adulthood and are now feeling completely hopeless.
Just recently, here in Canada, there was a leaked RCMP report issued to the government warning it of potential civil unrest due the economic and housing crises: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-police-future-trends-1...
Yes, it may be true that unemployment is at a low and stocks are up. That means absolutely nothing to young adults in their 20s who are still living with their parents, not by choice but because they have absolutely no hope of ever being able to buy a home of their own.
So I wouldn't be surprised if in the coming years we see record turn-outs of young voters.