Which Party Has the Best Blueprint for Fixing the Housing Crisis?
Which Party Has the Best Blueprint for Fixing the Housing Crisis?
From GST cuts to subsidies, here's how the different promises measure up
You're viewing a single thread.
The Canadian Housing crisis has two sources.
1. Extreme population growth
In 2024, the Canadian population increased by 3%.
This population growth rate means the population of Canada is growing 2 to 3 times faster than the United States, Britain, France, Spain, Colombia, Turkey, Vietnam, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Mexico or Brazil. In fact, Canada is now growing faster than many countries in Africa.
2. Terrible city zoning rules.
Several Canadian cities have rules banning multi-storey housing from being built. Multi-storey housing is significantly more affordable than individual homes. But cities ban it. They simply don't want it. When they do accept multi-storey housing, most Canadian cities often require developers to build parking spots. "You want to build a condo tower without parking spots ? Sorry, we can not accept that". By forcing developers to build parking spots for each condo unit, they artificially drive up the cost of each unit. They basically force condo buyers to subsidize car ownership. It's insane.
The Federal Government needs to reduce the immigration rate. Look, Justin Trudeau did a lot of good things, but his immigration policy was one of his biggest failures. The current immigration rate is simply unsustainable. Canada needs to aim for 1.5% population growth instead of 3%.
But cities shouldn't be left of the hook. They are responsible for half the problem.
I mean, just look at the zoning fight happening at the Ottawa City Council :
I agree with most of this but as someone who has to deal with streets filled with cars from small buildings with no dedicated parking, the parking spots makes absolute sense. You cannot just stick a dozen units on a single property and just expect people to find places to park. Parking must be provided.
I'm ambivalent about population growth. It undoubtedly contributed to the housing crisis, but there's a lot of other stuff going on: speculation by Canadians, a bit of foreign money, a bit of money laundering, and poorly designed tax law. I've been watching housing prices slowly taking off since the early 2010s. That's long before Trudeau was elected, and before the massive bump in population.
Immigration makes the housing demand worse, but most anti-immigration arguments completely forget that they help with the supply by bringing manpower to build the homes. So in a healthy market, it would balance it out. Unfortunately, both of you touch on a few points that makes this market unhealthy, so supply is restricted way too much. Bringing more manpower doesn't help since it's not the bottleneck.
The anti-immigration arguments are mainly from the racist right that looks for a boogyman while ignoring the real causes of our issues.
most anti-immigration arguments completely forget that they help with the supply by bringing manpower to build the homes.
To a degree. Canada's point system for immigration selects white collar workers, while most students coming in on education visas are aiming for office or healthcare jobs. The last time I looked, the trades had the same proportion of new Canadians as the rest of the population - so yeah, some immigrants are in the trades, but they aren't overrepresented.
The federal government should be selecting for more construction workers. IIRC there are a couple of programs that encourage tradespeople to immigrate, but they don't bring in a significant number of people.
Bringing more manpower doesn’t help since it’s not the bottleneck.
Lack of construction workers is a bottleneck. It's just one of many, including: increased construction costs, developer incentives, zoning, lack of government construction, etc. Like you say, we need to solve all of those at once.
The anti-immigration arguments are mainly from the racist right that looks for a boogyman while ignoring the real causes of our issues.
I don't think that's fair to say. Immigration exacerbates the housing/healthcare crises, even if it isn't the sole cause. Lining it up on political lines turns immigration into a wedge issue, which doesn't help anyone.
It's much faster for the federal government to reduce the number of newcomers than it is to build houses, train healthcare/construction workers, etc. A reduction would reduce strain on our society while we fix the many problems we're facing. Once housing is again affordable, and every Canadian has access to appropriate healthcare, then we can see about increasing admission if appropriate. In the meantime, we really need to increase the number of tradespeople (and healthcare workers) we're bringing in (and certifying) even as overall numbers fall.