Canada’s immigration and housing

by Maj (ret'd) CORNELIU. CHISU, CD, PMSC, FEC, CET, P. Eng. Former Member of Parliament Pickering-Scarborough East In reviewing the past year, two major issues polarizing Canadian society and politics seem obvious. These were issues related to immigration and housing. The crisis in housing, which has made the headlines several times, is a serious issue, which has been treated very superficially from the political standpoint. Nobody seems to realize the serious social implication this will have in the immediate future. Showing a lack of vision for the future of Canada, the political establishment has not seen fit to establish new settlements such those in Australia and Brazil. These would be important and necessary in order to develop and make the most of the resources of the second largest country in the world. In their lack of vision, our leaders are failing the citizens of Canada. There is a historical precedent. In the early twentieth century inspired and dedicated Canadian politicians, who are mostly despised today, invited immigrants to develop the country’s agriculture and economy by establishing the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. It is then obvious that the implications of not looking to the future of Canada are serious. A lot of additional housing is needed while housing prices are skyrocketing. Combined with an ambitious immigration policy not anchored in reality, we as a country are heading for disaster. In a recent article, journalist Lorrie Goldstein accurately points out the lack of knowledge and professionalism shown by the Liberal Government in dealing with this serious issue. Could it be that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing? For example, Federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser, formerly the Citizenship and Immigration Minister, announced in an interview with The Canadian Press that the Trudeau government will unveil a “renewed” housing plan in 2024. This clearly raises the question of what happened to all of the Liberal Government’s previously announced housing plans. The Liberals have been coming up with new housing plans ever since the 2015 election that brought them to power. In 2017, they announced their National Housing Strategy – originally a 10-year, $40-billion plan. It has since blossomed into a more than $82 billion plan, slated to run until March 2028, “to give more Canadians a place to call home.” The obvious problem is that their immigration policies are undermining their own announced housing policies. Presumably that is one of the things their latest “renewed” housing plan is intended to address. Yet another example of the Liberals announcing new plans to fix problems caused by their previous plans. When Minister Fraser was immigration Minister, he proudly announced the Liberals’ “ambitious” plan to boost Canada’s annual immigration targets to 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025. Did it not occur to anyone that these targets would put enormous pressure on Canada’s housing market and undermine housing affordability? The Liberals have since announced that their target for 2026 will be a further 500,000 permanent residents, compared to 272,000 when the Liberals came to power in 2015. Canada will also accept a record 900,000 international students this year compared to 352,000 in 2015, according to current Immigration Minister Marc Miller. Add to that the fact that Canada admitted 220,000 temporary foreign workers last year, an increase of 68% compared to 2021, according to a Globe and Mail analysis of federal data, and start wondering. The cumulative result of these policies, as Statistics Canada reported earlier this month, is that, “Canada’s population was estimated at 40,528,396 on Oct. 1, 2023, an increase of 430,635 people (+1.1%) from July 1, the highest population growth rate in any quarter since the second quarter of 1957 (+1.2%), when Canada’s population grew by 198,000 people. “Canada’s total population growth for the first nine months of 2023 (+1,030,378 people) had already exceeded the total growth for any other full-year period since Confederation in 1867, including 2022, when there was a record growth.” Now, everyone in the Liberal government, from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on down, is saying that ‘something has to be done’ about today’s affordable housing crisis. A crisis exacerbated, if not largely created by its own ill conceived immigration policies. As you may expect, the Liberals are not dealing with the issue. They are focusing on abuses in the international student and temporary worker programs instead. Who could imagine that their dramatic increases to Canada’s immigration levels have anything to do with the housing crisis? On that issue, the Liberals insist, Canada needs more immigrants to build more housing, because, as Miller put it in August, “Without those skilled workers coming from outside Canada, we absolutely cannot build the homes and meet the demand that exists currently today.” This is a clear example of tautology. Are these the communication skills taught in Canadian law schools? The fallacy in the logic of Miller’s argument is pointed out by several knowledgeable people: As the TD Bank warned: “Continuing with a high-growth immigration strategy could widen the housing shortfall by about a half-million units within just two years. Recent government policies to accelerate construction are unlikely to offer a stop-gap due to the short time period and the natural lags in adjusting supply.” The National Bank of Canada cautioned: “The federal government’s decision to open the immigration floodgates during the most aggressive monetary tightening cycle in a generation has created a record imbalance between housing and demand. As housing affordability pressures continue to mount across the country, we believe Ottawa should consider revising its immigration targets to allow supply to catch up with demand.” BMO (Bank of Montreal) reported, “Heightened immigration flows designed to ease labour supply pressure immediately add to the housing demand they are trying to meet. The infrastructure in place and the industry’s ability to build clearly can’t support unchecked levels of demand, so the affordability conundrum continues.” These warnings clearly point to a serious disconnect with reality. Moreover, high interest rates are not helping to resolve the problem. They have a serious impact on provincial and municipal housing policies. As the Trudeau government continues to announce new deals with municipalities to build more housing, we need to remember that their current high immigration polices are undermining those efforts. In my opinion they are panicking now and do not seem to have the skill or expertise to come up with workable solutions. What is your take?