Canada at the Crossroads

Canada at the Crossroads in 2025 by Maj (ret'd) CORNELIU. CHISU, CD, PMSC, FEC, CET, P. Eng. Former Member of Parliament Pickering-Scarborough East With the geopolitical situation getting more complicated by the day, Canada is at a crossroads. Our neighbour to the South is less friendly with Canada and threatening to initiate an economic war, which can debilitate our statehood and significantly lower our standard of living. In addition, Canada is missing the leadership needed to deal with this situation. Ontario, one of the most important economic engines of Canada, is in an unnecessary election at this crucial time, one that is being carried out only to fulfill the personal ambition of the Premier of Ontario. Federally, the Liberal government is embroiled in a leadership contest after the resignation of Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader. With a weak caretaking government and with an imminent tariff war with the United States on the near horizon, Canada is not in an enviable position. The issues confronting Canada in 2025 go beyond mere setbacks and can more accurately be called crises. Unless they are resolved quickly, Canada will face a deep and potentially permanent loss of its national standard of living and quality of life. Incompetent governance, runaway and rampant ideology, social malaise, and a national identity crisis beset Canada. Let us be realistic: Canada’s very future is at stake – and the time for small, hesitant steps has passed. Canada needs a leader as never before. Not tomorrow, but right now. It is in this spirit that I invite readers to join me as we confront the problems facing our country and set out serious, new ideas to make 2025 the year Canada began to step back from the brink. One of the most obvious problems is the severe housing affordability crisis that is a sign for more deep troubles to come in a chain reaction. Housing costs are far outpacing income growth and are creating a significant barrier to homeownership for many Canadians. The crisis can be boiled down to a mismatch between housing supply and demand, exacerbated by factors such as declining real disposable income, a discrepancy between the types of dwellings built and the needs of the Canadian population, increasingly restrictive building codes, excessive development charges, and surging immigration levels. Declining job opportunities generated by a manufacturing industry outsourcing loss, bad economic investments and an outdated immigration policy are just a few of the complicated factors that generated this situation. If we look more closely at the demand side, Canada’s rate of new housing unit construction approximately matched population growth from 2000 to 2021. Thereafter, however, the immigrant population surged while job opportunities declined, and housing completions could not keep pace. To align population growth with housing capacity, Canada needs to reduce its excessive immigration, particularly among temporary workers and visa students. Furthermore, the federal government needs to better plan and coordinate with the provinces and economic realities. On the supply side, it is essential that federal building codes be reformed to remove costly “green ideology” provisions, and that provinces give municipalities greater flexibility to match housing types to demand. The federal government should also take steps to expose where municipal development charges have become excessive and work with provinces and cities to bring them down. Canada’s governments must undertake decisive measures to reverse decades of policy missteps. Canada can restore housing affordability, promote economic growth, and enhance the quality of life for its citizens, but only if it takes multiple actions – not in a piecemeal fashion, but in tandem with solid economic planning. For example, since 2000 incomes have not risen at the same rate as housing costs, so single family home prices have doubled relative to real income, with a particularly strong spike after 2020. Today, a household earning the median Canadian income would now need to allocate two-thirds of its income to housing costs in order to afford a home. The combination of weak income growth and rapid housing cost increases has created the present affordability crisis. The COVID pandemic in 2020 also caused a sudden demand for larger detached homes as many people switched to remote online work arrangements. This helps explain the 2020 spike in the prices of single family homes. With the rise of work-from-home arrangements, detached homes, and semi-detached townhomes remain in high demand and municipal planning has failed to keep pace with this new reality. On the other hand, excessive immigration has also been a driving force behind rising house prices. Canada has been relying on immigration to maintain the growth of its working-age population. Since the early 1990s immigration levels have consistently been around 1.0 per cent of the adult population. However, after 2021, immigration levels surged and domestic housing costs spiked. This put obvious pressure on the demand side of the market and will need to be addressed as part of any overall solution to housing costs. In summary, significant factors affecting housing affordability since the early 2000s include the failure of real incomes to keep pace with the increase in housing costs, a mismatch between the types of dwellings built and the needs of the Canadian population, and, from 2021 onward, a surge in immigration numbers. In conclusion, Canada stands at a critical juncture in addressing its housing affordability crisis. The next federal government will need to address this urgent policy conundrum immediately. The availability of affordable housing is consequential, as it affects a great many other aspects of our quality of life. Without swift and decisive action, rising housing costs will continue to deter Canadians from starting families and raising children, and continue to undermine the financial stability of Canadian households and hinder economic development. Resolving the housing crisis will not only provide relief to millions of Canadians but also secure the nation’s long-term economic and social stability. Are politicians listening, or is the Ivory Tower syndrome making them blind to the needs of Canadians?