Migrants are building Canada’s homes—while getting blamed for housing policy failures
Migrants are building Canada’s homes—while getting blamed for housing policy failures
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17 comments
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Not all immigration is bad. Not all foreign workers are bad. However when companies/employers are allowed to freely manipulate the system so that Canadians cannot get the jobs or the training and 'scholarships' and apprenticeships are for women, indigenous, and immigrants first, then Canadians who are excluded will be resentful. There was a news report yesterday of someone trying to raise money to keep an unqualified student in Canada, all expenses paid, because that young person had "potential". So do many other young Canadians and yet no one is trying to sponsor them if their parents cannot afford to send them to post secondary training. When a Canadian needs a trade certificate to do a job but a TFW can use the fake certificate his friend created for him, it isn't a equal employment field.
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Canada's elite scapegoat imgrants while completely ignoring that Canada's elites are the ones who wanted more migrants so they could have migrants renting and sleeping in shifts in the houses the elite own, and working for a pittance wage and no complaints at the Tim Hortons franchises the elites also own.
(And yes, I know it's more complex than that, but the same people who benefit from goosing GDP through immigration while keeping taxes low just happen to support political parties that make hay on dogwhistled racism)
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Still applies:
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Except the white man would be a director at Brookfield who owns residential real estate and wants their asset values to rise.
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Houses being built my me and all of the excavation and framing are being done by visible minorities. Can’t tell if they qualify as migrants or not though but the only Europeans I see working on housing are doing electrical plumbing and HVAC.
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That's because wages are depressed. If you paid fair wages, white people would work those jobs
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I don’t pay anyone. Contractors do. At higher wages nobody would be working. See what’s happening in the US.
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Without immigration, Canada's population would be going down. They wouldn't need more houses.
So I mean, yeah, they're rightfully getting blamed for it.
Another part of the problem are regulations, which make houses safer, more efficient, and better all around, but they also make it harder and more expensive to build houses.
Both problems, immigration and housing regulations, are caused by the government. Housing regulations shouldn't be repealed, but they can just stop immigration. But immigrants are a cash cow, so they won't.
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As I understand it, immigration is always a balancing act. We have a demographic problem in Canada. As more boomers retire there needs to be workers to take their place and pay taxes to fund services. Many critical industries are experiencing a labour shortage and those jobs need to be filled. Their isn't enough young Canadian citizens to accomplish this. Immigration can't just be stopped.
More immigrants will put pressure on the housing market, but the lack of housing is the result of decades of government complacency, as well as support for Canadian housing as an investment vehicle. The amount of houses/housing we need right now is huge. So huge that the current amount of construction workers in Canada cannot build it quickly enough. Immigrant workers will be needed. Undoing the decades of damage done to housing in Canada will take a sustained, long term, and bold effort. Does the current government have the will for that? I'm not super hopeful. Politicians have vested interests in keeping the housing market 'strong'. I hate to be fatalist, but even if the government does everything right, I don't expect the cost of housing to decrease any in the medium term.
Unfortunately, I don't have answers, besides the obvious that immigration policy needs to be nuanced and strategic.
That's my view of things anyway. I invite anyone to criticise and share knowledge on the subject.
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Even in the most extreme scenario, they will be aiming to stabilize prices, so it will take rising wages over at least a decade to make housing affordable. They won’t want to see prices dropping because they will be worried about a financial crash when people start walking away from under-water mortgages.
Edit: not disagreeing with your main point. Cutting off immigration entirely would be suicidal for a country with our demographics.
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That's a fair interpretation. I'm all for well managed immigration, but we went too hard, too fast on immigration and accepting international students. It's not just housing, healthcare has reached the breaking point as well. We need to tap the brakes on these issues and SLAM the brakes on foreign investors hording Canadian properties. I know some processes to deal with all this have begun, but yeah, it's going to be MANY years before we come out of this.
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Canada takes in more people than the US, who has 10x the population.
Canada does it to appease corporate lobbyists, which leads to the capital shallowing the BoC warns about when they talk about a lack of worker investment.
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Imo, infinite growth is not sustainable. A country can work just fine at a set population level, or even when it's going down slowly.
I bet if the Canadian govt would stop approving new visas right now, housing prices would crash.
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So like, what's your poison, pardner, Poilievre or Bernier?
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Poison is the right word, isn't it?
I'm so tired of voting for the lesser evil
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17 comments