this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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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.
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.
I'd say that's a fair assessment of things. No worries, I'm happy to get more context on matters I should be better informed on.
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.
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.
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2024/03/productivity-problem/
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.
I'm not advocating for a system with infinite growth. I don't disagree with your first point, there's nothing inherently wrong with a country having a stagnant or declining population, but that's an over simplification. You need to look at the demographics. When more people are retired and drawing on services than there are people to work and pay for those services, that isn't sustainable. If you need more care homes for the elderly, than you need more people that work at care homes, for example.
If the housing prices are what they are now, with the current supply and demand, how would stopping new immigration cause a crash in housing prices? The aricle we're commenting under says that 1/5 of construction workers are immigrants. Would you want to stop bringing in more construction workers to build housing given the current crisis? Like I said before, immigration policy is complicated and needs to be nuanced and strategic, it isn't an all or nothing situation.