Bringing in more people in the middle of a housing crisis make no sense. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimates that our existing housing industry would need to grow by 50%, right now, to meet projected housing requirements for 2030 Canada’s Housing Supply Shortages. This is completely unrealistic and demonstrates a wanton disregard by our federal government for the very real negative impacts on Canadians.   Conservative legislators in other countries are calling for outright moratoriums on immigration, until this serious deficiency is fixed.

Expecting more immigration to solve the housing crisis is complete fantasy.  We are told immigrants will immediately help to build housing.  Well, Canada has strict building codes that simply do not exist in the developing countries,  so training will be required if we don’t want to see bodies being extracted from collapsed rubble, so often the case in many immigrant’s countries of origin.

Housing development takes years; immigration happens overnight.   Unlike food or clothing,  housing is not a product that can be rapidly increased to meet the growing population demands.   Ballooning regulation has added significant cost and lead times to all home construction in Canada.   To make matters worse, municipal endorsement of 15-minute cities has created a massive supply shortage and increased development costs in those cities.

Very few Canadians want population densification.   Some argue that Canada is a large country with plenty of space for new immigrants.  This view ignores the desires of many immigrants themselves, who prefer to live in urban centers.    The solution demanded of Canada by the United Nations is a program of densification,  whether those already living in Canada’s urban settings like it or not.   This is the root cause of 15-minute cities and why the federal government has decided to force municipalities to comply.

“The worsening was widespread with every single market experiencing an increase in their mortgage payment as a percentage of income (MPPI). At the national level the deterioration stemmed from a surge in home prices of 4.6%, the largest in 6 quarters and partially erasing the decline over the last year. A rebound in home prices during a period of rising interest rates could initially appear perplexing. That said, a chronic lack of supply in the resale market compounded by record population growth has allowed prices to rise.”

In a September 2023 report, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. estimated that Canada needs to build 5.8 million housing units by the end of 2030 to restore affordability. That’s 3.5 million units more than the current pace of new home construction.    That just won’t happen;  CMHC recently reduced its 2030 projection of the number of total housing units by 400,000.  Look for that estimate to be reduced even further in the 2024 report.   With continuing mass immigration, housing construction in Canada is unlikely to ever catch up.

“Too many people in Canada don’t have access to housing that they can afford and meets their needs. To get a better understanding of housing and supply and demand, this report looks at overall affordability for the entire housing system in Canada.”