Canada's population growth is exploding. Here's why - The Hub
Canada's population growth is exploding. Here's why - The Hub
thehub.ca
Canada's population growth is exploding. Here's why - The Hub
For several decades Canada’s population growth rate hovered at about 1.0 percent annually. This rate has more than tripled in a few short years, up to 3.3 percent in 2023.
It seems a bit odd to me that the solution is "fewer people" instead of "more housing"
Why not both?
There is no downside to building homes for everyone. There are downsides to not having a large population. More people can be beneficial economically, geopolitically, and socially.
It doesn't cost anything to have less people. It costs lots to build houses and infrastructure to support those people.
It also takes time to build out housing and infrastructure but pasuing growth can be done almost instantly politically speaking.
Both are required to drop the price and return to affordability as building new housing takes time and has hard limitations.
The reality is that the level of immigration should be dictated by the level of new housing and overall service and infrastructure investment. If you add people without alignment to these you're just degrading the housing security, quality of service, and overall quality of life for the vast majority of existing residents.
This also means that millions of immigrants could be accommodated per year if the level of new housing and investment were sufficiently high enough.
But government can do much to speed it up. Why are we just taking the rate of new housing as a given, and not taking the rate of new immigration as a given?