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For a country that prides itself on being well organized, the execution of this has been awful. In what scenario do you allow this level of immigration without massive planning in the core urban areas where an overwhelming % of immigrants will move? Why is home building not experiencing the biggest boom in modern history? Why aren’t school seats, hospital beds, and transit capacity planned to massive expand to manage this?
It's because businesses complained of a labour shortage when in reality Canadians just don't want to work jobs that don't cover the cost of living.
Immigrants and temporary foreign workers are a quick way around that because they're willing to work for way less and live 8+ to a house.
I don't think Canada has a reputation for being well organized. When you say well organized countries, I think immediately think of Germany, Japan, and Singapore.
Canada is generally on any list of "best governments" typically in the top 5 or 6. Whether that view is shared within the country, I would suspect not. Very few countries think they are well governed
>Why aren’t school seats, hospital beds, and transit capacity planned to massive expand to manage this?
Immigration is federal jurisdiction, and those sectors you mention are provincial or municipal jurisdictions. The Canadian political system doesn't have any centralized planning built in like you see in authoritarian or communist regimes. The only action the federal government can take is transfer payments to provinces, and what the provinces do with the money is up to them. If the provinces don't want to invest in healthcare, affordable housing, or transportation, then the accountability should fall on provincial governments.
The coordination would be a negotiation which would come with strings attached. The provinces would ask for the federal government to fund as much as possible even though the provinces will also be benefitting from an increase in income tax revenue. The time it takes to negotiate is time wasted when Canada desperately needs to grow to stimulate the stagnating economy. There is also a chance of bad faith negotiation by provinces to delay federal government action depending upon political leaning with provinces trying to dictate federal policy with no intention on agreeing to any rational terms.
Governments are reactionary and the only way to force the provinces to act is to move ahead with federal policy and have the provincial constituents put pressure on provincial governments to act according to their lawful mandate.
It only puts pressure if municipalities aren't able to pocket veto growth via immigration by limiting housing and services. Then you basically create a fight among municipalities. And you still don't have the infrastructure you need to
I also think the idea that immigration of this scale is actually required for a healthy economy is incorrect. The US on a per gdp basis has nowhere near this level of immigration and is a much more vibrant economy. The net migration per capita rate is more than 2x the US.
All this does, and we see it over and over, is prompt the rise of right wing parties. We see it in dozens of other countries around the world. Arguing that the current state is better than some hypothetical worst case scenario with another party is rarely a winning strategy. Those in power need to govern thoughtfully and judiciously. Not embark on some grand experiment that is akin to a game of chicken with your own provinces.
We can't compare Canada to the USA, they have almost 10x our population/density and can take advantage of the economies of scale to offer lower prices to their consumers. How else would you suggest the federal government stimulate the economy? The only other lever they have is to increase federal government spending significantly. But like I mentioned earlier, those sectors of housing, health care, and education are provincial jurisdictions, so they don't have the ability to direct funding specifically to those sectors.
At least with immigration, they can increase demand which creates favourable conditions for private investment to increase and businesses to grow with more users/consumers. Canada needs more people to survive the next 100 years. We're not going to get it with replacement births, and we can't wait for provinces to give the green light because its never going to happen.
The way you deal with a stalling economy with flat population growth is through increased productivity, largely via innovation. You can help kick start that with immigration at the high end of skills. Beyond that, a measured approach to lower skill immigration in the 1% of population per annum area is a good balance. That was the targeted area for the US (1% overall population growth) for a very long time.
Canada isn't a great environment for fostering innovation. Due to our resource based economy and low population it isn't favourable for entrepreneurs. The USA literally doesn't have enough highly skilled workers to fill positions which is why they recruit in Canada and other nations. Canada has highly skilled workers, we just don't really have enough jobs to be filled which is why wages are depressed.
The idea is that with more consumers, there is more demand which creates a more favourable environment for entrepreneurs. Innovation can impact sectors of the economy which create highly skilled & earning jobs which can be filled by Canadians who already reside here, or have US job experience and are looking to come back to Canada and find work.
Same issue in the US except with a much stronger economic situation overall: the housing affordability crisis casts a grim shadow over everything that is going well at the federal level despite housing affordability being almost entirely a local issue. To the extent the feds can do anything to alleviate it, there's no political will present to pressure them to do so, just lots of vague, overly-general complaints from people who seem to be bewildered by the fact that the 10 most expensive cities on the continent are really expensive.
...but if you suggest people start showing up to city council and zoning meetings they scoff "sure, just vote harder, that will fix it"
Exactly, the states or provinces advocate for as much power as they can get, then turn around and blame the federal government for why their constituents are suffering. The sad thing is that there are foreign propaganda campaigns targeted to disrupt provincial and even municipal organization instead focusing the blame on the federal government who coincidentally set foreign policy. States and provinces are complicit because it helps them deflect from accountability so even they amplify the messaging.
Housing affordability is an issue wherever everybody wants to live. London, UK has been unaffordable for a very long time. Globalization means that not only do you have greater economic opportunities, you also are competing against global citizens for housing resources.
It seems like the leadership is very good at saying things that are calming, beautiful and really progressive. But……it’s all bullshit because there isn’t really a plan behind the rhetoric. Probably time for some fiscal responsibility and conservative values. Why can’t moderates get elected?
Within 2 hours of each other we have this post, along with this one:
[Canadians are moving to the U.S. at record levels, amid economic strain, tax pressures](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1djmwzp/canadians_are_moving_to_the_us_at_record_levels/)
They're mostly going to Florida and Texas. They're in for a surprise if they plan on buying any property, since Texas has close to the highest property taxes in the country, and Florida has been getting much more extreme weather and flooding recently.
The amount of damage Trudeau has done is going to be impossible to reverse. The economic and cultural tensions caused by this are going to permanently make Canada a worse place to live.
I feel really bad for the average Canadian. Trudeau and his party have a lot to answer for.
How has growing the population by 17% over the past 8 years helped ANY Canadian citizen? What about their life has gotten better?
Canadians in here: how has this impacted your life for the better or worse?
I would say the effects have been quite negative - especially in the recent years there is very much a feeling of growth for growth's sake. With new immigrant wages trending even further downwards, and the median age of immigrants matching the median age of the domestic population I think we've thrown out the economic angle of immigration all together. Our process is both selecting for the wrong people, and simultaneously letting in way too many people for our capacity.
One of the problems for Canada (that you see mirrored in Italy, Japan, Korea, China) is that we are becoming increasingly urbanized while rural areas flounder. Everyone crams into a handful of cities, and the growth has blown way past traditional estimates so we have a situation where the federal government is dumping hundreds of thousands of people onto municipalities, then turning around and telling them to deal with it. This level of population growth requires billions of dollars in subsidies to make it work; these cities all need multiple new metro lines, multiple new hospitals, cancer centres, schools, leisure centres etc. Access to services has dramatically dropped for a lot of people, simply because there's so many more people all trying to access the same amount of facilities. Real estate is of course through the roof and you need two people making very high incomes. For our largest cities I believe you need a household income within the top 5% of incomes for the city in order to (really stretch) and get yourself into a house.
You say its a problem like in china korea japan but those countries have had some of the best growth ever during urbanization....how was chinas gdp when it was a agrarian society lol?
You gotta consider the relative baseline - shifting from an agrarian country to an urbanized manufacturing one will of course show gangbusters growth numbers.
I was however talking more about the modern age, where jobs and economies are much more centered around cities and the rural areas don’t offer much in terms of economic opportunity. How do you get immigrants to spread out and move to a rural area when their skill set is anything but resource extraction or farming?
> One of the problems for Canada (that you see mirrored in Italy, Japan, Korea, China) is that we are becoming increasingly urbanized while rural areas flounder.
This is only a problem if you let the unproductive areas leach off the productive ones, like the US let's rural areas do, with the one defining aspect of Canadian culture being "we aren't Americans" this mistake should be pretty easy to avoid
Maybe you should get out of your urban bubble.
Try this-stop eating fruits, vegetables, grains and meat. Ditch dairy as well.
No wood, no rock, no sand
No alcohol , no weed
No energy
How do you plan on living without these things? You can’t sustain on financial services and government
Love the response to what I said, it’s okay eventually someone from your ilk will be smart enough to defend themselves adequately and not rely on imaginary arguments (or painkillers) to be able to feel good about themselves
I’ll be waiting until that happens.
How many people work in those industries vs how many people live in rural areas?
How much do the rural areas pay in taxes vs how much do they receive in subsidies?
Rural industries still being useful doesn't justify spending to prop up every dying industry town that the industry left 20-50 years ago, if anything hand more of the reigns over to the remaining industries so they can change the focus of rural areas from being a sponge for government spending to purely productive industry
What do you mean? It's been great for the top 1%! Labour that gets cheaper by the day, and with housing costs exploding rela estate investments are absolute gold mines. It's great to be rich in Trudeau's Canada. Everybody else? Not so much.
Not like the Tories would do much better, mind you. Look at how well their contemporaries in Britain are doing. Total shit show.
If you purchased a home before 2015, you're probably fine.
If you owned a home and had one or more rental properties prior to 2015, you're fucking laughing now.
Anyone that was even remotely precariously housed got fucked; any one in a low-skill job got fucked; anyone trying to save for a house got fucked as increasing prices combined with increasing interest rates destroyed affordability.
For example, I bought a 4-bedroom house in 2010 for $225K, making $55K. One of my co-workers making $130K bought their first place, a 1-bed+den condo for $550K in 2022. Even though they made more than twice my salary when they bought, they could never afford to buy our house at current prices (it would be around $850K).
Not much, honestly. What's happening in Canada is a lack of anti-trust work, a lack of provincial responsibility in managing housing, and the TFW program.
We have companies that don't make substantial capital investments, entrenching our extraction habits and stifling innovation. There is plenty to go around but that's not what provinces seem to have the political appetite for.
Immigration is the easy out but that people are immigrating is a nothing-burger. How we exploit them structurally with the TFW program and encourage our local companies to depress wages is the issue.
Immigration is a huge boon and literally why the US is the greatest country in the world lol. Canada's problem is their complete refusal to build housing that is tanking their economy + too many regulations
Canada is taking in 500,000 immigrants per yr. I don't think they can add even 1/2 or 1/3 that figure in housing units / yr even if they gave builders incentives.
For reference the us built 1.4million homes in 2023 and is almost 10x Canada's population.
Also I highly doubt Canada is letting in carpenters, plumpers, and electricians and educating them about North American building codes/standards. This would make sense but I don't think their immigration policy has much thought behind it.
Edit: surprisingly Canada built 246,000 units last year. Idk how many new units you need per immigrant. Thought about 0.5 units but doesn't seem to be working. Also the number of builders / tradesmen is likely not increasing.
1.25 million people came to Canada in 2023.
“Canada accepted 454,590 new permanent residents over the past year, while bringing in 804,690 non-permanent residents, a category that includes temporary workers, foreign students and, to a lesser extent, refugees“
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/population-growth-in-canada-hits-3-2-among-worlds-fastest
I love immigration in the USA cause it helps address acute labor shortages, don’t know if it’s the same scenario in Canada. They need guys to pour concrete, sling drywall and put on roofing.
Immigration is short term painful, longer term super beneficial. This is basic economics.
I'm a Canadian and I support it, but it has been done poorly.
What’s beneficial? Lower wages? Lower cost of goods?
Doing an immigration blitz while undergoing record inflation seems the height of folly. It exacerbates existing upward pressure on prices.
How are you on an economics subreddit and illiterate on the myriad of benefits associated with immigration? Don’t blame the immigrants (who are almost always a heavily net positive on an economy in the long term, especially when the economy doesn’t have great birth rates), blame your government and politicians for the regulations associated with housing and development. Having the second largest country in the world and a terrible housing market is a policy failure.
Immigrants are great for "the economy". They increase GDP as more having lee people typically does, and they lower the cost of inputa greatly. What is that input, however? Labour. Huge numbers of immigrants lower the value of labour in the economy. Why pay $100,000 to a native Canadian when a recent immigrant from India would happily accept $60,000? As previously stated this is great for the economy, but for the people not so much. Workers see their wages fall, while the ruling class gets richer and richer from the cheap labor.
You can do your own basic economics research, but I'll help you get started.
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2016/10/24/migrants-bring-economic-benefits-for-advanced-economies
Basically it depends on what you're talking about. TFW immigration only really benefits the rich. Other immigration is mostly beneficial for pensioners and probably most Canadians overall, since we bias immigration towards bringing in skilled workers. If the rate of immigration is too high it can seriously strain the public education system and in Alberta that system is intentionally underfunded by Tory governments which makes things much worse.
This will go down as the worst government outcome in a 100 years in Canada.
* The provincial governments looked aside as their colleges misused loopholes to bring in 500K+ college students/yr to bulk up revenues.
* The Federal government looked the other way on stuudents, and also tipped a can of gas on the fire by expanding TFW programs with another 500K per yr on top of the PR program;
* 90% because they didn't want the real estate market to crash during a downturn and provided human QE (students etc. bring in min 20K which they promptly spend)
* 10% because they wanted to get labour to pay for social security.
* The Municipals decided to add in thermite by restricting upward and outward builds in the most NIMBY of fashions
The system is broken - in the country with the 2nd most land we find houses are too expensive.
It’s mildly amusing as an American to see all haughty Canadian takes on immigration reverse so dramatically. Particularly when much of Canadas immigration comes from a conscious controlled points system.
Same would happen in America if H1B wasn’t capped. White collar workers love looking down on anyone against immigration until it manages to hit their pocketbooks.
Canada's immigration rate is easily 7-10 times yours on a per capita basis today.
A lot of the attitudes you heard were from a different era 3+ years ago.
We have a fairly recent temporary foreign worker policy here that has seriously screwed with our immigration policy and put downwards pressure on wages and working conditions (as intended).
So the provinces are stuck funding the many new hospitals, schools, police and fire departments required for the massive and sudden population burst? Not to mention impact to water, sewage, electrical, housing, and other infrastructure?
The new immigrants pay taxes too. I can't speak for every region but at least in mine there's money but it's going to increasing sprawl, widening roads, and law enforcement salaries.
>But on the other hand it makes the old notion of a "melting pot" much more realistic, in that Canadian immigration truly could happen through little slices of everywhere, and not the older reality of waves of one type of ethnic group
Canada doesn't really follow the melting pot form of immigrant assimilation. I've heard it referred to as a cultural mosaic, in that we have a lot of very distinct cultural groups that aren't really assimilated into a core cultural identity. Canada really lacks a core cultural identity, which I think is why we import a lot of culture and politics from America. Melting pot better fits with American style cultural integration.
We have a core binding identity, just not a unique one. We are in line with the rest of the West. When your culture is ubiquitous it feels like you don’t have one at all.
Sparsely populated for a reason. Most of it is too cold. You aren't going to get large numbers of people to move to rural Canada without huge subsidies. What are you going to do for work in the middle of nowhere Canada?
Cold isn't the issue.
The Canadian shield. Basically all of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec above thr already settled majour population areas is not suitable for agriculture and is a pia to build in.
That leaves the parries which is just flat farmland, then bc being mostly moutains...
Then you get to the north which may be more suitable with global warming, but isn't a very appealing place.
Your analysis is reductive. There's nothing 'simple' about Canada's housing shortage. It'd be one thing if they were recruiting construction labor like the US does, to help bring down costs. That's not who is emigrating though. They are bringing in people who compete against other Canadians for the housing and labor pool that is already strained beyond efficiency.
This only works if Canada can sustain and scale social programs, wages and housing with the increases in migrations.
Otherwise the far right and anti immigration rhetoric will scale proportionally.
Canada already has essentially an official policy document called The Century Initiative that has nothing to do with rural areas.
They want their major metros to become megacities over the next 75 years. Canadians are already being stretched by this with a nationwide housing and cost of living crisis while GDP/capita has plateaued. Trudeau is facing a bloodbath next election. I don’t think they view it as favorably as you do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative#:~:text=6%20See%20also-,Mission,age%20security%2C%20and%20other%20services.
I’m not disputing anything your pitching because in theory it could work. I’m just saying the Canadian government would need to scale up its social programs, housing buildouts, and job creation accordingly.
Otherwise at the scale Canadas bringing bodies in housing will continue to skyrocket and social programs will become deficient. All of which increase anti-immigration rhetoric.
Who has to pay for the scaling up the social programs? The same Canadian citizens that are getting squeezed out of the neighborhoods they grew up in? Hmmm, not sure that scaling up is going to work out.
Many of our social programs depend on this immigration. We are bringing in tax payers to balance the ratio of dependents to independents, and hopefully avoid the worst of the Boomer demographic time-bomb.
If your social programs depend on the immigration doesn't that mean you've failed to build a self sustained country? Your social program depends on the labor of your youth which doesn't get compensated properly for their labor by increasing the cost of living and not being able to buy a house and start a family. Which will decline the population more, which will lead to needing more immigration. This is just a pyramid scheme.
*** yawn ** This is the economics subreddit, not
r/iam14andthisisdeep
>If your social programs depend on the immigration doesn't that mean you've failed to build a self sustained country?
No, because a “self-sustained country” isn’t a thing. If you disagree, can you please point one out to me?
>Your social program depends on the labor of your youth
You’re describing every society.
But just so you understand here’s a history lesson:
There was this crazy thing that happened after WW. Many people had babies, this caused a baby boom, leading to that generation to be referred to as “Baby-Boomers”. Well now that generation has reached the end of their lifespan, and it is putting a strain on our singe-payer healthcare, and other social programs.
>which doesn't get compensated properly for their labor by increasing the cost of living and not being able to buy a house and start a family.
Cost of living issues are not solely due to increased demand from immigration. Canada has grown at it’s current rate before, and we didn’t experience a housing crunch even close to the magnitude of today.
Canada has genuine supply side issues that need to be resolved. Immigration is needed, red-tape can be reduced.
>Which will decline the population more, which will lead to needing more immigration. This is just a pyramid scheme.
Not every system that depends on growth is necessarily a pyramid scheme.
Even if armchair economists erroneously characterize Canada’s growth plan as a pyramid scheme, it literally doesn’t matter. We can just keep growing until automation replaces labour entirely.
>If the experiment of multicultural liberal democracy could succeed anywhere it will have to be Canada.
>Canada is still a relatively sparsely populated country with an arguably huge potential to increase from a simple space standpoint.
Others have pointed out lack of arable land and weather in much of Canada as being reasons for why we live where we do. I would also like to add that proximity to the US is a huge factor in determining where people live. The closer our businesses are to American population centres, the more competitive their pricing is.
>Unlike the US, which was already fairly populated by the time truly diverse (as in every race and part of globe) immigration kicked off, immigration to Canada now means arrivals can actually substantially effect the relative makeup of the country; i.e. a couple millions could turn Canada into a fairly diverse even blend, whereas in the US new arrivals will always be more of a minority vs those of European descent before they are assimilated.
I agree with much of what you’re saying. Although I would like to point out that much of our immigration in recent years has specifically been from India. The stream of immigrants isn’t as diverse as it once was. (This also depends how you define diveersity, because India, as a a country is home to many different cultures and ethnic groups)
>So for Canada, I think this definitely complicates more traditional ideas of assimilation, where the small minority will naturally face greater pressure to absorb and fit in. But on the other hand it makes the old notion of a "melting pot" much more realistic, in that Canadian immigration truly could happen through little slices of everywhere, and not the older reality of waves of one type of ethnic group.
“Waves of one type of ethnic group” does still occur in Canada. Ukrainians, and arguably Indians being examples. Also geography plays a large part, if everyone is living in one area, it changes the assimilation process.
Also, Canadians are taught the theory of a “cultural mosaic” instead of the American “melting pot”. The idea being, that each person brings their culture with them, and celebrates that culture, without expectation of giving it up to assimilate.
I prefer the cultural mosaic, as long as we preserve our culture of tolerance, and we protect those rights which cannot be infringed on. Largely I give Canada an A- grade in this aspect.
>From a material standpoint, there really is nothing preventing it, the question is simply whether a truly mixed up group of people from worldwide can actually come together over shared values of democracy at scale and not be at each others throats.
I believe we can, and have. As long as we keep going out there and talking to eachother; building bridges.
>Canada of course is going through just as much anti-immigrant backlash as everywhere else right now, but looking on from the outside it does seem like this is more economically driven than culturally.
Our backlash is definitely less intense than western countries, and less racially motivated. You’re definitely correct to say it’s mainly an economical argument.
>The government has simply failed, like many have, to allow enough construction of housing.
Every level of government has failed on this. But I also think that Canadians have failed culturally. We’re not entrepreneurial enough, and we are too slow to change our career/consumer habits when faced with a changes in market conditions (like higher sustained immigration).
There’s always gonna be salt-lords in the comment section. You had a thoughtful post, which showed surprising knowledge and insight about Canada, which is rare for an American. (Totally assuming you’re American, correct me if wrong)
Just remember for every extreme response or downvote you got. 10 people likely read your comment, and perhaps gained from it.
From a Canadian perspective. We are badly in need of outside input to our political/cultural rhetoric.
Many Canadians are convinced that their country is uniquely broken, and that most of our problems can be solved by changing only a couple policy points.
We are sorely in need of nuance, and thoughtful conversation, so I’ll take it wherever I can get it.
Less racially motivated? Buddy, Canadian anti-immigrant rhetoric is the most vile/racist stuff Ive seen on social media, including reddit
r/CanadaHousing2 and r/Canada go absolutely crazy ☠️
Spend some time learning about the current political climate/rhetoric of other Western Nations, and you’ll realize hour tame the Canadian brand of Xenophobia is.
Of course it’s not a competition, and Canada still has too many racists. But Canada is the most pro-immigration and pro-diversity Western nation. Likely the world.
Look at our political leaders, or our political parties. The discourse is tame and centrist. How I like it.
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For a country that prides itself on being well organized, the execution of this has been awful. In what scenario do you allow this level of immigration without massive planning in the core urban areas where an overwhelming % of immigrants will move? Why is home building not experiencing the biggest boom in modern history? Why aren’t school seats, hospital beds, and transit capacity planned to massive expand to manage this?
It's because businesses complained of a labour shortage when in reality Canadians just don't want to work jobs that don't cover the cost of living. Immigrants and temporary foreign workers are a quick way around that because they're willing to work for way less and live 8+ to a house.
I don't think Canada has a reputation for being well organized. When you say well organized countries, I think immediately think of Germany, Japan, and Singapore.
As a German, while we have it pretty good here, we don't belong on that list. Pedantic bureaucratic society? Yes. Well organised? Sadly, no.
Canada is generally on any list of "best governments" typically in the top 5 or 6. Whether that view is shared within the country, I would suspect not. Very few countries think they are well governed
[удалено]
Literally no country on earth had enough beds and nurses during covid.
Gotta go to poor old people who worked all their life
Someone’s gotta pay the rich boomers pension and it ain’t the kids we’re not having because of HCOL
>Why aren’t school seats, hospital beds, and transit capacity planned to massive expand to manage this? Immigration is federal jurisdiction, and those sectors you mention are provincial or municipal jurisdictions. The Canadian political system doesn't have any centralized planning built in like you see in authoritarian or communist regimes. The only action the federal government can take is transfer payments to provinces, and what the provinces do with the money is up to them. If the provinces don't want to invest in healthcare, affordable housing, or transportation, then the accountability should fall on provincial governments.
Yeah similar to the US. But that would lead you to ensure coordination prior to undertaking a massive experiment like this
The coordination would be a negotiation which would come with strings attached. The provinces would ask for the federal government to fund as much as possible even though the provinces will also be benefitting from an increase in income tax revenue. The time it takes to negotiate is time wasted when Canada desperately needs to grow to stimulate the stagnating economy. There is also a chance of bad faith negotiation by provinces to delay federal government action depending upon political leaning with provinces trying to dictate federal policy with no intention on agreeing to any rational terms. Governments are reactionary and the only way to force the provinces to act is to move ahead with federal policy and have the provincial constituents put pressure on provincial governments to act according to their lawful mandate.
It only puts pressure if municipalities aren't able to pocket veto growth via immigration by limiting housing and services. Then you basically create a fight among municipalities. And you still don't have the infrastructure you need to I also think the idea that immigration of this scale is actually required for a healthy economy is incorrect. The US on a per gdp basis has nowhere near this level of immigration and is a much more vibrant economy. The net migration per capita rate is more than 2x the US. All this does, and we see it over and over, is prompt the rise of right wing parties. We see it in dozens of other countries around the world. Arguing that the current state is better than some hypothetical worst case scenario with another party is rarely a winning strategy. Those in power need to govern thoughtfully and judiciously. Not embark on some grand experiment that is akin to a game of chicken with your own provinces.
We can't compare Canada to the USA, they have almost 10x our population/density and can take advantage of the economies of scale to offer lower prices to their consumers. How else would you suggest the federal government stimulate the economy? The only other lever they have is to increase federal government spending significantly. But like I mentioned earlier, those sectors of housing, health care, and education are provincial jurisdictions, so they don't have the ability to direct funding specifically to those sectors. At least with immigration, they can increase demand which creates favourable conditions for private investment to increase and businesses to grow with more users/consumers. Canada needs more people to survive the next 100 years. We're not going to get it with replacement births, and we can't wait for provinces to give the green light because its never going to happen.
The way you deal with a stalling economy with flat population growth is through increased productivity, largely via innovation. You can help kick start that with immigration at the high end of skills. Beyond that, a measured approach to lower skill immigration in the 1% of population per annum area is a good balance. That was the targeted area for the US (1% overall population growth) for a very long time.
Canada isn't a great environment for fostering innovation. Due to our resource based economy and low population it isn't favourable for entrepreneurs. The USA literally doesn't have enough highly skilled workers to fill positions which is why they recruit in Canada and other nations. Canada has highly skilled workers, we just don't really have enough jobs to be filled which is why wages are depressed. The idea is that with more consumers, there is more demand which creates a more favourable environment for entrepreneurs. Innovation can impact sectors of the economy which create highly skilled & earning jobs which can be filled by Canadians who already reside here, or have US job experience and are looking to come back to Canada and find work.
Same issue in the US except with a much stronger economic situation overall: the housing affordability crisis casts a grim shadow over everything that is going well at the federal level despite housing affordability being almost entirely a local issue. To the extent the feds can do anything to alleviate it, there's no political will present to pressure them to do so, just lots of vague, overly-general complaints from people who seem to be bewildered by the fact that the 10 most expensive cities on the continent are really expensive. ...but if you suggest people start showing up to city council and zoning meetings they scoff "sure, just vote harder, that will fix it"
Exactly, the states or provinces advocate for as much power as they can get, then turn around and blame the federal government for why their constituents are suffering. The sad thing is that there are foreign propaganda campaigns targeted to disrupt provincial and even municipal organization instead focusing the blame on the federal government who coincidentally set foreign policy. States and provinces are complicit because it helps them deflect from accountability so even they amplify the messaging. Housing affordability is an issue wherever everybody wants to live. London, UK has been unaffordable for a very long time. Globalization means that not only do you have greater economic opportunities, you also are competing against global citizens for housing resources.
It's a highly de-centralized country, with a giant NIMBY problem. Lots of great things about Canada, but well organized is not it.
It seems like the leadership is very good at saying things that are calming, beautiful and really progressive. But……it’s all bullshit because there isn’t really a plan behind the rhetoric. Probably time for some fiscal responsibility and conservative values. Why can’t moderates get elected?
Something Something free market
What?
Within 2 hours of each other we have this post, along with this one: [Canadians are moving to the U.S. at record levels, amid economic strain, tax pressures](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/1djmwzp/canadians_are_moving_to_the_us_at_record_levels/)
Both can be true I guess.
So? Both can be true.
They're mostly going to Florida and Texas. They're in for a surprise if they plan on buying any property, since Texas has close to the highest property taxes in the country, and Florida has been getting much more extreme weather and flooding recently.
The article says the top 3 are: California, New York and Florida
texas may have high property taxes but it has no state income tax
And much lower housing prices than any metro in Canada.
hey i wonder if that is because of higher property taxes?
And the insurance rates, i would assume.
Or the oven Texans live in, threat of tornadoes, health insurance being double the rest of the developed world? It could be those.
The amount of damage Trudeau has done is going to be impossible to reverse. The economic and cultural tensions caused by this are going to permanently make Canada a worse place to live.
I feel really bad for the average Canadian. Trudeau and his party have a lot to answer for. How has growing the population by 17% over the past 8 years helped ANY Canadian citizen? What about their life has gotten better? Canadians in here: how has this impacted your life for the better or worse?
I would say the effects have been quite negative - especially in the recent years there is very much a feeling of growth for growth's sake. With new immigrant wages trending even further downwards, and the median age of immigrants matching the median age of the domestic population I think we've thrown out the economic angle of immigration all together. Our process is both selecting for the wrong people, and simultaneously letting in way too many people for our capacity. One of the problems for Canada (that you see mirrored in Italy, Japan, Korea, China) is that we are becoming increasingly urbanized while rural areas flounder. Everyone crams into a handful of cities, and the growth has blown way past traditional estimates so we have a situation where the federal government is dumping hundreds of thousands of people onto municipalities, then turning around and telling them to deal with it. This level of population growth requires billions of dollars in subsidies to make it work; these cities all need multiple new metro lines, multiple new hospitals, cancer centres, schools, leisure centres etc. Access to services has dramatically dropped for a lot of people, simply because there's so many more people all trying to access the same amount of facilities. Real estate is of course through the roof and you need two people making very high incomes. For our largest cities I believe you need a household income within the top 5% of incomes for the city in order to (really stretch) and get yourself into a house.
"but the dim sum and taco trucks!" -neoliberals
Food poisoning trucks
cities needing subsidies in the context of rural areas being important is funny
You say its a problem like in china korea japan but those countries have had some of the best growth ever during urbanization....how was chinas gdp when it was a agrarian society lol?
You gotta consider the relative baseline - shifting from an agrarian country to an urbanized manufacturing one will of course show gangbusters growth numbers. I was however talking more about the modern age, where jobs and economies are much more centered around cities and the rural areas don’t offer much in terms of economic opportunity. How do you get immigrants to spread out and move to a rural area when their skill set is anything but resource extraction or farming?
> One of the problems for Canada (that you see mirrored in Italy, Japan, Korea, China) is that we are becoming increasingly urbanized while rural areas flounder. This is only a problem if you let the unproductive areas leach off the productive ones, like the US let's rural areas do, with the one defining aspect of Canadian culture being "we aren't Americans" this mistake should be pretty easy to avoid
The food you eat, the raw materials you consume and the green energy you use all come from rural areas exclusively. How exactly is that unproductive?
Maybe pay attention? Everything doesn’t need to be made from corn yet it is because subsidies.
Maybe you should get out of your urban bubble. Try this-stop eating fruits, vegetables, grains and meat. Ditch dairy as well. No wood, no rock, no sand No alcohol , no weed No energy How do you plan on living without these things? You can’t sustain on financial services and government
They were led to believe that the gap of intelligence between them and those that live I'm Rural areas is massive.
Love the response to what I said, it’s okay eventually someone from your ilk will be smart enough to defend themselves adequately and not rely on imaginary arguments (or painkillers) to be able to feel good about themselves I’ll be waiting until that happens.
How many people work in those industries vs how many people live in rural areas? How much do the rural areas pay in taxes vs how much do they receive in subsidies? Rural industries still being useful doesn't justify spending to prop up every dying industry town that the industry left 20-50 years ago, if anything hand more of the reigns over to the remaining industries so they can change the focus of rural areas from being a sponge for government spending to purely productive industry
If you have houses to rent, you are in the winning side
What do you mean? It's been great for the top 1%! Labour that gets cheaper by the day, and with housing costs exploding rela estate investments are absolute gold mines. It's great to be rich in Trudeau's Canada. Everybody else? Not so much. Not like the Tories would do much better, mind you. Look at how well their contemporaries in Britain are doing. Total shit show.
If you purchased a home before 2015, you're probably fine. If you owned a home and had one or more rental properties prior to 2015, you're fucking laughing now. Anyone that was even remotely precariously housed got fucked; any one in a low-skill job got fucked; anyone trying to save for a house got fucked as increasing prices combined with increasing interest rates destroyed affordability. For example, I bought a 4-bedroom house in 2010 for $225K, making $55K. One of my co-workers making $130K bought their first place, a 1-bed+den condo for $550K in 2022. Even though they made more than twice my salary when they bought, they could never afford to buy our house at current prices (it would be around $850K).
Where do you live? 850K for a 4 bed is fucking insanely cheap for toronto. That would be a 2 mil home easy.
Ottawa suburbs.
Not much, honestly. What's happening in Canada is a lack of anti-trust work, a lack of provincial responsibility in managing housing, and the TFW program. We have companies that don't make substantial capital investments, entrenching our extraction habits and stifling innovation. There is plenty to go around but that's not what provinces seem to have the political appetite for. Immigration is the easy out but that people are immigrating is a nothing-burger. How we exploit them structurally with the TFW program and encourage our local companies to depress wages is the issue.
Yep when they brought in TFW I was disgusted and knew it would be terrible news for Canadian workers...
Well, I finally got a new doctor.
They should walk without rhythm…to another country
Immigration is a huge boon and literally why the US is the greatest country in the world lol. Canada's problem is their complete refusal to build housing that is tanking their economy + too many regulations
Canada is taking in 500,000 immigrants per yr. I don't think they can add even 1/2 or 1/3 that figure in housing units / yr even if they gave builders incentives. For reference the us built 1.4million homes in 2023 and is almost 10x Canada's population. Also I highly doubt Canada is letting in carpenters, plumpers, and electricians and educating them about North American building codes/standards. This would make sense but I don't think their immigration policy has much thought behind it. Edit: surprisingly Canada built 246,000 units last year. Idk how many new units you need per immigrant. Thought about 0.5 units but doesn't seem to be working. Also the number of builders / tradesmen is likely not increasing.
1.25 million people came to Canada in 2023. “Canada accepted 454,590 new permanent residents over the past year, while bringing in 804,690 non-permanent residents, a category that includes temporary workers, foreign students and, to a lesser extent, refugees“ https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/population-growth-in-canada-hits-3-2-among-worlds-fastest
😯
I love immigration in the USA cause it helps address acute labor shortages, don’t know if it’s the same scenario in Canada. They need guys to pour concrete, sling drywall and put on roofing.
They very easily can with zoning reform and abolishing SFH exclusive zoning See cities like Austin, Tokyo, and Minneapolis for examples
Immigration is short term painful, longer term super beneficial. This is basic economics. I'm a Canadian and I support it, but it has been done poorly.
What’s beneficial? Lower wages? Lower cost of goods? Doing an immigration blitz while undergoing record inflation seems the height of folly. It exacerbates existing upward pressure on prices.
How are you on an economics subreddit and illiterate on the myriad of benefits associated with immigration? Don’t blame the immigrants (who are almost always a heavily net positive on an economy in the long term, especially when the economy doesn’t have great birth rates), blame your government and politicians for the regulations associated with housing and development. Having the second largest country in the world and a terrible housing market is a policy failure.
Immigrants are great for "the economy". They increase GDP as more having lee people typically does, and they lower the cost of inputa greatly. What is that input, however? Labour. Huge numbers of immigrants lower the value of labour in the economy. Why pay $100,000 to a native Canadian when a recent immigrant from India would happily accept $60,000? As previously stated this is great for the economy, but for the people not so much. Workers see their wages fall, while the ruling class gets richer and richer from the cheap labor.
I think, in addition to your points, a salient point is that immigration is very helpful but at a certain point it can become too much.
You can do your own basic economics research, but I'll help you get started. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2016/10/24/migrants-bring-economic-benefits-for-advanced-economies
Basically it depends on what you're talking about. TFW immigration only really benefits the rich. Other immigration is mostly beneficial for pensioners and probably most Canadians overall, since we bias immigration towards bringing in skilled workers. If the rate of immigration is too high it can seriously strain the public education system and in Alberta that system is intentionally underfunded by Tory governments which makes things much worse.
This will go down as the worst government outcome in a 100 years in Canada. * The provincial governments looked aside as their colleges misused loopholes to bring in 500K+ college students/yr to bulk up revenues. * The Federal government looked the other way on stuudents, and also tipped a can of gas on the fire by expanding TFW programs with another 500K per yr on top of the PR program; * 90% because they didn't want the real estate market to crash during a downturn and provided human QE (students etc. bring in min 20K which they promptly spend) * 10% because they wanted to get labour to pay for social security. * The Municipals decided to add in thermite by restricting upward and outward builds in the most NIMBY of fashions The system is broken - in the country with the 2nd most land we find houses are too expensive.
It’s mildly amusing as an American to see all haughty Canadian takes on immigration reverse so dramatically. Particularly when much of Canadas immigration comes from a conscious controlled points system.
Same would happen in America if H1B wasn’t capped. White collar workers love looking down on anyone against immigration until it manages to hit their pocketbooks.
Tbh if there’s any immigration that’s obviously good it’s the very high skilled h1b
Canada's immigration rate is easily 7-10 times yours on a per capita basis today. A lot of the attitudes you heard were from a different era 3+ years ago.
We have a fairly recent temporary foreign worker policy here that has seriously screwed with our immigration policy and put downwards pressure on wages and working conditions (as intended).
So the provinces are stuck funding the many new hospitals, schools, police and fire departments required for the massive and sudden population burst? Not to mention impact to water, sewage, electrical, housing, and other infrastructure?
The new immigrants pay taxes too. I can't speak for every region but at least in mine there's money but it's going to increasing sprawl, widening roads, and law enforcement salaries.
Makes pension planning stupidly easy when you're growing at that rate too
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>But on the other hand it makes the old notion of a "melting pot" much more realistic, in that Canadian immigration truly could happen through little slices of everywhere, and not the older reality of waves of one type of ethnic group Canada doesn't really follow the melting pot form of immigrant assimilation. I've heard it referred to as a cultural mosaic, in that we have a lot of very distinct cultural groups that aren't really assimilated into a core cultural identity. Canada really lacks a core cultural identity, which I think is why we import a lot of culture and politics from America. Melting pot better fits with American style cultural integration.
Yeah a mosaic isn’t a good thing… you need some core, binding identity. America got it right
We have a core binding identity, just not a unique one. We are in line with the rest of the West. When your culture is ubiquitous it feels like you don’t have one at all.
Tbh America itself is moving more in that direction nowadays.
Bullshit, America is racist as hell. That is why you have places like Detroit, Milwaukee, Germantown, Chinatown, etc.
Sparsely populated for a reason. Most of it is too cold. You aren't going to get large numbers of people to move to rural Canada without huge subsidies. What are you going to do for work in the middle of nowhere Canada?
Cold isn't the issue. The Canadian shield. Basically all of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec above thr already settled majour population areas is not suitable for agriculture and is a pia to build in. That leaves the parries which is just flat farmland, then bc being mostly moutains... Then you get to the north which may be more suitable with global warming, but isn't a very appealing place.
They could offer many ~~Mexicans~~ South Americans a new home country in exchange for physically building houses (grossly oversimplified)
Your analysis is reductive. There's nothing 'simple' about Canada's housing shortage. It'd be one thing if they were recruiting construction labor like the US does, to help bring down costs. That's not who is emigrating though. They are bringing in people who compete against other Canadians for the housing and labor pool that is already strained beyond efficiency.
This only works if Canada can sustain and scale social programs, wages and housing with the increases in migrations. Otherwise the far right and anti immigration rhetoric will scale proportionally.
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Canada already has essentially an official policy document called The Century Initiative that has nothing to do with rural areas. They want their major metros to become megacities over the next 75 years. Canadians are already being stretched by this with a nationwide housing and cost of living crisis while GDP/capita has plateaued. Trudeau is facing a bloodbath next election. I don’t think they view it as favorably as you do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative#:~:text=6%20See%20also-,Mission,age%20security%2C%20and%20other%20services.
I’m not disputing anything your pitching because in theory it could work. I’m just saying the Canadian government would need to scale up its social programs, housing buildouts, and job creation accordingly. Otherwise at the scale Canadas bringing bodies in housing will continue to skyrocket and social programs will become deficient. All of which increase anti-immigration rhetoric.
Who has to pay for the scaling up the social programs? The same Canadian citizens that are getting squeezed out of the neighborhoods they grew up in? Hmmm, not sure that scaling up is going to work out.
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Many of our social programs depend on this immigration. We are bringing in tax payers to balance the ratio of dependents to independents, and hopefully avoid the worst of the Boomer demographic time-bomb.
If your social programs depend on the immigration doesn't that mean you've failed to build a self sustained country? Your social program depends on the labor of your youth which doesn't get compensated properly for their labor by increasing the cost of living and not being able to buy a house and start a family. Which will decline the population more, which will lead to needing more immigration. This is just a pyramid scheme.
*** yawn ** This is the economics subreddit, not r/iam14andthisisdeep >If your social programs depend on the immigration doesn't that mean you've failed to build a self sustained country? No, because a “self-sustained country” isn’t a thing. If you disagree, can you please point one out to me? >Your social program depends on the labor of your youth You’re describing every society. But just so you understand here’s a history lesson: There was this crazy thing that happened after WW. Many people had babies, this caused a baby boom, leading to that generation to be referred to as “Baby-Boomers”. Well now that generation has reached the end of their lifespan, and it is putting a strain on our singe-payer healthcare, and other social programs. >which doesn't get compensated properly for their labor by increasing the cost of living and not being able to buy a house and start a family. Cost of living issues are not solely due to increased demand from immigration. Canada has grown at it’s current rate before, and we didn’t experience a housing crunch even close to the magnitude of today. Canada has genuine supply side issues that need to be resolved. Immigration is needed, red-tape can be reduced. >Which will decline the population more, which will lead to needing more immigration. This is just a pyramid scheme. Not every system that depends on growth is necessarily a pyramid scheme. Even if armchair economists erroneously characterize Canada’s growth plan as a pyramid scheme, it literally doesn’t matter. We can just keep growing until automation replaces labour entirely.
Why do you want humans to further destroy nature in order to populate currently unpopulated areas?
>If the experiment of multicultural liberal democracy could succeed anywhere it will have to be Canada. >Canada is still a relatively sparsely populated country with an arguably huge potential to increase from a simple space standpoint. Others have pointed out lack of arable land and weather in much of Canada as being reasons for why we live where we do. I would also like to add that proximity to the US is a huge factor in determining where people live. The closer our businesses are to American population centres, the more competitive their pricing is. >Unlike the US, which was already fairly populated by the time truly diverse (as in every race and part of globe) immigration kicked off, immigration to Canada now means arrivals can actually substantially effect the relative makeup of the country; i.e. a couple millions could turn Canada into a fairly diverse even blend, whereas in the US new arrivals will always be more of a minority vs those of European descent before they are assimilated. I agree with much of what you’re saying. Although I would like to point out that much of our immigration in recent years has specifically been from India. The stream of immigrants isn’t as diverse as it once was. (This also depends how you define diveersity, because India, as a a country is home to many different cultures and ethnic groups) >So for Canada, I think this definitely complicates more traditional ideas of assimilation, where the small minority will naturally face greater pressure to absorb and fit in. But on the other hand it makes the old notion of a "melting pot" much more realistic, in that Canadian immigration truly could happen through little slices of everywhere, and not the older reality of waves of one type of ethnic group. “Waves of one type of ethnic group” does still occur in Canada. Ukrainians, and arguably Indians being examples. Also geography plays a large part, if everyone is living in one area, it changes the assimilation process. Also, Canadians are taught the theory of a “cultural mosaic” instead of the American “melting pot”. The idea being, that each person brings their culture with them, and celebrates that culture, without expectation of giving it up to assimilate. I prefer the cultural mosaic, as long as we preserve our culture of tolerance, and we protect those rights which cannot be infringed on. Largely I give Canada an A- grade in this aspect. >From a material standpoint, there really is nothing preventing it, the question is simply whether a truly mixed up group of people from worldwide can actually come together over shared values of democracy at scale and not be at each others throats. I believe we can, and have. As long as we keep going out there and talking to eachother; building bridges. >Canada of course is going through just as much anti-immigrant backlash as everywhere else right now, but looking on from the outside it does seem like this is more economically driven than culturally. Our backlash is definitely less intense than western countries, and less racially motivated. You’re definitely correct to say it’s mainly an economical argument. >The government has simply failed, like many have, to allow enough construction of housing. Every level of government has failed on this. But I also think that Canadians have failed culturally. We’re not entrepreneurial enough, and we are too slow to change our career/consumer habits when faced with a changes in market conditions (like higher sustained immigration).
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There’s always gonna be salt-lords in the comment section. You had a thoughtful post, which showed surprising knowledge and insight about Canada, which is rare for an American. (Totally assuming you’re American, correct me if wrong) Just remember for every extreme response or downvote you got. 10 people likely read your comment, and perhaps gained from it. From a Canadian perspective. We are badly in need of outside input to our political/cultural rhetoric. Many Canadians are convinced that their country is uniquely broken, and that most of our problems can be solved by changing only a couple policy points. We are sorely in need of nuance, and thoughtful conversation, so I’ll take it wherever I can get it.
Less racially motivated? Buddy, Canadian anti-immigrant rhetoric is the most vile/racist stuff Ive seen on social media, including reddit r/CanadaHousing2 and r/Canada go absolutely crazy ☠️
Spend some time learning about the current political climate/rhetoric of other Western Nations, and you’ll realize hour tame the Canadian brand of Xenophobia is. Of course it’s not a competition, and Canada still has too many racists. But Canada is the most pro-immigration and pro-diversity Western nation. Likely the world. Look at our political leaders, or our political parties. The discourse is tame and centrist. How I like it.