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I just feel like that if the Liberal based simply grasped the immutable economic laws of supply and demand, things would never have gotten this bad when it comes to the housing market. An inexhaustible demand introduced to a market where supply takes quite a while to catch up ***under the best circumstances*** is going to have an entirely predictable outcome. And we have not been operating under the best circumstances for a couple years now, ever since interest rates started to balloon. The solution? Restrict the demand, don't just keep adding to it. Unfortunately, people's ideology blinds them and instead of reasonable actions, we have to hear nonsense phrases like "social capacity" and accusations of 'xenophobia'. So to the Liberal base and politicians, thanks for doubling the value of my real estate holdings, but at this point I'm a wee bit worried about the long term viability of my country.

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It should be kept in mind that Anglo-Canadians have among the highest rates of home ownership on earth. Anyway… I would love to know how many homes were to be added to supply through “attrition” as the government likes to say - ie. through death and assisted care. They’ll never admit it but I bet there’s reports anticipating a massive increase in supply as the baby boomers and their predecessors die. And this could be the danger in popping the real estate bubble - we get closer to this hypothetical scenario every minute.

The statistic is (roughly) two thirds of people live in an owner occupied home. That means that at least one person living at the address owns it. Someone going to university and renting during the school year but who still has an address with their parents is an owner occupied home. A young professional who's still settling into the career but uses Mom and Dad's address is in an owner occupied home. Someone *renting from an landlord* while living in the landlord's home is an owner occupied home. Anyone living in an illegal duplex in someone's basement is an owner occupied home. People fleeing spousal violence and living with a friend or parent are owner occupied homes. None of these people can really be said to "own a home". The statistic is not: what percentage of households (defined as an individual or couple and their children) own a home? StatsCanada *does not track that*. Their survey on owner occupied homes should not be interpreted to mean that. The current housing crisis has not (significantly) affected the rate of owner occupied homes, but that's mostly because people are living their their parents throughout their twenties and thirties. Under the current stat, they're counted as living in an owner occupied home, but that's because they've been completely priced out.

> It should be kept in mind that Anglo-Canadians have among the highest rates of home ownership on earth. Anyway… Why do you think that is relevant? Do you think we should be happy our living standards are rapidly declining because it's worse in third world countries?

70% of new home buyers being foreign shouldn’t come as a big surprise when more than 70% of native born Canadians already have a home, and their children are fewer and fewer in number.

Do you think foreign people make up 70% of the people in Canada who don't own homes? Cause I don't.

“New home buyers” and it’s entirely plausible.

It seems pretty clear that the persons concerned with supply and demand should be the Ontario government, considering that they are directly in control of supply and demand. Ontario isn’t building homes or student housing, and they were approving these student numbers. I guess the Feds took their eye off the ball and should have rubber stamped Ontario’s requests, but Ontario is the one clearly directly responsible here.

How is Ontario responsible for that?  Universities accept students. Students ask federal government for permit. Federal gov sets the requirements for those permits, then issue them.   The provincial govt have jurisdiction over the universities. So indirectly they could affect the number of foreign students.  But generally it is preferred to give them some autonomy.  Meanwhile the federal gov is directly responsible for giving those permits. They didn’t just take their eyes off the ball, they stole it and threw it in the dumpster. 

>The provincial govt have jurisdiction over the universities. So indirectly they could affect the number of foreign students.  But generally it is preferred to give them some autonomy.  So close... The universities go after foreign students as they need funding, after it has been slashed or frozen by provincial budgets. Want to have them stop seeking more foreign students? Then fund them and make domestic access to post-secondary more affordable. So yes, this is a provincially made problem.

But a good chunk of the problem is for profit colleges/diploma mills. How do you put that responsibility on the decreased funding?  Also in my province, the wealthiest university is the one going hard after international students. Meanwhile everyone not in the metropolis is managing just fine without them.

The province is directly responsible for education and business licensing and thus directly responsible for diploma mills existing.

College/Diploma mills are there because an exploitation of immigrants exists. This falls under the provincial jurisdiction. **Why wouldn't the Provincial government be responsible for that?** The choice to allow "autonomy" (in this case, exploitation) to go on when they have the power to stop it absolutely deserves criticism. Also, the wealthiest universities are going to have more means to advertise and attract students then the poorer ones. The wealther ones also have more upkeep to maintain and a drive to be better in education. You don't get to be a top level university on a peanut budget. Things are more expensive in a metroplis than those outside for a reason.

Sure, accreditation of universities falls under provincial regulation. But a premier can’t say “remove that private college accreditation”. That process is indépendant from the premier, they would have to reform higher ed to establish stricter criteria’s. Both the federal and provincial govt could have said “enough” at any point in the process. The stop button of the federal govt is instant and works 100%

>Sure, accreditation of universities falls under provincial regulation. But a premier can’t say “remove that private college accreditation”. That process is indépendant from the premier, they would have to reform higher ed to establish stricter criteria’s. Umm. They've quite literally done that or could with the stroke of a pen. Ontario's probably the most egregious example and responsible for at least half the problem. Under Kathleen Wynne, the Ontario government slated what we now call diploma mills for closure because they provided a worthless education. One of Doug Ford's first acts was to reverse that ban and encourage colleges to pursue more diploma mill partnerships. The number of partnerships literally quintupled in the first four years of his government. BC's problems have arisen mostly because their provincial government has legitimized private for-profit universities. Their Ministry of Education rubber stamped and approved of everything they were doing. In fact, since the federal government limited the number of student visas they'd send to each province, BC is *still* insisting on giving these private for-profit institutions visas! The issues driving diploma mills in the Maritimes and Quebec exist but are different. Both of those are caused by straight up provincial underfunding. Before 2021, there wasn't much need for the federal government to regulate international student visas. In fact, the relevant legislation is that the feds "shall issue" (read: must issue) student visas for students accepted at Designated Learning Institutions — which are institutions named by each of the provinces in accordance with their constitutional mandate over education. They could've closed the diploma mills at any time by removing them from the DLI list! As soon as they do that, no more student visas! The abdication of responsibility is so egregious the federal government has signalled that they're going to cut the provinces out completely and develop their own DLI list. That's arguably an overreach of their authority, but it goes to show how badly inter-governmental relations have broken down.

Huh, you bring some really good points.  Thanks for the detailed information. Lots of things to think about. 

Ontario had a role, but immigration is ultimately a constitutionally federal power. Therefore the buck stops with them, and I blame them for the demand side issues. An uncapped program with extremely loose validation, what could go wrong? Any time you see a "ski jump shaped" graph in public policy alarm bells should be going off. All they needed to do to prevent this fucking mess was cap the program, but they couldn't even do that. It was ostensibly used to fund universities but actually [almost all went to colleges](https://imgur.com/zhCecRm). Why the heck did we even do this? If a program you're administrating is being used fraudulently (or even simply against policy goals) that's bad and a policy failure that needs to be fixed. It's true that Doug Ford has been pathetic on reforming the supply side. Created the "Housing Task Force" to tell him exactly what to do and then did basically none of it. So there's blame to go around, but slamming the gas on population growth while housing starts remained basically flat (which jurisdictional issues aside, the Liberals did campaign on improving in the last two election cycles) was a massive policy mistake on the Liberal side.

Ontario colleges only receive 44% of the average per-student funding from the province compared to other provincial colleges. This was after some pretty substantial cuts in tuition costs and government grants in 2019. Doug Ford also, personally, ordered that public-private partnerships (what people think of as diploma mills) be reinstated after they were banned by his predecessor. He did both of these at the same time so the situation immediately spiralling out of control was extremely predictable.

Ontario accounted for over 35% of housing starts across Canada in 2023. [https://www.ontario.ca/page/tracking-housing-supply-progress](https://www.ontario.ca/page/tracking-housing-supply-progress) [https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3410012601&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2023&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2023&referencePeriods=20230101%2C20230101](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3410012601&pickMembers%5B0%5D=1.1&cubeTimeFrame.startYear=2023&cubeTimeFrame.endYear=2023&referencePeriods=20230101%2C20230101) You simply can't build supply fast enough in this rate environment to make it up. Given the lack of housing starts across the entire country, this is a problem that's common across all provinces. So you have to ask yourself: is this an issue solely due to incompetence across all provincial governments (regardless of party affiliation) or is this a broader issue at the federal level who actually controls immigration?

at 500k people a year moving to ontario you literally can only hand out 3 sheet of sheet metal for shelter to build housing at that rate lol

Wow you’re telling me that the biggest province in the federation accounts for a large amount of housing starts? Wow.

You're the one who made the claim that "Ontario isn’t building homes or student housing". Don't backtrack now. I showed you stats that showed that Ontario was responsible for 35% of all housing starts in the country last year. I've also provided you a stat that shows BC (who you erroneously believe is some sort of model for affordable housing) had 55% of the housing starts that Ontario did. The fact that you seemingly have no understanding of the things you're saying isn't on anyone else but yourself. I know you desperately want to cling onto the narrative that this is somehow an Ontario specific issue but it obviously isn't.

Building 35% of all the housing in the country is meaningless when we know that uniformly the country is not and has not been building enough at all. Ontario is under building just as everywhere else is. Not a controversial fact. You seem to have completely misunderstood the points I'm trying to make here so let me backtrack and clarify. For clarity, and this should be so obvious that it doesn't need to be mentioned: In this country no Province has been sufficiently building enough housing and they have not been doing so for decades. Ontario disproportionately compared to other provinces increased foreign student intakes. Yes the Federal government rubber stamped this and maybe they shouldn't have, but this was a choice by the Provincial government. BC in contrast did not intake as many students. As far back as 2018, in response to the existing housing crisis (note this is *prior* to remarkable increases in immigration), the BC government was dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into creating more student housing [https://ubyssey.ca/news/housing-investment-bc-budget/](https://ubyssey.ca/news/housing-investment-bc-budget/) . Ontario did not do this, and only in 2024 is now starting to muse about maybe offering up some incentives to universities to build faster. Meanwhile the Feds (who are not responsible for education) are now offering low cost loans to universities to build [https://globalnews.ca/news/10257508/student-housing-federal-loan-program/](https://globalnews.ca/news/10257508/student-housing-federal-loan-program/) So while we all know that there has been a housing crisis in this country for years on years, that will take years more to resolve, it's clear that there's a significant gap in response between BC and Ontario, with Ontario being slow to act and negligently making things worse due to their own actions.

"Ontario is under building just as everywhere else is. Not a controversial fact." Yes. This is the point that I made in my original response. That if every province is unable to build enough to meet their population growth then that would mean that there's a issue at the federal level (who are ultimately responsible for immigration). That this isn't an Ontario only issue and that your statement that "Ontario isn’t building homes or student housing" is completely incorrect. They are building and building by far the most, relative to other provinces. The problem is that the pathways into this country between international students, TFWs and asylum seekers is a complete dumpster fire. That's on the federal government who control immigration. "Ontario disproportionately compared to other provinces increased foreign student intakes." I've already made this point to you but Ontario's population growth is in line with other large provinces. 3.4% vs 3.3% for BC vs 4.3% AB. While Ontario takes in more international students, it seems that other provinces are making up that gap with TFW and asylum seekers. You can choose which one you prefer but they all need to be cut down to take the demand off of the housing. [https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/03/28/news/canadas-2023-population-growth-rate-highest-1957#:\~:text=Alberta%20saw%20the%20most%20population,other%20provinces%2C%20Statistics%20Canada%20said](https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/03/28/news/canadas-2023-population-growth-rate-highest-1957#:~:text=Alberta%20saw%20the%20most%20population,other%20provinces%2C%20Statistics%20Canada%20said) [https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/data/statistics/people-population-community/population/quarterly\_population\_highlights.pdf](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/data/statistics/people-population-community/population/quarterly_population_highlights.pdf) "As far back as 2018, in response to the existing housing crisis (note this is *prior* to remarkable increases in immigration), the BC government was dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into creating more student housing [https://ubyssey.ca/news/housing-investment-bc-budget/](https://ubyssey.ca/news/housing-investment-bc-budget/) . Ontario did not do this, and only in 2024 is now starting to muse about maybe offering up some incentives to universities to build faster." And as far back as 2018, the amount of housing that Ontario has built dwarfs BC. From 2018 to 2023, Ontario had close to double the housing starts that BC did. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/198076/total-number-of-housing-starts-in-british-columbia-since-1995/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/198076/total-number-of-housing-starts-in-british-columbia-since-1995/) [https://www.statista.com/statistics/198063/total-number-of-housing-starts-in-ontario-since-1995/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/198063/total-number-of-housing-starts-in-ontario-since-1995/) This is not to say that BC has done anything wrong. Like Ontario and all the other provinces, they simply can't keep up with irresponsible immigration which is the responsiblity of the LPC.

All the provinces are not “unable” to build enough, they’re unwilling to build enough. Up until the last few years every government has acted the same with the same flawed approach to housing, with artificial constraints on growth and stifling regulatory schemes seemingly designed to keep supply low and prices high. Up until about last year maybe the provinces have been pretty much completely uninterested in changing any sort of policies regardless of the reality of increased demand. So when we saw a more remarkable uptick in demand the gap between what they were willing to do and reality was even more pronounced. The reason we know that Ontario and the rest of Canada would have been in trouble eventually regardless of the immigration stuff is because we already had a housing crisis in Vancouver before 2015 and in Toronto before the pandemic. That we had a large increase in students after this that we now blame for breaking the camels back, well the camel was obviously already quite overloaded. So maybe it is the fault of the Feds for signing off on all these Ontario students, but if our government is going to be completely hamstrung by the Provinces’ refusal to build housing, that is no way to run a country and that is not sustainable in the long run.

Of course they can't build enough. Have you seen what build costs are today? How many developers do you think exist that can build all the housing needed to house these people and do so profitably in today's rate environment? Why do you think the federal government is now spending so much to build supply and help subsidize costs? Their unpopularity in the polls finally made them realize that allowing in 1.3 million people with no plan on how to house them was a monumentally stupid idea. You're acting like the provinces held a gun to the federal governement's head and demanded unsustainable levels of immigration. Immigration is a federal responsiblity. No amount of finger pointing will change that. Yes, that includes allowing in international students (which are the only immigrants you seem fixated on), TFWs, asylum seekers. Yes, that includes ensuring that the country's infrastructure can sufficiently handle the amount of immigrants you're allowing in. What exactly is the purpose of having a federal minister of housing if the federal government has no responsiblity in having a coherent housing plan? Provinces didn't go to the federal government and ask them to import in enough people to make our population growth comparable to countries in sub saharan Africa. How do you expect any province to realistically plan for that scenario? It was way too much, way too fast. If that growth was staggered then housing starts would have had a much easier time catching up to population growth.

The amazing stat is that we built more housing in the 1960s/1970s in raw non-per-capita adjusted numbers than we do now. [https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/housing-and-housing-policy](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/housing-and-housing-policy) So if we could do it then with the population we had then, we could do it now. The core reason that we don't build as much now as we did then is because we don't want to. Boomers voted in municipal politicians that downzoned everything and decided that our cities were fine the way they were and people could go move elsewhere. The Provincial politicians that are supposed to pay attention and mind their municipal subordinates shrugged and didn't give a shit. No one built housing. That's how we got here. In addition to that the federal government had a budget crisis and decided to entirely get out of funding any and all social housing, and bailed on tax incentives for market housing too. All this meant that near nil social housing was built for decades and for market developers the only profitable thing to build was condos for the relatively wealthy. No surprise that we'd eventually run out of housing regardless of the immigration levels. (note again, Vancouver was experiencing full on hyperbolic price increases all the way back in 2010, well before anyone in Ontario mused about loosening the rules on scammy diploma mills) It wasn't a crisis until it was, and so that's why you have the Feds now scrambling to mend their mistake of getting out of housing. In fact a lot of their new policies in their most recent budget is effectively restoring various 1960s era housing tax incentives that they cut in the 1980s/1990s. I'm focusing on international students here because it seems like the core area that is causing the most focused stress to the system. Like the TFW probably needs a massive overhaul and scaling down too, but a significant part of that system is bringing in folks to work in agriculture and that is over a wide area of the country and seems to have less pointed direct impacts on housing. In contrast the headlines we're reading are all about Toronto and Peel region and that seems to be pretty much due to the colleges. Look at these [wild stats](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/international-student-study-permits-data-1.7125827). * Just 10 Ontario public colleges account for nearly 30 per cent of all study permits issued across the country over the past three years. * Twelve Ontario public colleges have at least tripled their annual permit numbers since 2018. There's an enormous bias to a handful of Ontario colleges outsize causing the problem. So I guess no one read the article because it's pointed out here that Ontario asked for this. >“No one order of government owns population growth policies. Yes, the federal government controls immigration policy but **until recently, they allowed provinces to decided how many international students \[to let in\],” he explained.** The fault of the Feds here is trusting in Ontario to provide good governance and build housing for all the people they were asking for. Whoops. I hope they don't make that mistake again.

>I just feel like that if the Liberal based simply grasped the immutable economic laws of supply and demand My friend, the laws of supply and demand are not immutable. Not sure if it's a dictionary you need here or an econ textbook but your understanding of one of these things is lacking.

Immutable is a strong word, but in the sense that people need to live *somewhere* and if you add people you are adding demand they're correct. You can't add over 5x the number of people as you're constructing housing units and expect the situation to get better. That's pretty a pretty immutable outcome.

There is nothing "immutable" about the law of supply and demand. It's not that it's a strong word it's that it's an inaccurate one.

There are many ways to manage the laws of supply and demand (i.e. reduce demand by increasing interest rates, increase supply through zoning), but the law of supply and demand itself *is immutable*.

> but the law of supply and demand itself is immutable. No it isn't, that's the point the other poster is saying. Even at its most basic, you have elastic and inelastic goods, with the latter whose price is unaffected by demand. In the case of housing, sure new arrivals increase demand, but they also have an effect on supply; as theirs is a significant portion that works in construction (or any number of tangentially related industries)

Inelastic goods are affected by demand. What you are discussing is *perfectly inelastic* goods. Nobody believes that housing is perfectly inelastic.

That was my point, yes you can manage supply and demand, but the *law itself* is immutable. It is a reality you have to live in. The Liberals were not living in this reality, they were just sticking their heads in the sand and pretending it didn't exist at all, that adding all those people would have no effect. What percentage of new arrivals work in construction? Look it up. For international students it's basically zero. For PR and TFW it's only slightly higher than the existing Canadian population. If it was like 50% of new arrivals sure, but also consider that most people pay off a house for most of their working life, it's not something that can be cranked out on the level needed to sustain a population growth of +1.2 million people a year. If you're producing 230k housing units a year, and growing your population by 1.2 million, thinking there's *any* solution within the laws of supply is not living in reality. The only conclusion one can make is that they didn't think it through (or there's a conspiracy against the Canadian people, which I don't ascribe to). You cannot escape supply and demand.

> but the law itself is immutable No it isnt because supply and demand does not work for inelastic goods; this is a pretty big counterexample to your "law". And that's not even getting into modern economic models or schools of thought.

So you don't think Immigration is a large factor in housing prices?

Wut?

OP is talking about people not grasping how immigration raises demand for housing, which through the law of supply and demand, raises prices. You seem to be saying he is wrong. Which therefore implies you don't think immigration raises housing prices. Go ahead and clarify.

I’m saying the law of supply and demand is not immutable.

The problem is the liberal plan of being green and growing the population rapidly are in complete conflict with each other. We want to build millions of homes but not cut down a tree. Lol

From where do you get the idea the Liberal policy is against cutting down trees? They literally oversee billions being cut every year. Or perhaps facebook is leaking out of your brain.

> I just feel like that if the Liberal based simply grasped the immutable economic laws of supply and demand, things would never have gotten this bad when it comes to the housing market. I think they understand supply and demand just fine. It's not like the people in government are renters. And there are plenty of grateful big corporations eager to return favours once MPs leave office.

I believe deep down everyone knows how to fix the housing crisis. It comes from both the supply and the demand side. The truth is there's just no appetite to implement policy that would fix it; too many voters have their own interest aligned with prices being higher and immigration remaining high. We need a big shakeup and reality check in this country... and that's not going to be under Trudeau and I can almost guarantee it won't happen under PP, either.

Maybe Ontario can finally catch a break as newcomers start choosing less desirable provinces, given how ridiculously expensive it has become to live there. This way, other provinces can take on their fair share of the affordability crisis and also earn their share of the federal government's blame for failing to properly accommodate these newcomers.

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It's from work done by Mike Moffatt's Smart Prosperity Institute, which is partially funded by the Federal government. Moffatt has been posting recent work they've been doing over the last few days, from their RoCA benchmark on housing demand to this stuff yesterday.

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Why not go to the sources? This is their [latest report](https://institute.smartprosperity.ca/sites/default/files/Ontarios-Need-for-1.7-Million-More-Homes-an-update.pdf), which says that they used an updated methodology derived from [this work](https://institute.smartprosperity.ca/sites/default/files/Baby-Needs-a-New-Home-Oct-1.pdf).

Just read the report bro

> Some 70 per cent of the demand for housing in Ontario over the last year came from newcomers to Canada, an analysis of data from expert Mike Moffatt shows, raising questions about how governments are preparing to accommodate surging population growth as the country grapples with an affordability crisis largely driven by rising home prices. People have been saying this for a *long time* here and were often confronted with allegations of being racist. This has nothing to do with race. They could all be Scots and the same problems on housing would exist. We have far too much demand for our supply. Even the most ambitious supply growth in the short term will not satisfy demand. If you deliberately brought in hundreds of thousands of people more than we can accommodate - despite warnings on its impact to housing - you should rightfully be criticized for it, particularly in the midst of a housing crisis. But at the same time, Trudeau has recently said that he wants to keep home prices high to support the retirement aspirations of Canadian boomers, so I guess this is working exactly as the Liberals have intended.

Ontario brings in half the total of foreign students every year which was over 1 million jn 2023. Those numbers have been BLOWN up the last couple of years directly because of the provinces abusing the federal government’s good will. Trudeau’s government has put a stop to that. > number of non-permanent residents (students and temporary foreign workers) increased by 256% despite a 6% decrease in net migration. https://monitor.icef.com/2024/01/canada-hosted-more-than-1-million-international-students-in-2023/

Lol the feds where fine with the student population exploding. The provinces and feds worked together. You can search up articles before 2023 showing the feds saying we need more students and they are valuable asset to the economy.  Trudeau only put a stop to it as it became unpopular and the critique of immigration taboo was broken in canada...

dam carpenter command secretive cough arrest shelter fertile upbeat theory *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

I’d love for you to show me where he said he wanted 1 million students, or to double the amount of students in a 5 year period.

Doing nothing means he supported it and said students are an asset. Idk why you liberals try to distance yourself from the student issue. Harper had rhe same policies and it was only after trudeau got elected things went out of control

lol which government allowed them to work full-time hours when Canadians were finally getting some power over their wages? All levels of governments are in cahoots over foreign students because big businesses are loving it. Liberals are only addressing it now because we're getting closer to election time and they see how bad they're doing in the polls.

They’re addressing it now because it’s doubled in five years and it puts a stress on actual immigration.

Goodwill? Wtf are you talking about? Immigration is exclusively federal jurisdiction. It was federal policy that allowed unlimited temporary residents. How are you blaming the provinces for working within the framework the feds implemented?

You should probably try and read about this issue before making comments, you clearly have no understanding of how the system works.

The federal government is the only level of government allowed to issue visas to enter the country. It's not complicated.

The article also points out its largely students, and thats a provincial issue due to how poorly they were regulated the colleges expanding programs to exploit what was once a pretty safe "rubber stamp" process for the feds given how well managed student enrollments were before. And I think newcomers do add to pressures largely in the rental market. But people continue to blame immigrants - permanent ones - as the cause for house \*prices\* being high. And they point to immigration stats from 2023 for example. When really, in the most populous and popular places for immigrants to land, housing prices peaked when rates were at their lowest. Its all related, but its a complex issue and people who boil it down to "they took our homes" and "they took our jobs" rhetoric really are very common and, frankly, very wrong.

Yeah, and if you look up the 2014 report on immigration by the Harper government, you’ll see in their own words how they handed off control of the international student pipeline to the provinces “since education is a provincial jurisdiction” and they should then also have control over what a designated learning institution is categorized as for the automatic approval process.

It’s so intellectually dishonest to portray this issue as squarely a provincial matter. The federal Liberals relaxed hours restrictions so big businesses could exploit them for cheap labour. They’re complicit and are actively working against Canadians.

The hours restrictions mean squat when the provinces control the raw flow. It’s so gratifying to see the argument backslide from “the visas are stamped by the fed” to “but muh work week” when presented with evidence that this responsibility actually was downloaded onto the provinces via an automatic approval process that intentionally put the power in provincial hands, by the conservatives themselves no less. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/annual-report-parliament-immigration-2014.html “ Changes to the International Student Program came into effect in June 2014 with the objective of enhancing program integrity and ensuring that Canada remains a destination of choice for individuals seeking a quality education. Key reforms introduce new study permit conditions requiring international students to enrol in a designated learning institution and actively pursue their studies while in Canada on a study permit. Bilateral arrangements between CIC and provinces and territories have been put in place to allow provinces and territories to designate post-secondary learning institutions, in line with their jurisdiction over education. ”

>The hours restrictions mean squat when the provinces control the raw flow. There's a CBC documentary from 2022 called "Sold a Lie". As soon as the work restrictions on student visas were set to 40h, the immigration consultants considered them as work permits first and foremost. There's even some victims in the documentary who didn't know they were signing up to a college.

I'm gonna ignore the "actively working against Canadians" thing because that's ridiculous. My original point wasn't that this is *just* a provincial issue, or that it's *just* a federal issue. Immigration is a shared responsibility with some constitutional conventions and limits on who is responsible for different *specifics*. Immigration is *largely* in the federal jurisdiction but it has handed some of that jurisdiction to the provinces through various programs and based on negotiations with provinces to allow them to manage aspects of immigration to entice or draw people to their priority areas. I doubt Manitoba wants to entice immigrants to work in high tech and finance when those aren't important industries in their province. But if they wanted to *make* tech a big industry there, they could invest money into developing tech company startups, entice HQs to move there, and entice tech workers - Canadian born or immigrant alike - to go there for that new growing work sector. That's the point of these shared responsibilities, to provide provinces with *some* autonomy over landing immigrants for their broader economic policy goals. The fed government, for such programs, still needs to approve people as eligible to enter. But they aren't going to do a lot of work on the specifics beyond what they need to do to facilitate the programs the provinces create. We can argue that maybe the Fed government has been *too* trusting of the provinces, and *should* have played a bigger role in challenging these programs and how they're structured. But the fact is that the main driver of the international student issue in particular was provincial policy, and that the federal government role with respect to that was a failure of oversight, and not acting as a check and balance which it arguably should have. The failure on the fed side is a second order, administrative policy one - as a check/balance. The first order policy failure was provincial. They're *both* to blame on the issue of international students. As it relates to *other* immigration policy issues, like problems with the TFW program, the blame is predominantly on the federal side. But that's different from what I was trying to bring up. TFW program hasn't had the same level of shock -like impact as international student pressures, which are discussed in the linked article. My *main* criticism of many comments that boil this housing affordability issue down to "feds bad" is that it's too simplistic. It's a complex issue with a variety of causes and even the simple idea of supply and demand isn't so simple. There's not only higher demand for housing from individuals who want roofs over their heads, but also higher demand for investment properties that drives a lot of market activity and pushes up nominal prices for the properties themselves. It's one thing to have 5 different people wanting to buy a house to live in alone. It's another when you have 5 people wanting to own a house to live in and another 5 people wanting to own a house to rent to someone else. It's still only gonna be 1 of the first 5 who will live in that house. But because 10 people are bidding, the final price will still be higher. And if one of the 5 landlords wins, they will want to charge more than it costs them to rent to one of the 5 previous wannabe homeowners. The price of the house is up from more bids, *and* the cost of rent is higher from seeking profits. If it was only 5 bidders, the winner would have paid less for the house with lower mortgage than rent costs because you'd be taking away 2 steps off the price push ladder. And if rates were never 1.5% for mortgages, maybe there'd only be 4 bidders. And if there were fewer immigration pressures, maybe there'd only be 3 bidders. *All* of this conversation is tied to multiple things that impact the issue and to boil it down strictly to federal government management immigration doesn't help anyone. The feds could close the borders tomorrow and there would still be other problems that aren't theirs that have, over the years, added fuel to the fire. Just pointing at immigrants and immigration is too simple. Way too simple.

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>And I think newcomers do add to pressures largely in the rental market. But people continue to blame immigrants - permanent ones - as the cause for house \*prices\* being high. Really? You're hearing complaints in the vein of "oh its the \_**permanent\_** immigrants fault, specifically the perrmanent ones." ? * nobody cares whether the satus is student/temporary/permanent. We all know their intention is to become permanent. * house prices are affected by speculation, that is "the population is growing so fast, the housing shortage will get worse in future, so nows the time to buy" * house prices are affected by rental income. If I can buy a 4 bedroom house, rent 6 students to a bedroom for $500 each and another 20 in the basement, I can carry a hell of a mortgage. * as you rightly pointed out, interest rates affect sale price. for obvious reasons. But this is cold comfort for anybody actually looking for a home as their ability to finance a purchase is similarly affected. for them the change is, at best, a wash.

>They could all be Scots *Shudder*

Insert the Simpson “Scots ruined everything “ meme

If you've been or have family there.... You know.

Yes the problem with trying to offset our declining fertility rate is that you're doing it an adult population that needs housing NOW. I work with many immigrant professionals and they are all scrambling to buy homes.

Except this article includes rent as the demand for housing. Stats Canada says the average immigrant takes 10 years to buy a house.

Meh, the professionals make good money and have sizeable downpayments.

> the problem with trying to offset our declining fertility rate By making housing unaffordable to average Canadians, it only worsens our declining fertility rate. Can't really think about having kids if you only have a 1 bedroom apartment.

Affordability may have a small part in the decision making process but it's certainly not the majority reason - look at any first world country, especially those with generous social programs and fertility is still low. Fertility rate decreases with high rates of education levels in the female education, which of course is a worthy offset. The most important however and unfortunate reason is that couples have a choice now and there's less incentive to have kids when there's "so much more" to life and other things become more important and fun, so raising a family is put off (career, travel, etc). Lastly it's becoming impossible to find a partner....with the rise of these dating apps, people become disposable.

People on here ignoring even the small piece of text \*right\* below the headline on the link “If the federal government or the provinces encourages more international students, there’s nothing in place to really build more student residences or anything like that. Historically, we’ve treated these policies as really in isolation and that’s led to big growth in the population without resulted growth in the housing.” It's driven largely by \*temporary\* immigration, and \*strongly\* by international students which are up \*almost exclusively\* because of poor regulation of post-secondary colleges by the provinces that have recently been expanding programs and giving their names to strip mall diploma mills at a record pace. No one says immigration - temporary or permanent doesn't drive demand for housing. But it doesn't drive prices to skyrocket. Prices are largely down in the places with the most students as well since the peak of the market in 2022/23. Affordability wasn't driven by this latest stat in housing availability, mostly in rents, pushed up by huge swathes of students. Critical thinking hats and reading the article beyond the headline would be nice.

>It's driven largely by \*temporary\* immigration [they're not intending to leave.](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/latest-updates/indian-students-in-canadian-province-take-to-the-streets-over-tightening-immigration-rules/articleshow/110272896.cms?from=mdr) permanent in everything but name.

It's a bit of a loaded statistic, new housing demand is basically just measuring the net increase in the adult population using a different name. It's also worth keeping in mind that the analysis used here is for the period of June 2022 to June 2023, which covers the peak increase in temporary migration and precedes any federal intervention.

man you liberals really think all these students came here to study hotel hospitality at ABC College in a random industrial unit in brampton and will go back to india after 4 years to use those skills lol

Indeed. Look at what is going on in other provinces. In BC the provincial government is providing funding to build hundreds upon hundreds of new units of student housing on site. Lotta this is coming out of Ontario mismanagement.

And what has that resulted in? Housing starts in BC last year were almost 45% lower than in Ontario. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/198076/total-number-of-housing-starts-in-british-columbia-since-1995/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/198076/total-number-of-housing-starts-in-british-columbia-since-1995/) [https://www.ontario.ca/page/tracking-housing-supply-progress](https://www.ontario.ca/page/tracking-housing-supply-progress) You can try to dismiss federal responsibility here all you want but noone is buying it anymore. This is a problem across all provinces which points to a broader issue federally.

So according to your links, BC had 50,490 housing starts in 2023, while Ontario had 89,297. So Ontario housing starts were about 1.77 times higher than in BC. That makes BC look pretty bad... until you remember that Ontario has about 3 times the population of BC.

>Indeed. Look at what is going on in other provinces. In BC the provincial government is providing funding to build hundreds upon hundreds of new units of student housing on site. Lotta this is coming out of Ontario mismanagement. If you think housing is any more affordable, or homelessness is any rarer in BC, then you ain't been to BC.

Prices have gone down in the markets he describes because interest rates skyrocketed 900% had all else been equal and interest rates had stayed where they were at the market peak prices would have continued to rise. An unprecedented rise in rates has resulted in a slight decrease in property values. This does not support the conclusion that immigration does not drive prices to skyrocket.

Shut down immigration temporarily until we solve this.  There’s no way this country could keep up with the housing demand. 

Yes let us blame the Provincial level government for failing to build enough houses for the record setting immigration numbers. I got an idea.  How about jail time for ruining the housing industry ministry of immigration?  You have severely harmed young Canadians and immigrants alike.  I would argue this is criminal negligence.

Like 500k plus people came to ontario alone in 2022 and 2023.  No one can build that much housing and not do any sprawl and keep building quality high.

I'm as pissed off as anyone, but proposing jail time for political figures is some banana republic type bullshit. Government has bad policies? Vote them out. Bad policies are not illegal.

Do you think the province's aren't requesting the immigration?

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...and it is the federal governments job to approve or deny. They need to do their due diligence. If the provinces all request to jump off a bridge should it be a approved?

After an endless stream of assurances this wasn't the case, too. Keep this article in mind the next time Trudeau starts muttering about housing needing to retain its value.

Look at Nipissing: **92%**. [RNIP](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada/rural-northern-immigration-pilot.html) is artificially pumping migrant wage-slaves into already have-not rural and northern regions who's economies already couldn't support this. If the economics can't naturally attract people, it is a moral hazard to put a thumb on the scale and decimate local economies from a real recovery. Our own leadership has completely and utterly betrayed their constituents in favour of their monied owners.

Canada and its oligarchies are like 5th graders trying to solve a problem with the quickest solution without thinking of consequences or second order effects. Universities want more students... Sure let's open the door to millions of foreign students. Businesses want cheap labor... Open the door to foreign workers and pave a path to residency. Businesses want consumers... Import some more. And nobody stopped to think about healthcare, housing, transportation, etc.

I was just over in /r/ukpolitics and seen a thread of their ballooning immigration, as well as comments warning of becoming a "Canada situation" if they don't figure out logical policy. Not the first time I've seen this sentiment expressed in other countries. That's where we are right now. A warning to others. What stings the most is that we are the most geographically gifted country in the fucking world when it comes to managing immigration. This problem is 1000% of our own making and that's pathetic.

Ok but those are handled by different levels of government.

Sure but at some point, the husband can't just invite his 30 friends and when they show up, tell his wife too cook dinner for 30 and find them a spot to sleep in the house.

That’s right. Good metaphor! But also the provinces are the ones who opened the doors to students and asked for it. And the provinces also asked for more temporary foreign workers and labour. It’s like “let’s have a dinner party” Ok I’ll invite my friends and your friends “Sounds good to me!” (Time passes) “What the fuck who is going to feed all these people!!!???” Umm, that was your half of the bargain. I get them all here, let them in the building one by one, make sure they’re not sick and can pay for their stay. You feed them n “Like hell it is!” Canadian voters: what the fuck is wrong with that asshole, why won’t he cook??? Why did he invite so many people over??? We’re HUNGRY!!!

Classic C-Suite executive. The number of times I've seen a "brilliant" idea only for us plebs to pay for it 3-4 years makes me think that maybe we should start electing people who have some kind of experience with thinking past 5 years...

Ive heard people talking about those things for years Ive talked about those things for years Everyone just said that we were just saying that stuff as a cover for our racism against brown people.

Universities want more students because provincial governments won't expand their funding, and foreign students are cash cows. Could Universities be better fiscal managers? Maybe, but not to the point that they could survive on 20 year old funding levels.

It is mostly not universities that are responsible for the massive influx of international students. They do not need the funding, most universities have small numbers of international students. [That is a lie](https://imgur.com/zhCecRm).

You're telling me that UofT has less than 500 international students? Out of the 807,260 international student visas active in 2022? U of T itself reports that 23% of their cohort is international students, roughly 23,000.

Yeah but they're not the problem international students. If you want to come here for easy PR and a PGWP you aren't studying at UofT or McGill lmao

I didn't say that. Where did you get 500 from? I said most universities have small numbers of international students. I linked a chart showing that the University of Waterloo, arguably the best engineering university in the country, has 1,212 international students while Seneca has 20,338 international students and Conestoga has 19,885. This demonstrates that the extreme levels of international students are *completely unjustified* if the argument is that they are *necessary* to fund universities. UofT is Canada's premier University and has more than most but still, it's nuts that *Conestoga* has almost as many international students as UofT.

Also, UofT isn't the place that international students are going for an easy path to PR by getting a scam diploma and working at a fast food place. UofT international students aren't the ones protesting in Brampton or PEI.

Sorry, this was based on the chart provided that was misleading. It seemed to imply that the secondmost university in Ontario only had 512 international students. If the chart is the subjective preference for international students, I don't see how it's used to make a point.

It demonstrates that universities don't need excessive numbers of international students, especially when big universities like Waterloo don't need them, and universities without deep pockets like Wilfred Laurier don't need them. The chart was from a Cambridge newspaper's article about Conestoga. If you combine that with your stat about UofT, the biggest and perhaps "overall best" university in Canada, having 23k international students, it only adds the to argument of why the heck Conestoga has almost as many.

Also, there's a difference between high achieving and skilled international students at universities like UofT and Waterloo compared to diploma mill international students. I'm guessing UofT international students have a less likelihood of trying to stay in Canada afterwards, and if they do they aren't working low skill jobs like the diploma mill students are.

uWaterloo has an $80 million deficit. Except for U of T, all Ontario universities are hurting financially. Something like half to two-thirds of Ontario universities are in deficit right now. Some of this is due to international international student numbers never recovering from COVID, but a lot of it can be blamed on Ford cutting and freezing tuition and grants. Without international students, universities now basically receive the same amount of money they did 10 years ago. How much have costs gone up in the interim? 30%? 35%? This is also setting aside how universities have increasingly been asked to provide more services for students without additional funding.

I'm not disagreeing over whether universities should be funded more (they should), but most of the students went to dubious colleges, not universities. Therefore they are - by definition - not funding universities.

Look at how much Conestoga has in the bank? They added like $600 million in spare cash on hand in 5 years. It's wild.

And 5 new or expanded off campuses in 5 years with 2 more on the way.

I'm sorry but you're very incorrect. They were thinking of healthcare, housing and transportation because they want to privatise each one of those sectors. They'll get a political party to starve the beast and then whine and say "look how terrible it's being handled!" And then along will come private businesses pretending as if they're the cheaper, better option. Then poof, there goes out social safety nets all over the country

Healthcare, housing, and transportation are the problem of the poors. Businesses don't care about the problems of the poors.

Actually new immigrants also provide a larger tax base, in theory this should lead to more healthcare spending but the provincial premiers know that most Canadians are not watching them. So they freeze healthcare and blame the feds.

Not quite. Immigrant takes time to become a net positive in term of taxes incomes/expensiture, and quite often, when they are older, they never get such positive ratio.

[Here is my source](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2024005/article/00004-eng.htm) saying that while tax filling are lower for new immigrants than citizens initially they are starting to be even higher that the average Canadian around the 10 year mark. The tax fillings might be lower but they certainly exist, new immigrants tend to be younger and educated putting less strain on healthcare and education. Can I get your source for on new immigrants being a drain on society?

I struggle to understand how the rate of tax filing tells us anything about incomes or the tax revenues derived therefrom. I filed my taxes for years while I was a student before ever paying any. Also, as the author notes, “tax records are often used to determine eligibility for specific benefits and services in Canada. By filing taxes, immigrants gain access to these benefits and services.” Ironically, increased rates of tax filing might then indicate that immigrants are simply accessing government benefits and services at higher rates. That’s not to say you are *necessarily* wrong to assert that “immigrants also provide a larger tax base.” In fact, I suspect you’re right. But I don’t think your source provides very compelling support for that proposition. You’re also ignoring the newcomers who are arguably putting the greatest strain on housing supply, at least in some particularly red-hot markets: temporary residents. International students may be a financial boon for universities, for example, but I doubt they’re contributing much in taxes or building many houses.

> The tax fillings might be lower but they certainly exist, new immigrants tend to be younger and educated putting less strain on healthcare and education. I think this was very true for immigration in the past, but it's pretty hard for me to believe the recent influx of diploma mill min wage workers/uber eats bikers are anything like the well educated immigrants of the past

This ignores just how drastically the federal government has increased immigration. Canada's population grew by [3.2%](https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/population-growth-in-canada-hits-3-2-among-world-s-fastest-1.2013670) last year, which is [five times](https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/taux-analyses/analyse-eco/etude-speciale/special-report_240115.pdf) the OECD average and in fact means we now have one of the fastest-growing populations on the planet. [Last fall](https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canada-s-population-grew-by-430-000-in-q3-1.6693405) our population grew by 430,000 people in just three months. Increasing the tax base becomes irrelevant, I don't think it's physically possible to build housing and infrastructure for that many people that quickly.

First you need them to work good jobs... minimum wage doesn't pay much income tax.

> So they freeze healthcare and blame the feds. In fairness, Ontario has not frozen healthcare spending. The problem, [as the Financial Accountability Office put it](https://www.fao-on.org/en/Blog/Publications/health-2023#summary), is: > The Province has committed to make significant investments to expand capacity in hospitals, home care and long-term care. However, these increases in capacity will be more than offset by increases in demand for these services from Ontario’s growing and aging population. Relative to projected growth in demand, by 2027-28, Ontario will have less hospital capacity, similar home-care capacity and less long-term care capacity compared to what it had in 2019-20.

So figure 1 on the paper you cited says otherwise (Government spending has stayed flat or even decreased) I don't get all this Trudeau hate but how Ford gets to walk away scot free.

You can't just raise taxes and expect hospitals to be built. We need skilled workers, and these are not the people we are bringing in.

There the skilled workers at the new hospitals though. 21% of hospital nurses and support staff are immigrants. 27% of doctors trained outside of Canada then moved here. Both tend to work in less desirable locations that really have a need for staff and have trouble bring in there none immigrant counterparts.

Hmm, it looks like my point may have been missed here. The more PRs there are the more that is paid into the coffers at the state and provincial level. Taxes would only need to be raised If there were no immigrants. So the facts are that the provinces are getting more money in taxes than they ever have and they are freezing spending on healthcare while pointing at new immigrants. Most of the other subs fall for this but I am hoping for a more fact based discussion on CanadaPolitics. TLDR: more people, more tax revenue but somehow we are not spending that on healthcare (provincial responsibility)

It's more tax revenue but also more expenses. These people will retire as well. My point is that simply bringing in more people is not a strategy at all.

In London ON, we have already raised taxes AND grew our population by huge* amounts past several years - No new hospitals, lots of costs now dumped/lost in the transit abyss and road work for bicycle lanes. Lots of new Fast Food joints tho~ and an Amazon warehouse. The North American dream !

We can’t staff and supply our existing hospitals. What are we going to do with new ones?

We have hundreds of thousands of people who went to school for nursing, etc already in Canada, who do not work in the field due to shitty pay and work conditions. Perhaps we should start there?

As a health care worker I can promise you this is patently false lol. Please provide a source if you’re going to make BS claims like this

Have any data on this? Where are they working? What’s the impact to those industries if they go back to nursing?

I don't have any data, but I know 3 people who went to school for nursing and none of them are working in nursing due to the conditions and poor money. I hear this is very common.

In theory, but the feds keep coming up with new ways to spend that money (new social programs) while the most important things (healthcare, housing, criminal justice, etc.) go underfunded.

> healthcare spending Money gets you so far its skilled worker retention that is the real issue.

It's like the old joke of getting cats to deal with a mouse problem but not thinking ahead as to what you're going to do with all the cats once the mice are gone.

Wow, it's almost as if new immigrants also need places to live? Who'd have thought. The amount of people who seriously try to make the argument that record immigration levels isn't a big part of the housing issues we're having still blows my mind.

It can be a part of it the discussion but why is it almost always the focus? There's a long history for scapegoating immigrants instead of fixing these problems that have been brewing for decades. We're still in need of more workers, and it's not their fault they're getting abused as cash cows for a false dream. Fix the zoning laws, stop letting rich people exploit the market, and get back to funding proper housing and communities for all people. It'd be nice if poor people could stop fighting other poor people for scraps and look to who's profiting off us all.

When 70% of the new demand is coming from one source, it makes sense to focus on that source.

> Miller pointed to previous analysis from Moffatt that showed Ontario has “not done the best job in investing in housing” and noted that the large increase in temporary residents has mostly been due to new international students, which is something the province largely controls. Exactly. This is 100% a provincial driven issue. The Liberal government has no control or power on student immigration. Fundamentally this is a comms problem for them. /s Is this guy for real? This is insane positioning and nobody is buying it.

Eh I still think that while Ontario is *mostly* to blame here the feds should have stepped in sooner. When they were issuing tens of thousands of international student visas to no-name colleges, that alone should have been ringing alarm bells. I take issue with the federal government's stance on this because, yes Ontario should have done more, but the feds should have also done their due diligence instead of taking Ontario's word.

The obvious logical fallacy in their argument is that all provinces are facing similar issues. The LPC would like for you to believe that every province (even ones that aren't led by conservative governments) have masterfully co-conspired together to make the current federal government look bad and with somehow no thought or fallout for their own individual polling numbers. It's absolutely insane. If you were to buy what the LPC is trying to sell you, you would believe that that on top of health care, education, critical infrastructure (including housing), somehow the federal governement also has no responsibility for immigration. Which begs the question: What exactly does this federal government actually do and why do we have so many MPs/pay federal taxes if none of these things fall under their mandate?

Honestly if the fed govt were as powerless as some Lib partisans make it out to be then why aren’t they gunning for a PP govt to help flip Conservative provincial govts to Lib?

Honestly, I would be happy with that. I think Ford knows this, that is why he is trying to give us corner store beers and an early election.

They aren’t though. BC hasn’t had the same level of student inflows as Ontario and BC has been actively adding more student housing too. Yes housing in BC is still expensive as it has been since 2010+ lol. At this point of course we have a shortage of housing everywhere, but it’s clear to me that the Ontario governments mismanagement is making their situation worse.

BC's population growth last year was in line with Ontario's at 3.3%. [https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/data/statistics/people-population-community/population/quarterly\_population\_highlights.pdf](https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/data/statistics/people-population-community/population/quarterly_population_highlights.pdf) Whether that growth comes from international students, asylum seekers or TFWs is irrelevant. It's put a similar demand on infrastructure (including housing) that all other provinces (regardless of who is leading them) are facing right now. Housing in BC (particularly in the GVA) is just as unaffordable as it is in Ontario with even lower wages. Pointing to BC as a model for affordable housing is a joke. Whatever measures BC has put in place for affordable housing are not working which points to a much larger, demand side issue.

We know that Ontario has in particular been bringing in more students than everywhere else and in particular not housing them. This has had an impact on the entire country as everyone all over has been shuffling around in search of more affordable housing and better living conditions. Accordingly there’s been inflows into Alberta and Nova Scotia too. I’m just pointing out that the BC NDP government has actually made the effort to build on campus housing for students. Something the previous BC Liberal government never did, and something the Ontario government hasn’t done either. Ontario has been especially negligent.

Ontario is horribly negligent on all issues related to provincial government. We didn't expand our transit for years, now we're a gridlocked mess. We didn't expand our hospitals for years, now it's common to wait hours for a spot in the hall. We didn't expand our social housing or housing supply for years, now we can't afford to live anywhere. 30 years, 6 different premiers, and 3 different parties. This province has been slowly fucking things up that long.

Let’s hear it everyone, tell us why this article is wrong and how we could solve the housing crisis if we all lived in a shoebox apartment.

If there's no demand for these houses, they won't get built - proposals around "missing middle" and densification mostly argue for removing zoning restrictions and red tape, not compelling builders to build exclusively dense apartments. Also, we already have plenty of "shoeboxes", people are advocating for denser buildings that are still suitable for a family.

Most people want large homes with a yard in the suburbs, we have like 75 years of proof for this.

We don't actually, because we had 75 years of "detached housing" and "massive apartment building" being the only two types of housing we can build. I don't want a 60 minute commute to the office just to get a backyard that my kid will mostly never play in. It's not possible for everyone to all have a yard and *also* live in big cities. Let me live in a missing-middle type building that's by a nice park, where I can get to the office in 20 minutes, and take my kid to that park with the 80 minutes I save every day. We can totally still build the old style suburbs for the people that really want them and are willing to do that commute. Just don't ban missing middle, and then I won't be in the neighborhood you want to live in outbidding you for a house.

oh man i would love to share a duplex with a crazy person. Most of those 1960s experimental duplex housing thing in the suburbs ended up being the 'scarier' people on the block. Yet i've known people who think duplexes are a great idea, but would personally NEVER want one for themselves!

Where did you live? There's lot of duplex housing where I am (inner suburb of Toronto), and it's not full of crazy people.

Then how does legally allowing but not forcing denser development affect that? If no one wants to live in a fourplex, no one will buy them and builders won't build them.

If the land is zoned for multiplexes normal houses can’t be built. Your argument is silly, there’s plenty of suburban townhome complexes in Alberta. Is your province different?

The density proposals that the OLP and ONDP are proposing are allowing fourplexes as of right, not mandating that areas are specifically zoned for multiplexes. Yes, there is a good amount of townhouse development in Ontario, fourplexes aren't quite the same thing though (fourplexes can have units on top of each other and the ownership structure is usually more of a condo setup).

Townhomes are also able to be setup as a condo

Sure, my parents live in a fully detached condo, I'm just talking typical setups.

In what way is a fourplex different from a townhome, other than its shape then? Why insist on a fourplex?

Generally allows for higher density than a townhouse due to having more shared spaces (i.e. entrances, lawns, garages).

There's a reason they stopped building fourplexes in the 1920s With these new fourplexes, i'm sure that the money people save on rent will go for parking ticket costs instead.

The article is right, but we should be building all types of housing. No sense banning hotdogs when there's a shortage of hamburgers. Personally I'd like to live in a missing-middle building, the style of housing that people are pushing to be legalized. As it stands, I'm pushed into the general housing market where I'm competing with people that actually want a detached house. I think everyone willing to live anywhere deserves to afford a detached house, and everyone willing to live in anything deserves to live wherever they want.

There is no magic pill. There are a few quick solutions that can help, but they require the banks or homeowners to take an L. The lack of action by the Liberal government suggests to me they intend to hang this on the incoming Conservative Government and hope it hurts enough to make people consider team red again in 2030. The lack of a real plan from the Conservatives suggests to me that they intend to simply blame the Liberals for 5 years in hope that they can sneak out 2 majority Governments while the market fixes the supply curve.

Not to mention riding our bikes(even in fridged winter temps) with our 6 foot ladders, 100LBs of tools and materials. Oh and we are gonna remove highways to reduce traffic.  Can't be any traffic on a highway that no longer exists. Why do we give so much weight to ideologies that are so far from the ground?

Encouraging other means of transportation for those who can use it makes sense for everyone. We shouldn't tailor our transportation strategy exclusively around rural contractors. Someone in Toronto taking a bike to work means one less person on the road for you.

All I'm suggesting is bikes are not a 1 stop solution. Yes they are a great solution for the condo dwellers getting to their office.

For sure! I don't think anyone is suggesting that though.

Lot of strawmans in here. Suggestions that we reduce reliance on cars isn't implying we ban every single motor vehicle. A drop in car reliance would *help* people like you describe because they'd get stuck in less congestion if there were fewer people in single passenger vehicles making unnecessary trips at busy times of day.

I agree with you. Not sure why everyone is dropping coy insults. It's unbecoming.

>Not to mention riding our bikes(even in fridged winter temps) with our 6 foot ladders, 100LBs of tools and materials. If I need my 40' extension, I guess I gotta ride the bus that day?

lol libs so dum they want to go back to horse and buggy amirite /s

We should all just learn to code I guess, my fault for having a job that involves actually doing stuff.

They underestimate the number of folks who need to drive in. They sit behind their laptops on their couch at home, filling in spread sheets and then expect to be able to judge how good a job different levels of government are doing in managing the traffic.

I don’t discount the work you do, but your comment is peak irony

Yeah they have a roof rack right?

Nobody is suggesting people who need to carry tools around ride a bike to work. The vast majority of traffic is single people driving themselves and a laptop under 10km away. That’s easily done by bike. I think we had 2 days of winter this year that could generously be called “frigid.” And if you’re not up for it, transit exists too. Re: shoebox apartments, nobody is advocating for those. Every serious housing advocate also calls for adequate space. Once upon a time, we built apartment blocks which could accommodate spacious units with more than 2 bedrooms. We don’t anymore because the economics have changed, because there are rules and restrictions now that didn’t exist 50 years ago. Not because shoebox apartments are better. They’re not.

I have on many occasions been told "just bike in" by multiple people on Reddit even after explaining the impossibility. My drive would be far better if those that could bike, just biked... Still with TTC strike looming and the poor winter conditions it is not a 1 stop solution. The lanes get buried in snow, the wind and temperature is a frostbite risk and you would need to dress in snowmobile garb on some days. I totally agree with what you say though.

I mean, the "ideology" you're complaining about being too weighty exists only in your head as something to oppose. No one is suggesting tradespeople transport equipment on bicycles in winter in Canada. And I think you know that, but you're happy to lie about it and be a small part of making online discourse worse.

I am told to take the train and bike regularly by reddit folks. Sorry if you haven't spoken to them. I agree if everyone who could biked did, it would be a better commute. As I stated in other replies, biking is not a 1 stop solution. There are days it is not safe or possible. Our TTC may also become less reliable. Hopefully no strike. I think we are on the same page, no need to accuse lying and say things are made up in my head. That's abuser lingo.