Trudeau recently told an audience that housing was a provincial issue and the federal government cannot be blamed for the rise in home prices, or words to that effect. To some extent, he is right. Municipal policies, Provincial policies and NIMBY culture issues have contributed to the shortage of houses. Federal fiscal and monetary policies have been major contributors. House prices have doubled under Trudeau.
Trudeau’s immigration policies will likely benefit Canada longer term but for the time being the number of immigrants has outpaced new home construction by a wide margin, exacerbating the housing shortage. If there aren’t enough homes being built to accommodate the new immigrants, there certainly aren’t enough to house families formed in Canada excluding the immigrants.
What bright light in Ottawa couldn’t see that bringing in more immigrants than housing starts would put upward pressure on home prices? Maybe the same boffin in the bureaucracy that thought QE’s lower interest rate results wouldn’t drive up prices as buyers could afford to pay more competing for scarce homes? I thought there were economists on the Liberal payroll, but apparently there are no more economists than physicists since the Liberals are just as ineffective in understanding why CO2 cannot cause climate change.
Canada is not short of land, not short of lumber, not short of concrete, not short of nails, not short of roofing tiles or floor tiles. Nope. Canada is just short of common sense in the House of Commons. According to an article in Bloomberg, Canada’s housing crisis is among the worst in the world. Hard to believe a sparsely populated country like Canada with enormous resources can’t house its people, but that is Liberal Canada today.
With housing now being given a priority both federally and provincially, housing starts have risen and are now running at a rate of about 250,000 annually. Canada currently has a population of about 40 million and Statistics Canada projects our population could reach 57 million by 2068, implying growth of 350,000 to 400,000 persons per year. At 2.3 persons per household, that growth will require about 175,000 new homes per year in addition to a current shortage on the order of 1 million homes. Unless homebuilding activity accelerates, it will take another 15 years before supply and demand come into balance and the relentless rise in home prices abates.
The pressure could be eased by simply reducing immigration and letting Canada’s population grow at a more moderate 120,000 persons per year, a 3% rate consistent with organic growth and normal fertility. Five years of such a policy would solve the housing problem at the current rate of housing starts, and an increase from 250,000 starts to 300,000 starts per year could shorten that timeframe further. Why would it be so terrible to curb immigration for a few years so our children can afford to buy a home? We don’t need to import problems. Trudeau has created enough domestic problems with stupid energy policies and divisive rhetoric that a hiatus might be welcomed by the electorate.
Time to run Trudeau out on a rail and let him begin his new life as a single man without the burden of the time it takes to screw up Canada while philandering on his former wife. Can’t happen soon enough for me.
Trudeau is a moron and an economy ignorant
its a known fact.
Real estate is not a Canadian only problem.
Real estate value in Australia , New Zealand and many other countries have ballooned to unsustainable levels.
The real estate bubble is global.
the Chinese real estate implosion is the canary in the coal mine