Mass immigration lead to skyrocketing asset prices and rents. We did it to artificially depress wages when inflation caused a labor shortage, as per the Phillips curve, as the Bank of Canada was raising interest rates to cool the job market.
Now wages are way down due to capital shallowing and a cooled labor market with far more people, and housing is way up.
Rent was mostly caused by us dropping the ball on building new housing and not zoning properly so the only profitable things to build were massive single family homes or complexes with huge amounts of parking which obviously required a lot of land.
Immigration is just a tiny piece of an interlocking puzzle.
Jobs aren’t this static thing that immigrants come and steal. Immigrants also increase consumption. Increased consumption = more jobs. Basic macroecon.
At no point has any modern macroeconomist ever condemned immigration. Immigration from a low economic productivity country to a high productivity country is always a net positive.
Canada is facing scaling issues with respect to population increase. Again, as you said not being able to construct new houses quickly. Why is supply not meeting demand? Shitty zoning laws, red tape and long, drawn out public consultations mostly attended by boomer NIMBY homeowners concerned about increasing the valuator their home.
How can 4% annual population growth while you arent building enough housing a “tiny piece”.
I agree that zoning, huge developer taxes that have increased thousands of percent in a decade, and slow bureaucracy are why we cant build housing, but without immigration demand would be stagnant.
https://realestatemagazine.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Average-listed-rent.jpeg
Mass immigration lead to skyrocketing asset prices and rents. We did it to artificially depress wages when inflation caused a labor shortage, as per the Phillips curve, as the Bank of Canada was raising interest rates to cool the job market.
Now wages are way down due to capital shallowing and a cooled labor market with far more people, and housing is way up.
Rent was mostly caused by us dropping the ball on building new housing and not zoning properly so the only profitable things to build were massive single family homes or complexes with huge amounts of parking which obviously required a lot of land.
Immigration is just a tiny piece of an interlocking puzzle.
Thank you so much.
Jobs aren’t this static thing that immigrants come and steal. Immigrants also increase consumption. Increased consumption = more jobs. Basic macroecon.
At no point has any modern macroeconomist ever condemned immigration. Immigration from a low economic productivity country to a high productivity country is always a net positive.
Canada is facing scaling issues with respect to population increase. Again, as you said not being able to construct new houses quickly. Why is supply not meeting demand? Shitty zoning laws, red tape and long, drawn out public consultations mostly attended by boomer NIMBY homeowners concerned about increasing the valuator their home.
How can 4% annual population growth while you arent building enough housing a “tiny piece”.
I agree that zoning, huge developer taxes that have increased thousands of percent in a decade, and slow bureaucracy are why we cant build housing, but without immigration demand would be stagnant.