With rising housing costs in Canada, it is easy to place the blame on immigration. Little housing supply means there are fewer places for people to live, and curbing immigration numbers seems to be a popular solution to this problem among politicians. However, blaming immigrants for a problem brought on by the politicians themselves is not the solution to the country’s growing housing concerns, and may prove to hurt the economy overall.
The Royal Bank of Canada has stated that “Immigration in Canada has accounted for all the growth in the labour force for well over a decade, but it’s still not enough to significantly offset the impact of an aging demographic or substantially reduce the structural shortages in the jobs market.” In other words, Canada needs immigrants to keep its economy afloat.
If the government was actually interested in finding out the causes of the housing crisis, it would do well to notice that the reasons are coming from within. Every level of government has consistently failed to address the housing shortfall by making it more and more difficult not only for Canadians to buy houses, but for new housing to be built at all.
At the municipal level, zoning rules and regulations often keep abandoned commercial offices — now sitting empty due to work-from-home policies — from being converted to residential space. This has been the case in Toronto, where applying to rezone a space takes a minimum of nine months once the paperwork has been submitted, as was pointed out by Consumer Choice Center manager David Clement in 2020.
According to Clement, applicants hoping to re-zone their properties must provide evidence such as “an archeological assessment, a services and facility study, an environmental impact study, an energy strategy, a heritage impact statement, a natural heritage impact study, their planning rationale, their public consultation report and a transportation impact study — on top of their own formal plans.” Who is going to find a process like that worth going through?
Toronto has since moved in the right direction by eliminating exclusionary zoning rules, which previously limited how many and what kind of homes can be built on a lot. This is significant because a large part of the housing shortage is a result of overly onerous rules that do not bring about more housing for Canadians. One can only hope that other cities follow suit, since cities like Hamilton, Vancouver and Ottawa continue to top the charts on housing unaffordability.
Federally, the government keeps providing solutions meant to distract Canadians from the mess it has made by not pressuring provinces to find ways to make building housing easier. Immigration Minister Marc Miller announceda two-year cap on international student admissions in January. He also announced he is restricting postgraduate work permits, which allow international students to gain Canadian work experience after completing their education, from those who attend private colleges that follow public college curriculums. These students are young, motivated and ready to help build Canada’s economy. And yet, they are being framed as one of the reasons for the housing crisis.
The federal government’s latest attempt at fixing its mess is the housing plan it released in April. The plan includes re-introducing a standardized housing design catalogue similar to the one Canada used in the 1940s, and investing in standardizing building processes to make construction more efficient.
However, builders don’t need to look to the past and take advice from politicians and slow-moving bureaucracy; they simply need the ability to do their jobs with fewer barriers such as zoning laws and unnecessary red tape. If housing is needed immediately, there is no time for the federal government to hold consultations about regulatory barriers and the National Building Code, as the new housing plan states — houses must be built now.
Ironically, although the government keeps using immigrants as a source of the housing crisis, they admit in their latest housing plan that they need to prioritize newcomers who have the skills to build more homes. It is clear that without immigrants, this housing crisis cannot be readily solved.
It is important to recognize that immigrants are worried about the housing crisis, too. In July, one study by Angus Reid found that nearly 40 per cent of immigrants have considered moving as a result of the housing crisis in Canada. This is terrible news for Canada because, with a declining population, the country’s economic hopes are tied to an increase in economic immigration over the next several years. Canadians should band together and stop allowing politicians to scapegoat immigrants for the mistakes the politicians themselves have made in the housing market.
Originally published here
