The Globe is going with a pretty click-bait-y title. But, I’ve seen others call for coordinating federal immigration numbers with infrastructure planning by municipalities and provinces. It looks like National Bank is on the same wavelength.
“The federal government’s decision to open the immigration floodgates during the most aggressive monetary tightening cycle in a generation has created a record imbalance between housing supply and demand. According to Statistics Canada, the working-age population surged 238,000 in Q2. That was the largest quarterly increase on record and 6.8 standard deviations from the historical norm of 82,000 per quarter. Unfortunately, Canadian homebuilders can’t keep up with this influx. Housing starts for Q2 2023 stood at 62,000 units (or 247,000 annualized). At just 0.26, the ratio of housing starts to working-age population growth fell to a new and stands at less than half its historical average of 0.61 (the ratio is normally below 1 to account for the fact that there is more than one person per household). To meet demand, builders would need to break ground on 144,000 units per quarter (or 576K annualized), double the best performance ever!
At an absolute bare minimum, post-secondary institutions should show students have decent housing before visas are granted.
Housing alone is essential just as a place to live. But then there would also be need for more roads, better public transport, more schools, more hospitals. Population congestion is going to increase and quality of life is going to decrease over the next decade even if all this were to start now.
My municipality: There’s been a large increase in the local population? Better spend millions to subsidize a luxury condominium and make school and hospital cuts.
We will need to drastically change our zoning rules very soon to keep up. Most sane countries allow all land use other than industrial and agricultural inside cities, and they’re better for it.
You mean going to continue to decline…