McGugan: Canada is a great place, with politicians who have a knack for bad decisions

More critical commentary, but leaves out the complicity of business associations, education institutions, provincial governments and others:

….The government’s incoherence on housing reflects its commitment to a similarly befuddled immigration agenda.

Mr. Trudeau supersized immigration after he became Prime Minister in 2015. Exactly why was never clear: Canada’s existing system admitted generous numbers of people, primarily on economic grounds, and was considered a model internationally.

Yet Mr. Trudeau ramped up the annual immigrant intake from a net total of roughly 200,000 people in 2015 to 300,000 by 2019 and more than 400,000 currently. Even more important, he allowed a vast expansion in the scale of programs that admit non-permanent residents – primarily international students and temporary workers – taking that category to more than 800,000 people this year.

The entirely predictable result of this population surge has been housing shortages and soaring rents. Ottawa is now moving to slash the number of non-permanent residents, but that will take time.

Perhaps the key question to ask is why nobody in Ottawa saw problems coming. It doesn’t take advanced economic modelling to suspect that the collision between a drum-tight housing market and an unprecedented surge of new residents would not turn out well.

On this Canada Day, we should ponder why our political class – federally and provincially, left and right – has developed such a knack for making unforced errors. Canada remains great. Sadly, its politicians aren’t.

Source: Canada is a great place, with politicians who have a knack for bad decisions