SHEPHERD: Poilievre repeatedly refuses to offer his own immigration target numbers

2023/08/19 Leave a comment

Don’t normally post articles from “True” North but of interest that they are criticizing Conservative leader for not commenting or engaging on immigration targets.

Personally, I have some sympathy for his refusing to comment given that any reduction might well be portrayed as anti-immigration or even racist by the Liberals and NDP (which or course it would not be as I have argued elsewhere):

Immigration Minister Marc Miller hinted recently that he may soon announce an increase in Canada’s immigration targets. The usually outspoken Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre seemingly has nothing to say about that.

“Whether we revise them upwards or not is something that I have to look at,” Miller said earlier this month. “But certainly, I don’t think we’re in any position of wanting to lower them by any stretch of the imagination.”

Officially, Canada plans to bring in 465,000 permanent residents this year, 485,000 next year, and 500,000 by 2025.

But don’t be fooled: we also invite in hundreds of thousands of additional residents every year, such as temporary foreign workers and international students, so our population actually grew by 1.05 million in 2022 even though we have a below-replacement fertility rate of 1.40 births per Canadian woman.

Canada’s exorbitantly high immigration numbers are straining the housing supply, the healthcare system, and social services such as food banks.

Many journalists, myself included, have been asking Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre what his immigration targets would look like if he becomes prime minister.

In a July press conference for ethnic media, blogger Darshan Maharaja asked Poilievre whether reducing immigration targets could help relieve the demand side of Canada’s housing crunch.

“In order for housing to become affordable at current rates of immigration we need to build six million homes by 2030,” Poilievre answered. “Right now we’re on track to build about 1.4 million homes. So we have to choose, either we’re going to build more homes or we’re going to have a big problem.”

“We gotta build, we gotta build now,” Poilievre said.

When I asked Poilievre’s office whether he would keep Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s immigration targets, and what he thinks about immigration minister Marc Miller possibly increasing the targets this fall, I received no answers to my questions and was instead sent a link to a CPAC video.

“My common sense policy on immigration will be driven by the number of vacancies that private sector employers want to fill, the number of charities that want to sponsor refugees, and the families that want to reunite quickly with loved ones,” Poilievre stated in the video during a stop in Ottawa.

“What’s wrong with the 500,000 target in your mind?” another journalist asks Poilievre.

“I think what’s wrong is Justin Trudeau’s incompetence… I’ll make sure we have housing and healthcare so that when people come here they have a roof overhead and care when they need it.”

People who would have been hesitant to say it out loud even a year ago are now admitting it: our high immigration levels make it more difficult for Canadians to house themselves.

Even individuals with full-time employment can’t keep up with the average rent of $2,000 per month ($3,000 in Vancouver), and end up living out of their vehicles at highway rest stops.

Immigration is now becoming a ballot issue for voters who historically may have only ever expressed support for our system. According to a poll commissioned by Bloomberg News, 68% of Canadians believe Trudeau’s immigration targets negatively impact the housing market.

So, yes, Poilievre should be offering up a quantitative figure to let us know where he really stands on the matter, instead of always deflecting with calls to ‘build, build, build.’

Until he does, we can only conclude that the Conservative party does, in fact, agree with Trudeau’s immigration targets.

With no opposition or critique of Trudeau’s immigration levels from any political party in the House of Commons, there will be no acknowledgment that Canada’s immigration plan actually does not work to counteract an aging population and workforce. Because immigrants themselves age and most come with dependents, parents, and grandparents, immigration does notultimately address the problem of replacing retirees.

Deeper questions arise once you know these facts: do our high immigration targets exist solely so that banks have an endless supply of debtors, landlords an endless supply of renters, and corporations an endless supply of workers who are less aware or assertive of their rights?

I await Poilievre’s answers and numbers.

Source: SHEPHERD: Poilievre repeatedly refuses to offer his own immigration target numbers

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ICYMI: Don Wright: Why did Justin Trudeau switch sides in the ‘class struggle?’

2023/08/18 Leave a comment

More on the recent expansion of temporary foreign workers and relaxation of conditions, along with contrast when the PM was in opposition:

In 2014, Justin Trudeau wrote an op-ed arguing that the Stephen Harper government should dramatically scale back the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program.

His reasoning was sound – both in moral terms and in economic terms. He wrote: “I believe it is wrong for Canada to follow the path of countries who exploit large numbers of guest workers.” He also pointed out that large numbers of TFWs “drives down wages.”

We might have expected, therefore, that things would change under his leadership. And indeed, they have. Between 2015 and 2022 the number of TFWs in Canada doubled!

But TFWs are actually only a small fraction of total Non-Permanent Residents (NPR) with work permits in Canada. There is another category known as the “International Mobility Program” (IMP) which provides work permits for international students, graduates of post-secondary programs and other categories. The number of IMP work permit holders almost tripled between 2015 and 2022. In total, NPRs with work permits now exceed 1.1 million people – and have grown from 2.1 per cent to 5.5 per cent of the Canadian labour force.

This hasn’t happened by accident. The current government has made a series of changes that have opened the door to higher numbers of NPRs. Last year, for example, the federal immigration minister made it significantly easier for employers to get permits for TFWs.

Perhaps more significantly, he eliminated the restriction on the number of hours that international students could work while they are supposedly studying. Previously, the limit was 20 hours a week. There are no limits on the number of international students that can be granted a student permit. All they need is acceptance from a “Designated Learning Institution.” In addition to the publicly funded universities, colleges and institutions, there are a large number of private, for-profit colleges that are in this business as well.

One doesn’t have to be too cynical to imagine that some private college operators would market themselves as a way to get a work permit in Canada, with a possible path to permanent resident status down the road, with the quality of the education being offered of secondary importance. Indeed, a casual search of the web will uncover many such stories.

One needs to be only a little more cynical to conclude that this was the federal government’s intention in lifting the restriction on working while studying. What an easy way to appease the demands from many in the employer community to deal with the “worker shortage.”

The jobs that NPRs fill are disproportionately low wage positions – jobs like food counter attendants, kitchen helpers, cooks, cashiers, retail salespersons, shore shelf stockers, clerks,delivery service drivers, and the like. Statistics Canada reports that, even with high educational attainment, NPRs were in occupations requiring no formal education proportionately more than the rest of the Canadian population.

You know, this kind of sounds like something that “those countries who exploit large numbers of guest workers” would do.

And let’s not lose sight of the other point that Mr. Trudeau made back in 2014. This all serves to depress the wages of Canadian workers. In particular, it disproportionately impacts low-wage earners – if employers couldn’t rely on the large number of NPR workers, they would have to raise the wages that they offer.

Why is the federal government aiding and abetting this? Apparently because they are responding to the consistent mantra from the employer community that there is a “worker shortage.” More precisely, there is a shortage of workers willing to work at the wages that certain employers prefer to pay. But whose side should the federal government be on?

Over the past 20 years “the bosses” have done much better than the workers. For example, Statistics Canada data shows that in 2003 the category of workers defined as “senior managers” on average earned 3.9 times more than the category of workers defined as “sales and service support.” In 2023 the multiple had widened significantly to 5.1 times. Sales and service support occupations include cashiers, service station attendants, store shelf stackers, food, accommodation and tourism workers, and cleaners – typical of the positions filled by many NPR workers.

Given this trend one needs to ask: who needs more help in the struggle for fair wages – the workers or the bosses? Why did the federal government apparently change sides in this struggle?

Don Wright was the former deputy minister to the B.C. Premier, Cabinet Secretary and former head of the B.C. Public Service until late 2020. He now is senior counsel at Global Public Affairs.

Source: Don Wright: Why did Justin Trudeau switch sides in the ‘class struggle?’

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Ottawa lance une stratégie pour attirer les «nomades numériques» sans rien changer

2023/08/18 Leave a comment

Of note, will see how situation evolves:

Le ministre fédéral de l’Immigration a lancé cet été — et en grande pompe — « une stratégie pour attirer les nomades numériques » au pays. Deux mois plus tard, rien n’a changé. Des centaines, voire des milliers d’entre eux, continuent de vivre au Canada dans la « zone grise » qui prévaut depuis des années.

Singapour, Inde, États-Unis, Philippines, Brésil… Diverses origines se croisent dans la résidence Nomad Coliving. Le bâtiment au centre-ville de Montréal loge quelques dizaines de ces nomades des temps modernes. Tous télétravaillent, à leur compte ou pour un employeur, et changent de pays au gré des saisons ou des échéances de visa.

Maria Kinoshita, gestionnaire de l’endroit, a organisé une fête avec tout ce beau monde lorsque l’ancien ministre de l’Immigration Sean Fraser a laissé supposer qu’un visa pour eux allait voir le jour.

« Nous allons lancer une stratégie pour les nomades numériques pour permettre aux personnes qui ont un employeur étranger de venir travailler au Canada jusqu’à 6 mois », avait-il lancé en juin dernier sur une grande scène d’un événement techno de Toronto. « Et si elles reçoivent une offre d’emploi pendant qu’elles sont là, nous allons autoriser qu’ils continuent de rester et de travailler au Canada. »

« Plusieurs ont eu l’espoir d’avoir un statut, raconte Maria Kinoshita. Ils ont reporté leur demande de visa en se disant qu’ils pourraient appliquer pour un visa de nomade. » Deux mois plus tard, rien n’a changé. Le fameux visa se fait attendre.

Ottawa prévoyait aussi consulter « des partenaires des secteurs privé et public afin de déterminer s’il serait souhaitable d’adopter d’autres politiques pour attirer les nomades numériques au Canada ».

Maria Kinoshita n’a pas été contactée. Même silence autour d’elle, elle qui connaît un peu tout le monde dans cet univers parallèle des travailleurs sans bureau fixe. Puisqu’elle a des origines japonaises, elle a cependant été appelée par le gouvernement du pays du Soleil levant, qui, au même moment, a lancé une stratégie similaire.

Le Devoir n’a pas pu trouver d’entreprises ou d’organismes québécois qui ont été consultés à ce sujet. Le gouvernement du Québec affirme aussi n’avoir pas été interrogé avant le lancement de cette stratégie.

Un nouveau ministre de l’Immigration, Marc Miller, a été nommé cet été. Ce dernier est « en retraite » deux semaines avec le nouveau cabinet, et n’a pas pu répondre aux questions du Devoir.

Les communications du ministère ont toutefois précisé les intentions d’Ottawa, en disant vouloir s’« assurer s’il serait utile qu’un nomade numérique ait un processus clair pour demander un permis de travail au Canada, s’il décidait par la suite de chercher un poste auprès d’un employeur canadien ».

Entrer pour ne plus repartir

Pour Claire Estagnasié, doctorante à l’UQAM en communication et spécialiste du nomadisme numérique, une telle annonce « pourrait clarifier une zone grise, mais, dans la pratique, ça ne change absolument rien ». Ces nomades vont et viennent toujours sous un visa de visiteur, travaillant hors du cadre des lois canadiennes.

« Pas un mot sur l’assurance maladie » de ces voyageurs longue durée, fait-elle remarquer. Ni sur la taxation de ces travailleurs. Pour l’instant, les nomades numériques ne paient des impôts que dans leur pays d’origine. Un Américain qui réside au Canada paie ses taxes uniquement aux États-Unis, s’il ne reste pas plus de 6 mois de ce côté-ci de la frontière. Et il peut toujours retourner très brièvement chez lui pour ne pas dépasser cette limite de six mois, faire le tour de la frontière, pour ensuite demander un second visa de touriste en rentrant au Canada.

« Pour les nomades numériques américains, ça leur ferait moins de paperasse. Pour les autres, ça ne change rien du tout », résume la chercheuse. « C’est un effet d’annonce, d’image. »

Le Canada cherche à sédentariser prochainement ces nomades, précise par ailleurs le ministère. « Ils peuvent très facilement demander à prolonger leur séjour en tant que résidents temporaires, ou demander un permis de travail au Canada s’ils trouvent un emploi sur le marché du travail canadien. »

Un besoin de logements

Maria Kinoshita, bien qu’enthousiaste à ce que Montréal devienne une plaque tournante pour ces nomades modernes, prévient qu’il faudrait inclure dans cette stratégie une politique de logements. Sa résidence, à mi-chemin entre l’auberge de jeunesse et la maison de chambres, est déjà pleine. Elle projette d’ouvrir d’autres résidences à Montréal et à Québec. Et déjà, les listes d’attente pour ses chambres sont toutes aussi pleines.

Les prêts, le zonage, les assurances : tout est compliqué pour transformer un multiplex de six logements en résidence de seize chambres. « Il y a beaucoup de monde partant pour partir des places comme ça, mais ils ont été découragés quand ils ont vu ce que j’ai traversé », assure la femme d’affaires, elle-même nomade à ses heures.

« Je densifie la bâtisse », précise-t-elle, soucieuse de ne pas retirer de logements d’un marché locatif très à l’étroit. « Et j’accepte les locaux qui ont besoin de cet espace-là. »

Ailleurs dans le monde, ce ne sont pas les exemples de « stratégies pour attirer les nomades numériques » qui manquent. Le nombre de pays avec des visas spécialement pour ces travailleurs a explosé ces dernières années. On en comptait un peu plus d’une dizaine il y a tout juste deux ans, selon une estimation des spécialistes du nomadisme Partout chez nous. Ces derniers recensent à l’heure actuelle 42 pays avec un tel type de visa.

Source: Ottawa lance une stratégie pour attirer les «nomades numériques» sans rien changer

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Colby Cosh: Nonsense for Trudeau to open immigration, but not the economy

2023/08/17 Leave a comment

Kind of funny column as he turns around the left wing critique of mobility of capital and restrictions on mobility of people to a critique of mobility of people and restrictions on capital. Reflects his ideology but nevertheless interesting contrast:

This week, the Wall Street Journal, a strong candidate for “best newspaper in the English-speaking world,” became the latest news outlet to lift a questioning eyebrow at Canadian immigration policy. WSJ’s superb Ottawa reporter Paul Vieira gestures, for the benefit of his paper’s international audience, at facts most of our readers already know well. Inflexible, highly regulated parts of the economy like housing, medicine and transport are screaming under the burden of immigration levels with few precedents anywhere — levels the Liberal government has done nothing but increase.

Recent immigrants themselves are starting to become disillusioned with the promise of Canada, and pollsters say the broad public is beginning to balk at the “more, more, more” approach to immigration — no wonder, because our per-capita economic output is now in active decline. Our multi-decade embrace of super-high immigration was supposed to flood our country with entrepreneurs and innovators; the practical overall result appears to be stagnant labour productivity, along with frank inattention to research and development on the part of our businesses. Everywhere you look it is economists who are shooting warning flares into the sky, and even the central bank is making Marge Simpson dissatisfaction noises. Only federal politicians, fearful of a third rail that may soon be totally disconnected from any power, remain quiet.
Something maddening struck me for the first time while reading Vieira’s piece, even though there’s nothing in it you and I don’t know. It’s that when it comes to economic policy, Canada’s philosophy has strong, inherited cultural-nationalist premises. In law, large parts of our economy are protected from the taint of foreign capital, lest it serve as a wedge for the destruction of our precious sovereignty.
Some of the economic ills I just mentioned are attributable to this. We’re subject to a strangling oligopoly in telecom services because our phones, for some damn reason, require cultural protection (culture is the explicit legal pretext for the foreign-ownership limits in that line of business). Our news industry, up against similar fences, grows ever leaner; our airlines subject us to unapologetic unredressed abuse; the internet, a realm of unlimited bandwidth, turns sludgy before our eyes as our government quarrels with foreign “tech giants” of a sort we could never grow here. And if I so much as mentioned foreign corporate involvement in a super-protected setting like health care, I’d probably be picketed by my own readers before the end of business.So let me ask: isn’t this double stupidity? How can our besetting economic nationalism be reconciled with haphazardly controlled mass immigration? Something called our “economy” is a precious national treasure that might come to harm if we let Verizon or Gannett or KLM trod our sacred soil. But when it comes to nose counts, no one will admit that anything valuable, anything distinctively Canadian, is at stake or might be threatened by unruly immigration. (Such as, say, your ability to afford a house or find a doctor.)

I’m a libertarian: I think the classic economic story of immigration’s benefits is essentially true, or can be true in a free and liberal economy. But Milton Friedman is supposed to have once remarked that you cannot have both free immigration and a welfare state. I suspect that’s right, but what seems especially clear, whether you regard Friedman as a hero or a devil, is that you really cannot have both free immigration and economic nationalism. And why would you want that? For one purpose we are Fortress Canada, and for another closely related purpose we have walls made intentionally from Kleenex?

Source: Colby Cosh: Nonsense for Trudeau to open immigration, but not the economy

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John Robson: So we need more immigrants … to build homes for all the immigrants?

2023/08/17 Leave a comment

Robson captures the circular argument before his overall rant:

With the Australian government hiring a consultant for advice on dealing with consultants, Momus, the Greek god of satire, retreats helplessly from the stage. Which is too bad since we could use a satirical hand, or mouth, when told Canada’s minister of immigration says we must bring in an endless stream of immigrants to build houses for the endless stream of immigrants we’re bringing in to build … um … hang on a second.

Are Canadians incapable of constructing dwellings? I’m a journalist by trade, so presumptively as useful in real life as, say, a poet. Or a consultant. But I have built a sleeping cabin and helped on that most iconic of Canadian dwellings, a cottage. I have even mixed cement. And doubtless others in this land surpass me. Including pros.

The minister cannot possibly think absent mass immigration we couldn’t build any homes. Where did our existing stock come from? The real issue is whether the current flood of immigrants contains enough extra homebuilders to provide extra shelter for that flood and then some. Especially as the minister cannot possibly think Canadian immigration policy is structured to bring in hundreds of thousands of framers, joiners, engineers and guys who use “footer” in everyday conversation.

Of course it derives from the more general, insulting notion that Canadians are such shlumps that without new immigrants we won’t work hard or effectively at anything. And not just those of us born in this notorious land of slackers; the millions who have poured in over the past quarter-century, and their offspring, are evidently assimilated to our culture of sloth so rapidly they can no longer be bothered hoisting a two by four instead of a 2-4 or something.

It’s the demographic version of the “bicycle” economic theory popular in Japan, that if they stopped pedalling they’d fall over. Whereas Japan’s real problem, and ours, is a plunging birth rate as we increasingly regard life as a burden or, at best, a brief party followed by MAID when the music stops, not a precious gift to be passed on. And you can’t fix despair with immigration because you really will get assimilation to that anomie unless we find a fix from within.

Canadians are famously pro-immigrant. Possibly because we are so famously polite that we don’t dare question bringing in another 60-odd million people to turn our fabled environment into one continuous strip mall from Saint John to Surrey.

To dissent against mass immigration risks wild accusations of bigotry. But what doesn’t nowadays? Like the joke about the patient who calls every single Rorschach ink blot a nude woman, then when the psychiatrist suggests he has a sexual obsession retorts, “Hey doc, you’re the one showing all the dirty pictures,” our elites increasingly see white supremacy in every defence of our heritage then say “Hey Canuck, you’re the one obsessed with race.”

Not everyone goes as far as our prime minister with his claim of an ongoing genocide in Canada on his watch. But the federal cabinet did approve a state-funded pamphlet from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network declaring the Red Ensign a red flag for white supremacy because it “denotes a desire to return to Canada’s demographics before 1967 when it was predominantly white.”

Do the Trudeau Liberals not concede that someone from afar, not remotely white let alone predominantly, might regard Canada’s heritage of individual liberty, capitalist prosperity and resolute defence of freedom as something to be admired and embraced? That someone who does not look like me, or them, might take their children to the Vimy Memorial and shed tears over the fallen?

Apparently not. It only recently dawned on them, with Muslim parents protesting radical sex ed, that not every non-white person is automatically left-wing in every dimension. And the Liberals are still struggling with not every white person being a right-wing xenophobic clod, though Justin Trudeau himself is only occasionally cosmetically non-white. But trying to stifle real debate with nonsense about bringing in immigrants to build homes for immigrants we bring in to build homes for immigrants is insolent, particularly as the housing crisis gets worse, not better, as people pour in. (Toronto is nearly half foreign-born, for instance.)

Of course if you’re trying to immigrate to Canada you favour a relatively open border. But once you succeed, and realize this country is everything you hoped for plus lakes and loons, you might well decide that as soon as you bring in your immediate family we should reduce the inflow dramatically.

Even people who admired Canada from a distance need time to internalize the habits that make it what it is. Which are not sloth, incompetence and bigotry, it’s apparently necessary to add.

Or inability to use hammers.

Source: John Robson: So we need more immigrants … to build homes for all the immigrants?

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Housing crisis: Feds stick by immigration plan, rethink international student flows

2023/08/17 Leave a comment

Possible partial pivot but limited to international students, Minister Miller linking this to fraud concerns, not permanent residents and temporary workers.

Kind of an interesting contradiction in the article between “pace of population growth, facilitated by immigration, is making the housing crisis worse” and “Most experts agree that the root causes of this housing shortage are unrelated to immigration.”

The alarm bells are becoming bull horns: Canada’s housing supply isn’t keeping up with the rapid rate of population growth.

Academics, commercial banks and policy thinkers have all been warning the federal government that the pace of population growth, facilitated by immigration, is making the housing crisis worse.

“The primary cause for (the) housing affordability challenge in Canada is our inability to build more housing that is in line with the increase in population,” said Murtaza Haider, a professor of data science and real estate management at Toronto Metropolitan University.

A TD report released in late July also warned that “continuing with a high-growth immigration strategy could widen the housing shortfall by about a half-million units within just two years.”

But the Liberals are doubling down on their commitment to bring more people into the country, arguing that Canada needs high immigration to support the economy and build the homes it desperately needs.

“Looking at the (immigration) levels that we have recently approved as a cabinet (and) as a government, we can’t afford currently to reduce those numbers,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

That’s because Canada’s aging population risks straining public finances, he said, as health-care needs rise and the tax base shrinks.

A report by Statistics Canada published in April 2022 finds the country’s working population has never been older, with more than one in five people close to retirement.

At the same time, Canada’s fertility rate hit a record low of 1.4 children per woman in 2020.

The TD report, co-authored by the commercial bank’s chief economist Beata Caranci, notes that economists are the ones who have been warning of the economic consequences of Canada’s aging population.

“A ramp-up in skilled-based immigration offered a solution. Government policies have delivered, but now the question is whether the sudden swing in population has gone too far, too fast,” the report said.

The federal government’s latest immigration levels plan, released last fall, would see Canada welcome 500,000 immigrants annually by 2025.

In contrast, the immigration target for 2015 was under 300,000.

Although the half-million figure has caught considerable attention, it’s not just higher immigration targets that are driving the surge in population.

Canada is also experiencing a boom in the number of temporary residents who are coming to the country, which includes international students and temporary foreign workers.

In 2022, Canada’s population grew by more than one million people, a number that included 607,782 non-permanent residents and 437,180 immigrants.

Miller said in the interview that the federal government is open to reconsidering international student enrolments, particularly amid fraud concerns.

Earlier this year, hundreds of people were suspected of being caught in a fraud scheme that saw immigration agents issue fake acceptance letters to get students into Canada.

“There is fraud across the system that we are going to have to clamp down on,” Miller said.

The increased scrutiny of Canada’s immigration policies and population growth comes as the country faces a housing affordability crisis caused in large part by a shortage of homes.

Most experts agree that the root causes of this housing shortage are unrelated to immigration. Red tape and anti-development sentiment at the municipal level, for example, can lead to major delays in projects.

Federal tax incentives that helped spur purpose-built rental constructions were rolled back decades ago, leading to a massive shortage in rentals that has slowly built up over time.

Given these existing challenges, experts are concerned strong population growth will add fuel to the fire.

BMO published an analysis in May that estimated that for every one per cent of population growth, housing prices rise by three per cent.

The rebound of the Canadian real estate market this year also shows how immigration is helping to maintain demand for housing, despite decades-high interest rates.

In contrast, the immigration target for 2015 was under 300,000.

Although the half-million figure has caught considerable attention, it’s not just higher immigration targets that are driving the surge in population.

Canada is also experiencing a boom in the number of temporary residents who are coming to the country, which includes international students and temporary foreign workers.

In 2022, Canada’s population grew by more than one million people, a number that included 607,782 non-permanent residents and 437,180 immigrants.

Miller said in the interview that the federal government is open to reconsidering international student enrolments, particularly amid fraud concerns.

Earlier this year, hundreds of people were suspected of being caught in a fraud scheme that saw immigration agents issue fake acceptance letters to get students into Canada.

“There is fraud across the system that we are going to have to clamp down on,” Miller said.

The increased scrutiny of Canada’s immigration policies and population growth comes as the country faces a housing affordability crisis caused in large part by a shortage of homes.

Most experts agree that the root causes of this housing shortage are unrelated to immigration. Red tape and anti-development sentiment at the municipal level, for example, can lead to major delays in projects.

Federal tax incentives that helped spur purpose-built rental constructions were rolled back decades ago, leading to a massive shortage in rentals that has slowly built up over time.

Given these existing challenges, experts are concerned strong population growth will add fuel to the fire.

BMO published an analysis in May that estimated that for every one per cent of population growth, housing prices rise by three per cent.

The rebound of the Canadian real estate market this year also shows how immigration is helping to maintain demand for housing, despite decades-high interest rates.

Source: Housing crisis: Feds stick by immigration plan, rethink international …

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Clark: Go big or go home on housing, Mr. Trudeau

2023/08/16 Leave a comment

As well as “going smaller” on immigration given the increased pressure and demand on housing:

Maybe it was just a coincidence that the new federal Housing Minister, Sean Fraser, told the press he’d be taking the train to an announcement in Burnaby, B.C., on Monday.

But Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had been talking about building housing next to train stations in a social-media video he posted Saturday that garnered over two million views and won plaudits from housing experts.

That made Mr. Fraser’s arrival on the SkyTrain to talk about housing seem a little late. That’s a recurring problem for the Liberals.

The biggest, loudest, most obvious political issue in Canada is the high cost of housing. Yet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have been slow to see it build. And they still haven’t matched the public’s angst with governing ambition.

That’s baffling, if only because of the politics. Mr. Poilievre has been banging the housing issue like a drum for a year and half, striking a chord with couples who can’t afford a house and folks facing skyrocketing rents. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is now making it his theme in tour stops, too. And housing is a top-of-mind concern for many in cities and suburbs – and that’s core Liberal electoral geography.

Mr. Trudeau likes big policy initiatives in areas like child care or clean energy, yet he has sounded pretty ambivalent about housing lately. A few weeks ago, he backed into a vague answer about Ottawa’s plans with an assertion that much of the problem is in provincial jurisdiction, not federal.

But it should be obvious that Mr. Trudeau has to expand the scale of federal housing policy to another level.

Former Liberal policy adviser Tyler Meredith argues Mr. Trudeau should go big: by bringing the federal government back into funding large-scale development of affordable housing, creating tax incentives for residential building, adjusting infrastructure programs and policies in areas such as immigration and banking. Then, he suggests, the PM should call provincial premiers to a national housing summit.

Mr. Meredith wants to see the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation put tens of billions of dollars into developing affordable housing, noting that can be done without a major impact on Ottawa’s budget deficit or net debt, because Ottawa will own the buildings as an asset. It doesn’t have to be a landlord: It might lease those houses to non-profit organizations.

Policy thinkers have already proposed a number of solid, relatively low-cost ways to change the tax system to provide incentives to build – and acting on such things now should be a no-brainer.

One is eliminating the GST on purpose-built rental housing, which should seem like a good idea to Mr. Trudeau because it was in his 2015 Liberal election platform. Another, proposed by economist Mike Moffat and former Stephen Harper adviser Ken Boessenkool, working with the Smart Prosperity Institute, is more generous tax treatment for depreciation of residential buildings. Those two measures would cost the treasury relatively small sums.

Both the Liberals and the Conservatives have proposed using infrastructure spending as a lever to get municipalities to permit more building. Mr. Poilievre has called for Ottawa to withhold funds from cities that don’t approve housing projects quickly, while the Liberals have created a $4-billion “housing accelerator fund” to encourage towns to speed up the process.

And it’s pretty clear money will talk: Municipalities will be reluctant to lower the costs they charge to developers unless someone – Ottawa or the provincial government – replaces the revenue.

Mr. Meredith also thinks the Prime Minister should call premiers to a national housing summit, because a lot of the obstacles are at the provincial or municipal level, from building rules and permits to fees. Provinces are responsible for municipal governance.

Usually, prime ministers are wary of such summits as premiers tend to come to them with demands. But the cynical political calculation could be different for a prime minister launching major federal housing initiatives and inviting premiers to join the mission. It could shift some of the political pressure to act back to the provinces.

At any rate, Mr. Trudeau has reached a point where he has little time to catch up to the urgency many Canadians feel. The alternative is to roll out small initiatives and argue his government has done enough, and that means missing the train on the country’s hottest political issue.

Source: Go big or go home on housing, Mr. Trudeau

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Housing experts, advocates, industry have unified message for government: Get more rentals built

2023/08/16 Leave a comment

Impressive coalition with practical recommendations, even if they sidestep the demand side and the time lags between current immigration levels and housing availability and affordability:

A coalition of housing experts, advocates and industry representatives are calling on the government to overhaul its policies to get more rental units built.

In a new report titled A Multi-Sector Approach to Ending Canada’s Rental Housing Crisis, the report is co-authored by Mike Moffatt, founding director of the PLACE Centre at the Smart Prosperity Institute, , president & CEO of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, and Michael Brooks, head of REALPAC, a group that represents 130 real estate firms.

“A lot of the conversation is ‘Whose responsibility is it to solve this?’ And the answer should be ‘It’s everyone’s,'” Moffatt told CBC News.

The report, being released Tuesday, makes a number of recommendations to address a dearth in rental units in Canada’s largest cities.

According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC), Canada needs to build 5.8 million new homes — including two million rental units — by 2030 in order to tackle housing affordability.

The report notes that Canada’s renting population and the price of rentals have continued to increase in recent years.

One of the report’s key recommendations calls on the federal government to take on a leadership role and co-ordinate with provinces, territories and municipalities to ensure that more rental units are built.

“This is too big for any one government or sector to handle alone and so we’re hoping the federal government will jump into a leadership role and meet us in the square to have this conversation,” Richter said.

Specifically, the report calls on Ottawa to create a national workforce strategy —  in co-operation with other levels of government, trade unions and education institutions — to ensure Canada has enough skilled labour to build the number of units needed to meet the needs of renters.

It also calls for financial reforms to ensure rental units are viable for builders and developers. Brooks said that costs to the industry have increased to the point where the number of construction projects for rental units is likely to drop significantly in the coming years.

“We’ve got a problem that’s likely to get worse before it gets better without changing some of the elements,” he said.

Some of the financial solutions the report puts forward include creating a tax credit for developers that invest in community rental units and deferring the capital gains tax when a rental housing project is sold and the proceeds are reinvested into the construction of further rental units.

The report also calls for the government to offer fixed-rate financing through CHMC or the Canada Infrastructure Bank on rental builds.

To better help low-income renters, the report suggests a targeted housing tax benefit for families spending more than 30 per cent of their income on rent.

The report also contains recommendations that federal opposition parties would support.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has suggested in the past that the federal government should tie infrastructure funding to municipalities to local housing permit approvals. Similarly, the report suggests the federal government tie funding to municipal housing targets.

The report also suggests that the government waive the GST on rental housing construction, something that NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has been calling for.

The author’s said they hope their report sends a signal to all governments of varying political stripes to work together to solve the housing crisis.

“This is about communication and collaboration,” Brooks said. “Get together in a room and talk to each other and make that conversation be based on evidence.”

“I think we were all pleasantly surprised just how much common ground there was,” Richter said of working on the report with his two co-authors.

“There’s plenty of stuff that I’m sure that we don’t agree on, but there was more that we do agree on then we didn’t and I think you see that in the report,” he said.

Source: Housing experts, advocates, industry have unified message for government: Get more rentals built

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ICYMI: New federal immigration minister pressures Quebec to increase family reunification capacity

2023/08/16 Leave a comment

Not sure how well that went over:

Canada’s new immigration minister has only been in the office for a few weeks and he’s already entered into his first clash with Quebec.

For five years, he tried to improve relations between the federal government and indigenous communities. Now, after last month’s cabinet shuffle, Montreal MP Marc Miller has been handed another challenging job as Canada’s new immigration minister.

At his first press conference in that function, he took aim at Quebec’s policy on family reunification.

“Quebec controls a good chunk of its immigration policy, particularly on the family reunification envelope, which is capped at about 10,000 right now,” Miller said. “There’s a backlog of of 30,000 families that want to come here and support their kids, and…Quebec says we need to cut it off.”

Under Premier François Legault, Quebec has been working to gain more and more control over immigration from the federal government. The province does have a say on things like economic immigration and  family reunification.

“The cap of 10,000 is not a lot of people,” said immigration lawyer Patrice Brunet. “It’s very alarming because here we’re not in the context of economic immigration, we’re in the context of families waiting to be reunited.“

Brunet says because of Quebec’s family reunification limit, some files are taking two years to be processed, which is nearly double the delay in the rest of Canada.

“Two years to be reunited with your family is absolutely too long. It’s inhumane,” he said, adding he fears delays will only get longer as the backlog grows.

Miller says family reunification is a topic he wants to address with the Legault government.

“We need to have mature conversations with provinces and territories about how we welcome newcomers, and that’s one that I plan to have,” he said.

Political scientist Daniel Béland points out Quebec has been trying to get even more control from the federal over family reunification.

“There is a clear disagreement between Ottawa and Quebec City,” he said. “I don’t expect Ottawa to cave on that really, in terms of powers to Quebec over immigration, but I think some fine tuning is certainly possible.”

In its quest to protect the French language, the Legault government recently announced plans to accept only economic immigrants who can speak French.

Miller says he’s willing to work with Quebec on preserving French.

“I think we have a role as the federal government and I would say primarily that is to make sure we are supporting the diaspora of French-speaking communities outside Quebec, to make sure that they are thriving,” he explained. “French is one of the largest languages in the world, but it is threatened in North America and we have to be vigilant.”

In a statement Quebec’s immigration ministry said it has requested a first meeting with Miller and hopes it takes place quickly so that priority issues can be discussed.

Source: New federal immigration minister pressures Quebec to increase family reunification capacity

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Meggs: When it comes to immigration levels, temporary permits are the elephant in the room 

2023/08/15 Leave a comment

Good reminder of the need to manage the number of temporary residents, not just the permanent residents in the annual levels plan.

No sign yet that the government is seized with the pressures on housing, healthcare and infrastructure that result from high levels of permanent and temporary residents or an appreciation of how this issue will harm them politically and how it risks damaging the overall Canadian consensus in favour of immigration.

Anne and I often compare observations but our respective pieces were written separately and complement each other (see Griffith: Canada badly needs an immigration reset):

With pressure mounting to rethink Canada’s immigration policies, it’s no surprise to see a new minister, Marc Miller, take charge of the portfolio. Over recent months, we have seen an increasing number of articles, studies and reports warning that the rapid rise in population is stretching housing and health services and that the current immigration levels might be too high. More voices are calling for a course correction or restoring balance in Canada’s immigration policy.

The federal government may, indeed, want to propose a temporary slowdown of the pace of arrivals in response to these calls for a reset, and the new minister might be more open to this approach. However, any realignment in pace, numbers or skill levels of new arrivals will be much easier said than done. Mr. Miller can certainly level off permanent immigration targets, at least for the short term, but this would make little or no difference to the number of arrivals, since almost all people arriving from other countries now do so on temporary visas and permits.

Permanent immigration planning was relevant years ago when the number of permanent residents each year coincided relatively closely with the number of new arrivals. This was because permanent immigration applications had to be made from outside Canada. It is also important to note that people arriving with permanent status benefit from the same protections and public services as Canadian citizens from the moment they land in the country.

The bulk of people granted permanent resident status these days are already living in Canada with some sort of temporary immigration status, such as a work permit or a student visa. These are not the people driving new demand for housing or health services, because they are already here.

Meanwhile, the number of people arriving as temporary residents isn’t directly managed by the federal government – there are no targets and no ceilings. The former immigration minister Sean Fraserwas very clear that temporary immigration is based on the demand of postsecondary institutions and employers. The number of temporary work permit holders in Canada at the end of 2022 had soared to 798,100. The number of foreign students in Canada has also soared, with more than 807,260 in the country at the end of 2022.

The requirement to apply for permanent residence from outside the country was abolished several years ago. Most people with temporary study or work status (and their spouses and children) nevertheless arrive seduced by the promise of permanent residence. Multiple pathways for just that purpose have been put in place both federally and provincially.

Temporary residents do not have the security, rights or protections associated with permanent residence. They often can’t get a mortgage or a car loan because they’re in the country ostensibly on a temporary basis, even though the positions they hold are often permanent. Many are tied to their employer and therefore to the municipality where they work. The nature of their permit determines which public services are available to them.

Provincial governments will resist cutting back on the number of international students because they would have to find new ways to finance postsecondary institutions. These young people have also become essential to fill low-paid jobs in certain key sectors of the economy.

Employers have been led to believe that temporary immigration is the best and quickest solution for their job vacancies. But this is contrary to international evidence showing that countries with faster-growing populations are not seeing their job vacancy rates decrease: as immigrants spend their incomes, the pressure on demand for workers returns. Naturally, it is cheaper for employers to bring in foreign labour for low-paid, low-skilled jobs than to put in the effort and resources necessary to improve salaries, working conditions and productivity.

No realignment on immigration policy, whether it be slowing the pace of arrivals or getting back to focusing on selecting highly skilled immigrants, will have any effect if it does not include temporary immigration. Restoring balance to the immigration system will not be easy, but Mr. Miller must try.

Anne Michèle Meggs is the former director of planning and accountability at Quebec’s ministry of immigration and the author of L’immigration au Québec: Comment on peut faire mieux.

Source: When it comes to immigration levels, temporary permits are the elephant in the room

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