With rising rents and house prices making it increasingly hard to find an affordable place to live, some are pointing the finger at Canada’s record-level immigration rates.
Immigration is not the only thing putting a strain on the housing market. High interest rates, increasing building costs and red tape at the municipal level that can slow down or halt home construction are all part of the picture.
But to tackle the pressure being created by immigration, some are now openly discussing forging a public policy link between how many people Canada takes in each year and the state of the country’s housing stock.
“It’s very simple math. If you have more families coming than you have housing for them, it’s going to inflate housing prices,” Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told an audience in Winnipeg recently.
Poilievre has offered few details on how a government led by him would handle immigration, but he did say it would take three factors into consideration.
“We have to bring the [immigration] numbers in line with the number of houses that are built,” he said. “The growth in immigration should not exceed the amount of housing stock we add, the number of doctors we add and the available jobs.”
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CBC News has asked the Conservative leader for more details of his plan to tie immigration to housing, but has yet to receive a response.
The Liberals also have acknowledged that the number of people coming into the country is making the housing crisis worse.
But experts and economists say that targeting immigration broadly won’t bring the cost of housing down. What’s required, they say, is a more nuanced approach.
Canada’s immigration picture has changed dramatically in recent years.
In the fall of 2022, the Liberal government announced its plan to increase the annual permanent resident target from 405,000 in 2021 to 465,000 in 2022, before stabilizing at 500,000 in 2024 — almost double the 260,411 permanent residents who arrived in 2014.
But new permanent residents are only part of the immigration story.
LISTEN: Making immigration work for Canada
Canada may cap temporary residents over housing strain, immigration minister says
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Immigration Minister Marc Miller acknowledged that the influx of non-permanent residents has added to Canada’s housing crisis and says the federal government is considering a cap, something critics say could hurt the economy and create a stigma against immigrants.
Statistics Canada reported a total population increase of 1,158,705 permanent and non-permanent residents as of July 1, 2023, a 2.9 per cent increase over July 1, 2022 and the highest population growth rate recorded for a 12-month period since 1957.
The agency said 98 per cent of that increase was due to immigration, while the remainder was due to natural increase — the difference between births and deaths.
Statistics Canada said that by the end of 2023, there were 2,511,437 non-permanent residents in the country — a class that includes international students and temporary foreign workers — compared to 1,305,206 in the fall of 2021.
Houses vs. households
Many housing experts say tying the official immigration target — even at the 500,000 per year level — to the number of houses built each year won’t make housing more affordable.
David Hulchanski, a professor of housing and community development at the University of Toronto’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, said new arrivals are free to live where they want — which may not be where housing is available.
“Are we going to require all immigrants to stay in place?” he asked.
Hulchanski said it’s also important to distinguish between households and homes because “the 40 million people in Canada don’t live in 40 million houses.”
Canadian households, he said, have an average of about 2.45 people. In Germany it’s just 2.14 people per household, while in Ireland it’s 2.73 people per household.
By that measure, he said, 500,000 immigrants would need about 204,000 homes in Canada, 233,000 homes in Germany and just 183,000 in Ireland.
CMHC said housing starts were down seven per cent over 2022 in population centres of 10,000 or more, with only 223,513 new starts in 2023 compared to 240,590 in 2022. (Colin Butler/CBC News)
CMHC figures released this week show housing starts are down seven per cent since 2022. Hulchanski said that still amounted to 223,513 new starts last year, enough to accommodate incoming permanent residents.
Other pressures are driving down the number of housing starts: high interest rates making home ownership less affordable, the increased cost of building materials due to inflation and supply chain disruptions lingering from the COVID-19 pandemic, and zoning laws at the municipal level that make it harder to build homes.
Hulchanski said it’s important to remember that “homes are not households” and tying immigration to the availability of housing assumes all immigrants are the same, with the same housing needs.
People immigrating to Canada through the family reunification stream are, he said, more likely to live with family members than to seek separate housing. Some immigrants come as complete families and will live together, he said, while others may be wealthy and able to afford housing at inflated prices.
“The challenge with actually having a policy that links the number of immigrants to houses is that households don’t equal immigrants,” he said. “There’s a big disparity there.”
Immigrants vs. international students
Still, Hulchanski and other housing experts see a clear link between non-permanent immigration and housing availability.
The massive recent spike in non-permanent residents, they say, has had a substantial impact on housing affordability.
In 2011, for example, the number of international students in the country was just shy of 240,000. Late last year, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Canada was on track to host as many as 900,000 international students in 2023.
“We exponentially increased demand [for housing],” said Stephen Pomeroy, a professor and housing expert at McMaster University.
“Temporary foreign workers and students don’t come to buy homes. They rent. So we’ve had a massive demand impact on the rental part of the housing system.”
WATCH: Canada may cap temporary residents, immigration minister says
The Current19:29Making immigration work for Canada
The federal government is facing criticism that it has hiked immigration targets in recent years, without ensuring there’s enough housing and other essential services to support a bigger population. Matt Galloway talks to economists who say immigration is an important part of Canada’s future prosperity, but the policies around it need more nuanced thinking.
Pomeroy said that while the annual immigration target has been well managed, provincial and federal governments have lost control of non-permanent resident programs that bring in students and temporary workers.
Housing Minister Sean Fraser admitted as much this week in Halifax when he told reporters “the temporary foreign workers program, and in particular the international student program,” were making the housing crisis worse.
Fraser singled out colleges that do not grant degrees but rather provide diplomas to international students.
“There are some institutions in different parts of this country that, I have the sincerely held belief, have come to exist just to exploit the program for the personal financial gains of the people behind some of these schools, if we can call them that,” he said.
Pomeroy said cutting as many as 700,000 international students out of the system would reduce rental pressures in some areas without hurting the universities that have come to rely on the high tuition fees such students pay.
Irfhan Rawji is chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, which helps settle new immigrants in Canada. He told CBC Radio’s The Current this week that if Canada’s immigration intake is going to be tied to housing, targeting the right kind of immigration is critical.
“Do we need 800,000 students studying skills maybe this economy doesn’t need, living in houses that we don’t have? Of course that’s not sustainable, but we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said.
Rawji said he worries about Canada losing the economic value that immigrants entering through the permanent resident program deliver.
The right mix
“I think what’s happened probably since the 1990s is that different corporations in Canada, business lobby groups, have seen more immigration as just an unambiguously good thing,” said Christopher Worswick, economics chair at Carleton University.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce says building more homes is preferable to cutting immigration.
Pascal Chan, the chamber’s infrastructure and construction director, told CBC News the chamber sees immigration as good for business and wants to see it focus on attracting skilled workers.
“Looking at restricting demand versus looking at increasing the supply to get to the levels we need to be, I think that the focus should really be on increasing that supply as well,” he said.
Hulchanski said that to bring the cost of housing down, Canada has to help people at the lower end of the income scale.
“If you ask any housing researcher now, any place on earth, how do you house low income people? Well, the market can’t do it,” he said.
He said only four per cent of Canada’s housing stock is social housing — dwellings that are supported in whole or in part by government funding. Social housing accounts for 18 per cent of the United Kingdom’s housing stock and 17 per cent of housing in France.
While social housing makes up only three per cent of the housing stock in Germany, that country offers significant breaks to developers building social housing and props people up with financial incentives.
Hulchanski said that focusing on immigration as a cause, and promising to reduce it in order to bring housing costs down, is “just another way of avoiding the real discussion, that we need systemic change.”
“In this case, the solution would be saying we’re going to increase social housing from, say 4 per cent to 16 per cent of the mix, or 20 per cent of the mix,” he said.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The Australian government announced on Thursday what it described as world-leading legislation that would institute an age limit of 16 years for children to start using social media, and hold platforms responsible for ensuring compliance.
“Social media is doing harm to our kids and I’m calling time on it,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
The legislation will be introduced in Parliament during its final two weeks in session this year, which begin on Nov. 18. The age limit would take effect 12 months after the law is passed, Albanese told reporters.
The platforms including X, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook would need to use that year to work out how to exclude Australian children younger than 16.
“I’ve spoken to thousands of parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles. They, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online,” Albanese said.
The proposal comes as governments around the world are wrestling with how to supervise young people’s use of technologies like smartphones and social media.
Social media platforms would be penalized for breaching the age limit, but under-age children and their parents would not.
“The onus will be on social media platforms to demonstrate they are taking reasonable steps to prevent access. The onus won’t be on parents or young people,” Albanese said.
Antigone Davis, head of safety at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said the company would respect any age limitations the government wants to introduce.
“However, what’s missing is a deeper discussion on how we implement protections, otherwise we risk making ourselves feel better, like we have taken action, but teens and parents will not find themselves in a better place,” Davis said in a statement.
She added that stronger tools in app stores and operating systems for parents to control what apps their children can use would be a “simple and effective solution.”
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. TikTok declined to comment.
The Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for the digital industry in Australia, described the age limit as a “20th Century response to 21st Century challenges.”
“Rather than blocking access through bans, we need to take a balanced approach to create age-appropriate spaces, build digital literacy and protect young people from online harm,” DIGI managing director Sunita Bose said in a statement.
More than 140 Australian and international academics with expertise in fields related to technology and child welfare signed an open letter to Albanese last month opposing a social media age limit as “too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.”
Jackie Hallan, a director at the youth mental health service ReachOut, opposed the ban. She said 73% of young people across Australia accessing mental health support did so through social media.
“We’re uncomfortable with the ban. We think young people are likely to circumvent a ban and our concern is that it really drives the behavior underground and then if things go wrong, young people are less likely to get support from parents and carers because they’re worried about getting in trouble,” Hallan said.
Child psychologist Philip Tam said a minimum age of 12 or 13 would have been more enforceable.
“My real fear honestly is that the problem of social media will simply be driven underground,” Tam said.
Australian National University lawyer Associate Prof. Faith Gordon feared separating children from there platforms could create pressures within families.
Albanese said there would be exclusions and exemptions in circumstances such as a need to continue access to educational services.
But parental consent would not entitle a child under 16 to access social media.
Earlier this year, the government began a trial of age-restriciton technologies. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the online watchdog that will police compliance, will use the results of that trial to provide platforms with guidance on what reasonable steps they can take.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the year-long lead-in would ensure the age limit could be implemented in a “very practical way.”
“There does need to be enhanced penalties to ensure compliance,” Rowland said.
“Every company that operates in Australia, whether domiciled here or otherwise, is expected and must comply with Australian law or face the consequences,” she added.
The main opposition party has given in-principle support for an age limit at 16.
Opposition lawmaker Paul Fletcher said the platforms already had the technology to enforce such an age ban.
“It’s not really a technical viability question, it’s a question of their readiness to do it and will they incur the cost to do it,” Fletcher told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“The platforms say: ’It’s all too hard, we can’t do it, Australia will become a backwater, it won’t possibly work.’ But if you have well-drafted legislation and you stick to your guns, you can get the outcomes,” Fletcher added.
TOKYO (AP) — A robot that has spent months inside the ruins of a nuclear reactor at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi plant delivered a tiny sample of melted nuclear fuel on Thursday, in what plant officials said was a step toward beginning the cleanup of hundreds of tons of melted fuel debris.
The sample, the size of a grain of rice, was placed into a secure container, marking the end of the mission, according to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, which manages the plant. It is being transported to a glove box for size and weight measurements before being sent to outside laboratories for detailed analyses over the coming months.
Plant chief Akira Ono has said it will provide key data to plan a decommissioning strategy, develop necessary technology and robots and learn how the accident had developed.
The first sample alone is not enough and additional small-scale sampling missions will be necessary in order to obtain more data, TEPCO spokesperson Kenichi Takahara told reporters Thursday. “It may take time, but we will steadily tackle decommissioning,” Takahara said.
Despite multiple probes in the years since the 2011 disaster that wrecked the. plant and forced thousands of nearby residents to leave their homes, much about the site’s highly radioactive interior remains a mystery.
The sample, the first to be retrieved from inside a reactor, was significantly less radioactive than expected. Officials had been concerned that it might be too radioactive to be safely tested even with heavy protective gear, and set an upper limit for removal out of the reactor. The sample came in well under the limit.
That’s led some to question whether the robot extracted the nuclear fuel it was looking for from an area in which previous probes have detected much higher levels of radioactive contamination, but TEPCO officials insist they believe the sample is melted fuel.
The extendable robot, nicknamed Telesco, first began its mission August with a plan for a two-week round trip, after previous missions had been delayed since 2021. But progress was suspended twice due to mishaps — the first involving an assembly error that took nearly three weeks to fix, and the second a camera failure.
On Oct. 30, it clipped a sample weighting less than 3 grams (.01 ounces) from the surface of a mound of melted fuel debris sitting on the bottom of the primary containment vessel of the Unit 2 reactor, TEPCO said.
On Thursday, the gravel, whose radioactivity earlier this week recorded far below the upper limit set for its environmental and health safety, was placed into a safe container for removal out of the compartment.
The sample return marks the first time the melted fuel is retrieved out of the containment vessel.
Fukushima Daiichi lost its key cooling systems during a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, causing meltdowns in its three reactors. An estimated 880 tons of fatally radioactive melted fuel remains in them.
The government and TEPCO have set a 30-to-40-year target to finish the cleanup by 2051, which experts say is overly optimistic and should be updated. Some say it would take for a century or longer.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said there have been some delays but “there will be no impact on the entire decommissioning process.”
No specific plans for the full removal of the fuel debris or its final disposal have been decided.
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A strong typhoon was forecast to hit the northern Philippines on Thursday, prompting a new round of evacuations in a region still recovering from back-to-back storms a few weeks ago.
Typhoon Yinxing is the 13th to batter the disaster-prone Southeast Asian nation this season.
“I really pity our people but all of them are tough,” Gov. Marilou Cayco of the province of Batanes said by telephone. Her province was ravaged by recent destructive storms and is expected to be affected by Yinxing’s fierce wind and rain.
Tens of thousands of villagers were returning to emergency shelters and disaster-response teams were again put on alert in Cagayan and other northern provinces near the expected path of Yinxing. The typhoon was located about 175 kilometers (109 miles) east of Aparri town in Cagayan province on Thursday morning.
The slow-moving typhoon, locally named Marce, was packing sustained winds of up to 165 kilometers (102 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 205 kph (127 mph) and was forecast to hit or come very near to the coast of Cagayan and outlying islands later Thursday.
The coast guard, army, air force and police were put on alert. Inter-island ferries and cargo services and domestic flights were suspended in northern provinces.
Tropical Storm Trami and Typhoon Kong-rey hit the northern Philippines in recent weeks, leaving at least 151 people dead and affecting nearly 9 million others. More than 14 billion pesos ($241 million) worth of rice, corn and other crops and infrastructure were damaged.
The deaths and destruction from the storms prompted President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to declare a day of national mourning on Monday when he visited the worst-hit province of Batangas, south of the capital, Manila. At least 61 people perished in the coastal province.
Trami dumped one to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours in some regions, including in Batangas.
“We want to avoid the loss of lives due to calamities,” Marcos said in Talisay town in Batangas, where he brought key Cabinet members to reassure storm victims of rapid government help. “Storms nowadays are more intense, extensive and powerful.”
In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages and caused ships to run aground and smash into houses in the central Philippines.
