But she would also like more space for a baby, as the 27-year-old and her partner currently live in a 500-square-foot apartment in Toronto’s east end for $1,550 per month. Like many Canadians in their 20s and 30s, she says she’s realizing she can’t have both.
So Smith, a University of Toronto graduate student, has been delaying having children for two years now, a decision she calls “just heartbreaking.”
“I’ve always hoped I could be a young parent because my folks had me in their mid-40s, and while they were excellent parents, they couldn’t keep up with me, and I wanted to give my kids a different kind of childhood,” Smith said.
“We feel so stuck, and it’s disheartening to be struggling to achieve these life goalposts.”
Crunching the numbers on Canada’s rental crisis
According to a CBC News analysis of over 1,000 neighbourhoods across Canada’s largest cities, fewer than one per cent of rentals are both vacant and affordable for the majority of renters. CBC’s Nael Shiab shows a new online tool that reveals where you can afford to rent.
Families in smaller apartments
With surging prices and decreased availability, finding housing at all has become daunting. Demand is outpacing supply in a rental housing crisis gripping the country. And vacancy rates have reached a new low, while average rent increases hit a new high, notes a January rental market report from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
Less than one per cent of rentals are both vacant and affordable for the majority of the country’s renters, a recent CBC News analysis of more than 1,000 neighbourhoods across Canada’s largest cities found.And it gets worse if you’re looking for rentals with multiple bedrooms, which are as scarce as they are costly. Only 14,000 units with two bedrooms or more were potentially vacant and affordable for the median income of families living in a rented place — just 0.5 per cent of all such rentals on the market.
Because of this and other factors, some families are crammed into smaller apartments, with parents sleeping on couches so kids can have bedrooms. Others, like Smith, have delayed starting families at all.
Some, like Zach Robichaud, 37, say they’ve had to reshape their dreams of having a big family.
Robichaud, who lives in Kitchener, Ont., grew up the youngest of six kids. He says he and his wife wanted three children, but stopped after having Avery, who is now four. Even though they both have full-time jobs, he said, most of their income goes to their $2,000-a-month rent.
Between that and other necessities, he says they just can’t afford another baby.
“She’ll essentially be on her own,” Robichaud said of his daughter. “It’s really kind of sad that she won’t have that same sort of support system.”
Zach Robichaud, right, of Kitchener, Ont., poses with his daughter, Avery. Robichaud would have liked to have a big family, but says he can’t afford more than one child when most of his income goes to rent. (Zach Robichaud)
Affordability influencing family choices
Canada’s total fertility rate dropped in 2022 to its lowest point in more than a century, at 1.33 children per woman, Statistics Canada reported in January. The agency also previously reported that affordability concerns were a major factor in younger Canadians not having children.
In 2022, 38 per cent of young adults (aged 20 to 29) did not believe they could afford to have a child in the next three years, according to Statistics Canada.
In addition to the inadequate supply of affordable housing, people are also being squeezed by less housing stock coming back on the market as older Canadians stay in their homes longer, Randall Bartlett, senior director of Canadian economics with Desjardins, told CBC News.
“The only way to really contend with this is to bring more supply on the market to help ultimately bring down the price of housing and rents and make it more accessible for a broader group of Canadians,” Bartlett said.
A growing number of Canadians are delaying parenthood or choosing not to have children at a time when Canada’s fertility rate is at an all-time low. The Current’s producer Kate Cornick looked into these decisions and the long-term implications.
Meanwhile, just over half (55 per cent) of Canadians age 18 to 34 surveyed last year for a study by Abacus Data and the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) said the housing crisis had affected their decision and timing to start a family. The study polled 3,500 Canadian adults at the end of September 2023.
The survey also found that 28 per cent of those in that age range who wanted children were temporarily postponing doing so because of housing affordability. And 27 per cent were choosing to have no or fewer children for the same reason.
(The margin of error for a comparable probability-based random sample of those aged 18 to 34 is +/- 3.34 per cent, 19 times out of 20.)
A file photo of a crib. Just over half of the young Canadians surveyed last year for a study by Abacus Data and the Canadian Real Estate Association said the housing crisis had affected their decision and timing to start a family. (Cort Sloan/CBC)
More complicated decision
All this can have repercussions, as people delay having children outside of their prime reproductive years, said Karen Lawson, a professor and department head of psychology and health studies at the University of Saskatchewan. Lawson also studies why people choose not to have children or delay the decision.
“They may have fewer children than they wanted because of their shortened reproductive window, or they may face fertility problems that result in involuntary childlessness,” Lawson told CBC News in an email interview.
The decision to have children is more complicated than it was in the past, Lawson said. While financial and housing costs are a factor for some, she said, for others it seems to be driven more by the personal costs in child-rearing.
“Financial costs are higher, social supports are lower, perceived rewards may be fewer — parenting itself has changed to become much more intensive and consuming,” Lawson said.
“The alternative options for fulfilment have never been greater or more accessible.”
In her own research, Lawson says she sees young Canadians following a more “sequential” life path model, where they only have children after finishing their education, establishing their career and achieving financial and housing security.
“As a society, we may need to … support a more ‘parallel’ life path model, so that young people can achieve these important life goals and begin their families simultaneously.”
As rent soars to record heights, Canadians are struggling to find affordable family-size units. CBC’s Yvette Brend shares the Ward family’s tragic story – and their search for a solution.
‘Further out of our grasp’
Smith, the U of T graduate student, is finishing up her PhD in medicine. She says she and her partner secured their more affordable, but small, $1,550 apartment during a dip in prices during COVID-19. Now, they’re looking at paying more than twice that for a place with two or more bedrooms.
“We were ready to have kids two years ago, but decided to wait until we’d saved up and and were a bit more stable. Now rents are so high that if we moved, we’d be even worse off overall,” she said.
And because she and her partner are both scientists, she says that realistically they’ll only be able to find work in major cities, meaning higher prices.
People walk past rental units in Toronto in January 2024. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
“We’ve lowered our expectations for what our life would look like at age 30 many times over the years. We used to dream of owning our own home in the city, having two kids and a pet,” Smith said.
“Everything we hoped for just keeps moving further and further out of our grasp.”
And for Robichaud, he says it’s disappointing that he and his wife both make decent money, but still feel they can’t afford another child. He’s a reporting analyst for a gaming startup. She works for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
“In any other economy, I would consider us to be middle class, but we struggle,” Robichaud said.
“I have never made more money in my life and I’ve never been poorer.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
