[kEiThZ]

That should be quite the family debate. “We want grandchildren! Well mom and dad, just how much do you want them? Let me show you this condo brochure.”

I‘m not sure housing affordability is impacting fertility. Millions of people have many kids they can’t afford to house or fed and yet keep pumping them out. What’s impacting fertility is that women now are empowered, financially independent, more educated (vs. their male counterparts), focused on careers, friendships, experiences and enjoyment of life. This is why Canada’s immigration plan will fail, since as soon as the female children of new immigrants become empowered adults they won’t be mirroring their own mother’s high fertility.

How old are your kids? If they are old enough to give you grandkids, they will tell you exactly what @afransen and I are telling you here.

It's not women's "empowerment stopping people from having kids. It's gross that this has to be pointed out. Don't you have a daughter? I'm sure you hope for her to be more fulfilled than just being compelled into being a baby machine by culture.

It's the cost of raising kids. And the biggest cost of raising a kid is housing. The marginal cost of one child is the cost of going from a 1 bedroom to a 2 bedroom condo. The marginal cost of the second child is the cost of going from a 2 bedroom condo to a 3 bedroom townhouse. Go look at prices and work out what that means for increases in monthly payments on mortgages and you'll quickly figure out why people are not having more kids.

Policies like subsidized childcare are window dressing. It's great that the government capped costs.... For those who can get a spot. I've been on the waiting list for after school care for 2 years. And I'm willing to pay.

See above the anecdote I gave where a Eastern European friend compared having a kid in Canada to owning a Ferrari. I can't say he was wrong. The Ferrari is probably cheaper than the second or third bedroom in most of this country.

 

[Admiral Beez]

It's the cost of raising kids. And the biggest cost of raising a kid is housing.

In developing or poverty-ridden countries (where most of Canada‘s immigrants now come from) women have many children no matter if they can afford to house or feed them, because women in these countries have no power over their own fertility and lives. Look at countries with strong social welfare systems and empowered women, like the Scandinavian countries, where fertility rates are dramatically lower than in developing countries. Housing cost in Canada will also impact fertility rates as you suggest, but there’s a lot more at play. In Norway, for example cost of housing is there, but not top of list. Perhaps housing is more affordable?

 

[Richard White]

That should be quite the family debate. “We want grandchildren! Well mom and dad, just how much do you want them? Let me show you this condo brochure.”

I‘m not sure housing affordability is impacting fertility. Millions of people have many kids they can’t afford to house or fed and yet keep pumping them out. What’s impacting fertility is that women now are empowered, financially independent, more educated (vs. their male counterparts), focused on careers, friendships, experiences and enjoyment of life. This is why Canada’s immigration plan will fail, since as soon as the female children of new immigrants become empowered adults they won’t be mirroring their own mother’s high fertility.

There may be some truth to this Admiral.

As you may or may not know, I used to do Condominium Security for 12 years. In that time, I saw plenty of people holding off having kids because it was too expensive in Toronto. I know one couple who got married and moved outside Toronto where it was cheaper to start a family.

The couple that moved out of Toronto, one was the daughter of an Indian immigrant to Canada.

Simply put, they had to choose between high rents or having kids. They could not afford to survive in Toronto on their own let alone with a family.

 

[Richard White]

See above the anecdote I gave where a Eastern European friend compared having a kid in Canada to owning a Ferrari. I can't say he was wrong. The Ferrari is probably cheaper than the second or third bedroom in most of this country.

In Hungary their cost of living was so out of whack the Orban Government actually issued tax breaks to women who had multiple children. I believe it was after 4 children the mother did not have to pay any income taxes.

They also gave them financial incentives for having children.

 

[Admiral Beez]

There may be some truth to this Admiral. I know one couple who got married and moved outside Toronto where it was cheaper to start a family.

I agree that housing cost is a factor, I'm just not sure it's the top one. The couple you mention were smart, there's no way as a young adult today I would stay in the GTA. I expect the only way either of my early 20s kids will stay in the GTA after university is if we help them buy a home - which we will do, but I don't expect it to encourage them to have kids.... it would be great, but we're good either way.

In Hungary their cost of living was so out of whack the Orban Government actually issued tax breaks to women who had multiple children.

Did it work? Trudeau won't do what's necessary to reduce housing costs, namely significant reduction in foreign student visas and reducing immigration, while reducing interest rates, enacting federally-funded building incentives and partnering with provinces to encourage more housing, but he can do tax breaks for multiple children.

 

[kEiThZ]

In developing or poverty-ridden countries (where most of Canada‘s immigrants now come from) women have many children no matter if they can afford to house or feed them, because women in these countries have no power over their own fertility and lives. Look at countries with strong social welfare systems and empowered women, like the Scandinavian countries, where fertility rates are dramatically lower than in developing countries. Housing cost in Canada will also impact fertility rates as you suggest, but there’s a lot more at play. In Norway, for example cost of housing is there, but not top of list. Perhaps housing is more affordable?

This is still all economic. There's a direct correlation between development and fertility rates. And it isn't so much because women are empowered. It's because they stay in school longer and need to work to support their families. This leaves less time for child bearing and rearing.

Also, the Scandinavian countries focus on equity with services and tax rates. But that doesn't make them cheap places to live at all. They are rather unaffordable and have many of the issues we have.

Closer to home the province with the highest birth rate is Quebec. Still not at replacement. But a lot closer than the rest. This isn't just a result of having better services. It's also because they have a much better housing mix that makes scaling housing with family size much easier. Simply put, it's much easier to get a second or third bedroom in Quebec relative to the rest of Canada. And it's easier to afford a child's needs (beyond housing) thanks to public programs like universal childcare.

In Hungary their cost of living was so out of whack the Orban Government actually issued tax breaks to women who had multiple children. I believe it was after 4 children the mother did not have to pay any income taxes.

They also gave them financial incentives for having children.

4 children is way too high, to make that work. Economic supports like this need to overcome the specific step changes in marginal costs between kids. Somebody who has 3 kids likely has the space and resources to have a fourth. The real problem are the couples who never have any or just have one. This policy sounds to me like a tax break to reward conservatives who have multiple kids. And Hungary's fertility rate is still only a touch better than Canada. Hardly anything worth serious study.

 

[afransen]

That should be quite the family debate. “We want grandchildren! Well mom and dad, just how much do you want them? Let me show you this condo brochure.”

I‘m not sure housing affordability is impacting fertility. Millions of people have many kids they can’t afford to house or fed and yet keep pumping them out. What’s impacting fertility is that women now are empowered, financially independent, more educated (vs. their male counterparts), focused on careers, friendships, experiences and enjoyment of life. This is why Canada’s immigration plan will fail, since as soon as the female children of new immigrants become empowered adults they won’t be mirroring their own mother’s high fertility.

Sure, there may be the those minimum wage earners that has three children by different fathers, but for middle class people, there is incredible pressure to provide a certain standard of living to their children, even beyond what I experienced as a child. This includes a high degree of after-school programming, trips, gadgets, post-secondary education etc. People choose to have fewer kids than that to have more kids and feel like they are bad parents for not being able to provide their children with what their peers are able to.

 

[yrt+viva=1system]

Millennials nearly twice as likely to vote for Conservatives over Liberals, new survey suggests​

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada...cle_7875f9b4-c818-547e-bf68-0f443ba321dc.html

Canadian millennials are nearly twice as likely to vote for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s governing Liberals, according to new polling from Abacus Data.
The new survey of more than 2,000 adults, published last Thursday, also suggests the Liberals would fall to third-party status if an election was held today among Canada’s two youngest generation of voters.
The Tories are polling at 40 per cent among Canadian millennials, ahead of the NDP at 24 per cent and the Liberals at 21 per cent. Among the younger Gen Z cohort, the Conservatives also hold a strong lead at 32 per cent, six percentage points up over the NDP and eight percentage points ahead of the Liberals.

Roughly 54 per cent of Gen Z Canadians and 51 per cent of millennials say housing affordability and accessibility is one of their top three issues, more so than any other cohort of Canadians, according to the new Abacus Data survey.
In contrast, health care is of greater concern among older Canadians than younger ones. Some 42 per cent of Gen X Canadians and 57 per cent of Boomers, respectively, rank health care as one of their top three issues, compared to 29 per cent of Gen Z voters and 36 per cent of millennials.

I wonder if the Liberals can see past their sunny ways and pitchers of Kool Aid that there's a lot of anger amongst the younger voting base considering their future is being robbed before their eyes.

 

[lenaitch]

Sure, there may be the those minimum wage earners that has three children by different fathers, but for middle class people, there is incredible pressure to provide a certain standard of living to their children, even beyond what I experienced as a child. This includes a high degree of after-school programming, trips, gadgets, post-secondary education etc. People choose to have fewer kids than that to have more kids and feel like they are bad parents for not being able to provide their children with what their peers are able to.

Interesting angle that I hadn't considered. As a boomer kid raised by a Depression-era farm kid, there was a lot of 'be happy with what you have' in my upbringing. Many things, like bikes, and even the family car, were not brand new and we didn't care (well, until I got my licence). Obviously, there wasn't the proliferation of readily-available toys and distractions that there are today. We often amused ourselves with imagination and often ad-hoc toys. We roamed a neighbourhood where every parent (few moms worked) was your parent, especially when you got into trouble, and the 'be home when the streetlights came on' rule applied. We backed onto the hydro corridor north of Finch, so our backyard was a couple hundred yards wide and miles long. If we were really adventurous we would head off to Shadowbrook (which I think was the name of an adjacent golf course on Bathurst) which is now where the G. Ross Lord dam is. It was pretty much unimproved valley land back then. Organized, non-school activities were sports, scouts, etc. or, if you were rally adventurous, one of the CF cadet programs.

If I have to recall, the vast majority of the families had two kids, some with three, a few with more. There must have been but I really can't recall any family in the neighbourhood with only one kid.

 

[Northern Light]

Interesting angle that I hadn't considered. As a boomer kid raised by a Depression-era farm kid, there was a lot of 'be happy with what you have' in my upbringing. Many things, like bikes, and even the family car, were not brand new and we didn't care (well, until I got my licence). Obviously, there wasn't the proliferation of readily-available toys and distractions that there are today. We often amused ourselves with imagination and often ad-hoc toys. We roamed a neighbourhood where every parent (few moms worked) was your parent, especially when you got into trouble, and the 'be home when the streetlights came on' rule applied. We backed onto the hydro corridor north of Finch, so our backyard was a couple hundred yards wide and miles long. If we were really adventurous we would head off to Shadowbrook (which I think was the name of an adjacent golf course on Bathurst) which is now where the G. Ross Lord dam is. It was pretty much unimproved valley land back then. Organized, non-school activities were sports, scouts, etc. or, if you were rally adventurous, one of the CF cadet programs.

If I have to recall, the vast majority of the families had two kids, some with three, a few with more. There must have been but I really can't recall any family in the neighbourhood with only one kid.

Housing is by far the largest cost differentiator in a 'then and now' and deciding whether to start or grow a family.

That said, there are additional 'base' costs; that is those that would not be considered profoundly indulgent, but fairly normative:

1) A cell phone for every child above a certain age. For full 5G you're looking at $30 per month ++ for each child, before taxes, so a minimum of $360+tax per year.

2) Post-secondary education; in my dad's era (born early 40's) the norm was leaving HS after grade 10, (at 16); some kids went the distance (grade 13) but mostly that was for University-bound kids which was a small minority.
Today the expectation is that every child ought to get some type of post-secondary education

Even without student housing, assuming you're looking at one of the non-premium programs, you're looking 2k per year for Community College.

Obviously if you want to keep your child's options open for graduate education at U of T....medicine will set you back just over $23,000 per year before ancillary fees and without housing.

So $100,000+ for the degree.

If a parent wanted to pay the entire tab, that's basically setting aside $350 per month for 15 years at 6% return.

3) Organized sport (teams) can be quite a bit more more expensive, relative to inflation than it would have been. The GTHL (Greater Toronto Hockey League) has a cited annual per player cost of $5,500 on average.

***

We could get into other expectations, but I think if we stop there, we can see the significant cost per child very easily, without lavish toys/travel or designer clothes.

Take the above, without housing/food/core costs; and you're looking at just over $2,400 per month in after-tax earnings for 3 kids.

If the cost of a 3-bedroom apartment in Toronto is ~$3,000 per month......... and your grocery bill is another $1,000 a month if you're tight with a buck....

That requires more than $6,400 in after--tax income, monthly or something in excess of $102,000 per year in gross income.

The median household income in Toronto is only $78,000 and change

 

[lenaitch]

Housing is by far the largest cost differentiator in a 'then and now' and deciding whether to start or grow a family.

That said, there are additional 'base' costs; that is those that would not be considered profoundly indulgent, but fairly normative:

1) A cell phone for every child above a certain age. For full 5G you're looking at $30 per month ++ for each child, before taxes, so a minimum of $360+tax per year.

2) Post-secondary education; in my dad's era (born early 40's) the norm was leaving HS after grade 10, (at 16); some kids went the distance (grade 13) but mostly that was for University-bound kids which was a small minority.
Today the expectation is that every child ought to get some type of post-secondary education

Even without student housing, assuming you're looking at one of the non-premium programs, you're looking 2k per year for Community College.

Obviously if you want to keep your child's options open for graduate education at U of T....medicine will set you back just over $23,000 per year before ancillary fees and without housing.

So $100,000+ for the degree.

If a parent wanted to pay the entire tab, that's basically setting aside $350 per month for 15 years at 6% return.

3) Organized sport (teams) can be quite a bit more more expensive, relative to inflation than it would have been. The GTHL (Greater Toronto Hockey League) has a cited annual per player cost of $5,500 on average.

***

We could get into other expectations, but I think if we stop there, we can see the significant cost per child very easily, without lavish toys/travel or designer clothes.

Take the above, without housing/food/core costs; and you're looking at just over $2,400 per month in after-tax earnings for 3 kids.

If the cost of a 3-bedroom apartment in Toronto is ~$3,000 per month......... and your grocery bill is another $1,000 a month if you're tight with a buck....

That requires more than $6,400 in after--tax income, monthly or something in excess of $102,000 per year in gross income.

The median household income in Toronto is only $78,000 and change

No doubt costs have increased (when I went to community college, I recall tuition was $75/semester (ish). But some of the growth in child-rearing costs can still be considered indulgent, or at least driven by social pressure.

I will be called out for saying that mobile data is anything but discretionary, but I have never had it - talk and text only, and don't view a personal phone 24/7/365 for every offspring as something that can't be dispensed with. If your "certain age" is mid-teens, perhaps, and perhaps they can help pay for it through an allowance or part-time job contribution. To me, giving a phone to pre-teens is just wrong.

I agree that, today, a post secondary education is pretty much a necessity these days. Even in the unlikely event that a child wants to go into a trade, many have surrendered training to the post-secondary system.

If a parent decides to fund education beyond the under-grad level, they are digging their own hole. I have a number of post-graduate/terminal degree holders in my family, like a lot, more than anyone family should have. Other than the professions (doctor/lawyer/engineer), none of them are in fields that translate into an income, which most have them came to realize.

Organized sport has become an industry. Granted, ice/facility costs have gone up, but the amount of inter-league tournament play for what used to be considered house-league level teams is off the dial.

I realize I have been arguing that it doesn't have to be the way it is, but it is, and I suppose it doesn't help parents that they are caught up in a social wave.

 

[afransen]

I graduated university 15 years ago, at the time tuition was about $8k per year. I just checked and the estimated first year cost for that program is now up to $17k + estimated 2500 for books and supplies.

 

[Northern Light]

To me, giving a phone to pre-teens is just wrong.

I don't disagree, but its certainly not the prevailing attitude. I think when we speak of 'indulgence' we need to think in terms of generosity/luxury beyond the prevailing norm.

Worth adding here, some schools are incorporating cell phones into class work......(bit of a problem if you don't have one then)

If a parent decides to fund education beyond the under-grad level, they are digging their own hole. I have a number of post-graduate/terminal degree holders in my family, like a lot, more than anyone family should have. Other than the professions (doctor/lawyer/engineer), none of them are in fields that translate into an income, which most have them came to realize.

I wasn't thinking of a parent funding their ' Fill in the Blank' studies student/child through their doctorate, LOL.

I was thinking of the education your child actually needs to get into the profession they desire, and for which they meet the qualifications.

Medicine, Nursing, IT/Computer Studies/Coding, Engineering, and Pharmacy are all deregulated programs with exorbitant tuitions.

Regular undergrad at U of T is still $6,125 plus ancillary fees and books, the former bring the total to just over $7,400 per year, and books/supplies will surely run north of $1,500, so ~9k all-in, if one does not require housing/meal plan.

Organized sport has become an industry. Granted, ice/facility costs have gone up, but the amount of inter-league tournament play for what used to be considered house-league level teams is off the dial.

No question, and it would be a better world in my opinion if leagues were not profit-centres (whether they identify as non-profit or not); and if they were volunteer led and facility and equipment costs were lower; but tis not so.

I realize I have been arguing that it doesn't have to be the way it is, but it is, and I suppose it doesn't help parents that they are caught up in a social wave.

Yup. This is the thing, we a society could change a lot of the above via government, and/or competition, among other things; but we have not, and such is our reality.

 

[yrt+viva=1system]

The bottom has suddenly fallen out of Liberal support. Why?​

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opi...s-suddenly-fallen-out-of-liberal-support-why/

Great read if you can get access to it, I’m going to bring forth the main points:

A wise old pollster once put it to me this way: “When people have decided to get rid of a government,” he said, “it doesn’t matter who the other guys are.”

But while inflation and housing are clearly top-of-mind issues for many Canadians, I suspect the public funk is broader and deeper than that. It is what these issues represent, I suggest, as much as the direct pocketbook impact, that is taking its toll on Liberal support.

That line of Mr. Poilievre’s – “everything seems broken” – gets at it. But it’s less a sense of things being broken than of a country that is adrift, under a government that gives every appearance of being asleep at the wheel.

Perhaps the most remarkable responses in the Abacus poll were in answer to the question of whether the government had a “good plan, a bad plan, or no plan” to deal with a number of issues. On issue after issue – cost of living, housing, economic growth, immigration – few (25 per cent or less) were confident the government had a good plan. Larger numbers said they had a bad plan. But the largest single group in most cases believed they had no plan.

This is the kind of thing that truly drives folks batty. Try something, make mistakes, and people will at least credit you for good intentions. But this sort of inertia suggests, fairly or not, either a government that does not know what to do or does not even know there is a problem. Whether Mr. Poilievre has the right answers on inflation or housing may be fairly doubted, but it’s beyond dispute that he picked up on the level of public discontent with these long before the government did.

There is a point in the life of any government when a number of different issues coalesce into one big issue. That may be what has been happening over the past few months. The Prime Minister’s own early popularity, which had provided protective cover for the government through its early missteps, had long since worn off.

What had since been revealed, in both the Prime Minister and the government he leads, is a disquieting combination of cynicism (think of all those broken promises, or the endless ethical imbroglios), naiveté (think of its dealings with China, though that may be being too charitable) and doctrinaire ideology (especially over identity issues). It is easy to think of governments that were guilty of one or the other of these. It is quite unprecedented for a government to be so redolent of all three at once.

The government that had come to power promising to reverse all of its predecessors’ abuses of power soon embraced all of them. The Prime Minister who made such show of his commitment to racial and gender issues was found to have serious failings of his own on both fronts – almost as if the whole social-justice campaign had been a con, intended to shield him from the inevitable accusations.


This sort of ruthlessness might have been forgiven, had it been accompanied by competence, or even action. But the growing list of files that the government has either bungled or neglected altogether has given rise to a growing list of crises. The revelation that Canada’s GDP per capita has not grown in six years should confirm that we are in a productivity crisis – an issue the government did not think even to mention in any substantive way until last year’s budget.

The recent news, likewise, that the government does not even know, to the nearest million, how many people are in Canada has crystallized growing unease about its handling of the immigration file. There remains, thankfully, substantial popular and political support for a generous and growth-oriented immigration policy.

But to have ramped up immigration, as the government has, without mobilizing the resources needed to absorb it – to have added all that labour, without doing anything to improve our glacial rates of investment; to have no plan for supplying the housing such numbers would imply – looks either feckless or reckless.

Go down the list, from military procurement to air travel, from violent crime to minority rights, from Afghanistan to judicial appointments. The impression, time and again, is of a government that has other priorities than those on the public mind or, where it does turn its attention to them, looks overwhelmed, out of its depth, paralyzed.

To be sure, the government has made its share of “big bets.” The tens of billions it has ploughed into a handful of battery manufacturing plants comes to mind, as does the Infrastructure Bank. I suppose its multiple attempts to regulate the internet would fall into that category. But the results of these have generally been enough to make the case for paralysis and inertia.


As it is for the government, so, eventually, it is for the country: a sense that it is unable to deal with its problems, that it cannot get things done, but rather is slowly falling into decay and division, until the pattern is so ingrained that it cannot even rouse itself to change. At which point it becomes irreversible.

That, I think, is what people mean when they say, in such emphatic numbers, that things are going in the “wrong direction.” When enough people come to the same conclusion at the same time, it doesn’t matter who the other guys are.

 

[Northern Light]

The Conservatives have passed a few policy motions today at their convention:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-policy-convention-transgender-1.6961991