[darwink]

So far the only issue is with housing provision in many cities where a small group of people can exercise massive influence to limit housing supply to their advantage.

I think those who bemoan immigration may have a failure of imagination about the effects of a shrinking workforce and falling housing demand.

 

[UrbanWarrior]

Nice to see someone intelligent, who knows even the first thing about immigration, being part of this conversation @darwink . Reading the other bilge, I literally may have lost brain cells akin to sniffing glue.

 

[DougB]

So far the only issue is with housing provision in many cities where a small group of people can exercise massive influence to limit housing supply to their advantage.

I think those who bemoan immigration may have a failure of imagination about the effects of a shrinking workforce and falling housing demand.

Pushing immigration as the main solution to a shrinking workforce is lazy and likely doomed to fail given Canada's poor track record in building housing and infrastructure. A more cohesive plan would include:

-pushing people into the workforce at younger ages. The number of people consuming more than four years to get through undergrad degrees is alarming. Lots of people also end up studying degrees of little personal interest in hope of getting into the programs they actually want. Perhaps tuitions should rise to fund additional seats while incenting students to finish as quickly as possible. Finally, lots of professions have suffered credential creep to limited tangible benefit. For example, do four year nursing programs really produce higher quality workers than the former three and two year diploma programs?
-encourage people to remain in the workforce longer by pushing out the OAS and CPP eligibility ages, increasing the penalties for activating these programs earlier and pushing out the age at which RRSPs convert to RIFs. Of all the regressive policy measures inacted at the federal level since 2015, perhaps the most egregious was cancelling the already announced push of OAS eligibility from 67 back to 65. If anything, the feds should have pushed it out to 68 or 69
-public sector employees qualify for ridiculously generous pensions at obscenely young ages. Reducing the amount of these pensions and say increasing the qualification (age plus years of service) by ten years could drastically reduce the new employee demand in public services
-workers on short term disability due to injuries should be able to jump queues for medical treatment to get them back into the workforce as soon as possible
-another policy regression at the federal level was increasing the priority of family reunification for immigration priority. Individuals, particarly younger ones, with scarce skills should receive absolute priority. Family reunification is important, but less so, and especially when it involves older family members and ones who aren't immediate family
-most important of all, would be doing something to overcome Canada's poor track record on private sector investment in productivity enhancing plant, equipment and training. Yet another example of the recurring theme of policy regression at the federal level has been more (instead of fewer) regulatory barriers to investment, be they in the alleged name of indigenous reconcoliation and climate change, as examples

 

[DougB]

Please explain why, in 2020, a year with functionally no immigration, house prices exploded. Stop the fear-mongering, NIMBYism has a lot more to do with home prices exploding than immigration

That housing price explosion was mostly driven by massively over the top fiscal and monetary stimulus. So much money was force fed into the economy that much of it had nowhere to go other than housing, equities and cryptocurrency. The federal government and some provinces are still feeding the beast by running deficits.

 

[Silence&Motion]

Per capita immigration rates were higher in the post-WWII period. The thing that has changed is not immigration policy. It's housing policy. We are not building housing in the same way we did in the post-WWII era (for better or worse).

Anyway, it's weird that people would be bemoaning immigration on this message board where the main topic of conversation is cheering on Calgary's population growth and the development of new and taller buildings. If you don't like immigrants or population growth, you can always move to one of Canada's many dying backwater towns that have aging, declining populations.

 

[DougB]

The post WWII period had no housing policy: minimal zoning, no NIMBY's, no environmental reviews, no consultation so supply was relatively unconstrained. It was also a time when the population was young and didn't consume much health care, and when it did, it was not the government's problem to solve.

Population growth isn't bad. Betting on immigration as the major solution to the labor shortage is what's wrong.

 

[UrbanRED]

That housing price explosion was mostly driven by massively over the top fiscal and monetary stimulus. So much money was force fed into the economy that much of it had nowhere to go other than housing, equities and cryptocurrency. The federal government and some provinces are still feeding the beast by running deficits.

Yes, that was part of it. That's my point. Immigration is not the main factor driving home prices upwards

 

[darwink]

given Canada's poor track record in building housing and infrastructure.

We seemed to do fine up until the late 70s. Then we had 20 years which ate the slack. Then the problem slowly built until it was suddenly much worse.

Let’s apply that energy fuelling that pessimism to solve the problem shall we? We’ve increased housing production greatly before and we can do so again.

 

[darwink]

That housing price explosion was mostly driven by massively over the top fiscal and monetary stimulus.

Price changes in Calgary were more of a mechanical response to stimulus. About 60% flight to quality (yard, size, ability to avoid renovations) about 40% monetary.

In Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto the constraint of supply was a far larger factor, and you end up in a price runaway based on fear of missing out. If you don’t move today you won’t be able to tomorrow. That’s why calgarys moderation has been minimal while brampton, Surrey you have 20% drops.

 

[darwink]

The post WWII period had no housing policy

Yes we did. The federal government directly built houses, townhouses, and apartments, then flipped them to recover capital and go on to the next projects. The herald archive even has articles about what became the CMHC fighting city of Calgary zoning to get projects built. If you’ve ever walked along at claire in Toronto all the post wwII brick apartments are federal government projects. In west hillhurst, you can see the federal government houses.

There was huge intervention in the sector to increase housing provision because the depression had largely stopped new construction and so did the war.

 

[DougB]

We seemed to do fine up until the late 70s. Then we had 20 years which ate the slack. Then the problem slowly built until it was suddenly much worse.

Let’s apply that energy fuelling that pessimism to solve the problem shall we? We’ve increased housing production greatly before and we can do so again.

Apply that energy to regulatory relief. Government has no comparitive advantage in building housing, so I can't see why any program would work.

 

[Cowtown]

Ontario grew by almost 800k in the last census! No one there is paying attention to interprovincial migration.

That was last census though, the next 5 years could look a lot different. Not that Ontario's ever going to become the next Ohio, no doubt it'll always be Canada's economic engine, but still, anytime numbers change so sharply, people should pay attention. At any rate it's just good to see some of the population spread around other parts of the country.

 

[Cowtown]

Speaking of those Ontario numbers. I know these articles are sensationalist, and meant to grab attention, but it does raise some interesting points. Hopefully Calgary's economy can stay strong, but not go into a boom situation. Especially an oil boom situation. It would be nice to keep these non-oil and gas companies rolling in. It would also be nice if housing costs stayed reasonable.

For the sake of their financial future, young people should leave Toronto and Vancouver

They may be great places to live, if you can afford it. If not, living in Vancouver and Toronto can be harmful to your financial health

www.theglobeandmail.com

 

[darwink]

Apply that energy to regulatory relief. Government has no comparitive advantage in building housing, so I can't see why any program would work.

A program can be regulatory relief. Alas I think the problem has got so bad elsewhere to move the market to a new equilibrium will require a big intervention.

Fortunately Calgary isn’t in quite the dire straights as others.

 

[DougB]

A program can be regulatory relief. Alas I think the problem has got so bad elsewhere to move the market to a new equilibrium will require a big intervention.

Fortunately Calgary isn’t in quite the dire straights as others.

Again, government has no advantage in building housing. If it can deliver regulatory relief to itself, it would also do so for the private sector.