Imagine saying "this boat is full!" as some immigrant living in the
6th-least-densely populated country on this planet.
A big part of our struggle to invest into the infrastructure we need is that we lack the density in most of this country. We just have to incite more of them to live in areas outside of the Greater Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver Areas, but the places with the least immigration are often the hardest to convince of the opportunities it offers, even though they would benefit most...
I think one has to step back.
Homelessness has tripled in Toronto in only 10 years.
Average unit size in new builds is declining to below that of units in Europe that were once lauded as reasonable in size.
Standard of living is under assault as wages stagnate, particularly for those in low and lower-middle income professions; while productivity investment lags, in part because of artificially goosed cheap labour supply.
Most of that supply is not from the high-skill, legal immigration channel that always gets the attention; its from the foreign student channel and the TFW (Temporary Foreign Worker) channel; and collectively, they boost the immigration number to more than 860,000 this year, which is daunting growth with which the development industry cannot keep pace; and there is no forseeable way in which it will be able to in the near term. Key here, we're not talking about exceeding said pace which is what is required to drive prices/rents down.
I think an anti-immigration view in that context, while overly simplistic, perhaps ill-informed and unfortunate regardless, is entirely predictable.
Someone making a six figure income can be very challenged to relate to what's happening to many people out there. Imagine being single and earning, not minimum wage, but double that, or about 60k per year.
Ten years ago that got you a very good apartment in Toronto in a decent location, with room to devote some money to retirement and/or travel or the like.
Today, if you have to seek out new housing, you might find yourself at the edge of needing a food bank at that income level; that is well and truly insane. Now remember the many workers getting by on 1/2 that.
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As for shifting immigrants to locations outside of Toronto and Vancouver; TFWs go where employers seek them out; foreign students go where colleges make spots available and advertise in given jurisdictions; and there are a lot of foreign students outside of big cities (albeit far fewer in absolute terms and somewhat less in percentage terms). Lakehead University in Thunder Bay is 10% foreign students. (for Comparison, U of T is 25% foreign students.........Harvard is 12.5%)
But Thunder Bay's retention rate for those grads is quite low; that has a great deal to do with employment opportunities; though there are other factors at play as well.
But homelessness is also on the rise in Thunder Bay.
The idea that Canada can or should attempt to permit immigration at 2% of population per year, which no other OECD country is attempting is just wrong.
At 1% we have a workable level of growth, but not at 2%.
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Also, we really need to stop using the overall all density stats as if they had any meaning.
27% of Canada is literally north of the treeline. Zero Trees. Most people have no desire to live in such a harsh and unwelcoming climate.
Yes, Canada has room to grow; though this is deceptive, because most of the easy growth will come at the expense of top tier farmland which feeds not only Canadians, but the world.
Its a gross over simplification to look at density for the entire country and to fail to consider that you can't even reach 1/2 of the country by year round road.
PS. if you did build out to European densities in Canada you would vastly accelerate climate change, global displacement, food shortages, and cause substantial deterioration of air and water quality.
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I'm pro immigration and pro development; but we need to get a handle on using statistics properly, presenting them in useful context and understanding real-world impacts of policy choices.
