So, while I get that these will likely be abused given Smith’s general approach, I think gilmore’s take is wonky/missing some data. It’s also failing to read the room for many locals…
Mark Miller was the immigration minister for a long time, and was the one largely responsible for the huge immigration spike post covid that sent prices/rents skyrocketing again, and triggered massive affordability issues. He was in the press constantly saying Canada needs as much immigration as it can get, and that narratives about immigrants causing strain / issues for locals were fake news. Then, he got put on to the housing file, and suddenly he did an about face: high levels of immigration were causing issues, so the federal government needed to cap it. Housing/Rent prices have been coming down ever since immigration got capped by the Federal government – Vancouver just reported that housing prices are down another 4% yoy since last sept.
Infrastructure such as housing and medical services are under provincial jurisdiction, but immigration is under federal, generally (Quebec gets special treatment, which allows many ‘backdoor’ entries where the immigrant goes through Quebec, then immediately resettles elsewhere). Canada’s population grows/shrinks almost entirely based on immigration. In order to plan for capacity on provincially regulated/controlled critical infrastructure, you need a predictable population growth pattern. Further, when growth is entirely via immigration, you need time for those new immigrants to acclimatize and ‘get settled’ into professional positions / fields of work, and for them to adopt Canadian cultural values.
The fed allowing a massive influx of immigrants DID fuck up govt services and their ability to function. Our own AG noted that our immigration fraud investigators couldn’t come close to keeping up with the reports of student visa fraud – 2000 cases investigated per year, for 75000 cases reported. Hell, I work with a bunch of immigrants, some fairly recent, and I’ve heard a bunch of them say things like “We thought we’d be able to afford a home, but things went crazy” and “We thought we’d be able to get medical care/a family doctor, but the wait times are years out. We may aswell go back home to get treated”.
Gilmore’s daft for pretending like provinces wanting more control over this area isn’t a valid concern.
Let’s blame immigrants for the fact that rich people have been using housing as investment objects for decades. So much easier than facing the facts about Capitalism.
Blindly blaming immigrants is wrong / prejudiced. Discussing the damage / problems caused by shitty immigration policies isn’t. You’re toe’ing an ideological line that’s ridiculous, counter productive and doesn’t advance the conversation at all.
Blindly faulting “the rich” is just as prejudiced as blindly faulting immigrants. ‘The rich’ in this case are older immigrants, and non-first gen locals, who bought homes when they were cheap / immigration policies were more sound. Locals who had invested in a second rental unit for a second income stream, because they had some capital from early-entry to the housing market / familial ties to people who’d gotten that chance, did so because our immigration policies made it practically the only sound investment in Canada. Even if you reallly really really want to blame those “rich people”, their actions were still resulting from our shitty approach to immigration / population growth. So it’s STILL appropriate to discuss changing immigration policies.
That gets added to a note that our population growth is entirely based on immigration levels. So if our housing-construction is lagging behind our population growth by so much that housing prices go crazy, immigration levels / policies are CLEARLY part of the issue. There’s an imbalance in the scales.
And as for facts, again, the facts say that when our approach to immigration did an about-face under Trudeau’s liberals, housing prices followed suit. That’s a fact. Changing immigration policies impacts housing, and impacts other social services. Those are facts, I’m facing them, so what am I supposed to do now? Ignore them, re-label regular middle class Canadians as “the rich”, and blindly blame that group of people, instead of blaming immigrants (which isn’t what I did before, since I was highlighting policies/approaches to immigration). Yea, no thanks.
Regular middle-class Canadians are the ones that voted for racism the other day.
Moreover, the question in your mind should be why and how our systems have all become so threadbare and lacking in any amount of resilience. Hint: “finding efficiencies”.
But mostly, housing-as-investment-vehicle is straight up evil. There are empty apartments and houses sufficient to give everyone a place to live right now in most large cities. Government could be spending Billions on new, non-commercial public housing right now, and we know they could because they’re handing that over to Venture Capitalists instead.
Housing is a problem for damn sure, but it’s not the immigrants to blame. Nice try, but from a Middle Class Canadian who pays less than $500 per month for his mortgage while his friends live in warzones and pay three times as much for the privilege, you need to stop and look at Capitalism. Over time, you will see this more and more clearly, as your racist approach fails to make society any better, and in fact things just get worse and worse as long as you recommit yourselves to the dead future.
Branding people who vote for changes in immigration policy as racist is wrong, and blaming an amorphous “rich” group of people is bigotry. Calling me a racist for discussing this topic / expressing sound, fact-based views, is not convincing in the slightest.
I see no point to you highlighting your personal position, nor in your lame personal attacks. You say I should look at facts, I state a bunch of facts. Now you pivot and say “no no, you need to look at a broad stroke big picture that’s based on ideologies and theoretical stuff”. So we’re doing personal attacks and moving goal posts here, neato.
So, while I get that these will likely be abused given Smith’s general approach, I think gilmore’s take is wonky/missing some data. It’s also failing to read the room for many locals…
Mark Miller was the immigration minister for a long time, and was the one largely responsible for the huge immigration spike post covid that sent prices/rents skyrocketing again, and triggered massive affordability issues. He was in the press constantly saying Canada needs as much immigration as it can get, and that narratives about immigrants causing strain / issues for locals were fake news. Then, he got put on to the housing file, and suddenly he did an about face: high levels of immigration were causing issues, so the federal government needed to cap it. Housing/Rent prices have been coming down ever since immigration got capped by the Federal government – Vancouver just reported that housing prices are down another 4% yoy since last sept.
Infrastructure such as housing and medical services are under provincial jurisdiction, but immigration is under federal, generally (Quebec gets special treatment, which allows many ‘backdoor’ entries where the immigrant goes through Quebec, then immediately resettles elsewhere). Canada’s population grows/shrinks almost entirely based on immigration. In order to plan for capacity on provincially regulated/controlled critical infrastructure, you need a predictable population growth pattern. Further, when growth is entirely via immigration, you need time for those new immigrants to acclimatize and ‘get settled’ into professional positions / fields of work, and for them to adopt Canadian cultural values.
The fed allowing a massive influx of immigrants DID fuck up govt services and their ability to function. Our own AG noted that our immigration fraud investigators couldn’t come close to keeping up with the reports of student visa fraud – 2000 cases investigated per year, for 75000 cases reported. Hell, I work with a bunch of immigrants, some fairly recent, and I’ve heard a bunch of them say things like “We thought we’d be able to afford a home, but things went crazy” and “We thought we’d be able to get medical care/a family doctor, but the wait times are years out. We may aswell go back home to get treated”.
Gilmore’s daft for pretending like provinces wanting more control over this area isn’t a valid concern.
Let’s blame immigrants for the fact that rich people have been using housing as investment objects for decades. So much easier than facing the facts about Capitalism.
Blindly blaming immigrants is wrong / prejudiced. Discussing the damage / problems caused by shitty immigration policies isn’t. You’re toe’ing an ideological line that’s ridiculous, counter productive and doesn’t advance the conversation at all.
Blindly faulting “the rich” is just as prejudiced as blindly faulting immigrants. ‘The rich’ in this case are older immigrants, and non-first gen locals, who bought homes when they were cheap / immigration policies were more sound. Locals who had invested in a second rental unit for a second income stream, because they had some capital from early-entry to the housing market / familial ties to people who’d gotten that chance, did so because our immigration policies made it practically the only sound investment in Canada. Even if you reallly really really want to blame those “rich people”, their actions were still resulting from our shitty approach to immigration / population growth. So it’s STILL appropriate to discuss changing immigration policies.
That gets added to a note that our population growth is entirely based on immigration levels. So if our housing-construction is lagging behind our population growth by so much that housing prices go crazy, immigration levels / policies are CLEARLY part of the issue. There’s an imbalance in the scales.
And as for facts, again, the facts say that when our approach to immigration did an about-face under Trudeau’s liberals, housing prices followed suit. That’s a fact. Changing immigration policies impacts housing, and impacts other social services. Those are facts, I’m facing them, so what am I supposed to do now? Ignore them, re-label regular middle class Canadians as “the rich”, and blindly blame that group of people, instead of blaming immigrants (which isn’t what I did before, since I was highlighting policies/approaches to immigration). Yea, no thanks.
Regular middle-class Canadians are the ones that voted for racism the other day.
Moreover, the question in your mind should be why and how our systems have all become so threadbare and lacking in any amount of resilience. Hint: “finding efficiencies”.
But mostly, housing-as-investment-vehicle is straight up evil. There are empty apartments and houses sufficient to give everyone a place to live right now in most large cities. Government could be spending Billions on new, non-commercial public housing right now, and we know they could because they’re handing that over to Venture Capitalists instead.
Housing is a problem for damn sure, but it’s not the immigrants to blame. Nice try, but from a Middle Class Canadian who pays less than $500 per month for his mortgage while his friends live in warzones and pay three times as much for the privilege, you need to stop and look at Capitalism. Over time, you will see this more and more clearly, as your racist approach fails to make society any better, and in fact things just get worse and worse as long as you recommit yourselves to the dead future.
Branding people who vote for changes in immigration policy as racist is wrong, and blaming an amorphous “rich” group of people is bigotry. Calling me a racist for discussing this topic / expressing sound, fact-based views, is not convincing in the slightest.
I see no point to you highlighting your personal position, nor in your lame personal attacks. You say I should look at facts, I state a bunch of facts. Now you pivot and say “no no, you need to look at a broad stroke big picture that’s based on ideologies and theoretical stuff”. So we’re doing personal attacks and moving goal posts here, neato.