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Originally Posted by GenWhy?
So Timmins is declining (immigrants don't like winter), but Edmonton is growing (immigrants don't mind winter)?
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This is the SSP weather fetish manifesting. It is not reflective of reality.
Timmins was declining (don't know if it still is as of 2024) because it's a low-growth, high-skill blue-collar mining city 300km north of Sudbury - itself not particularly appealing a city.
It is 700km away from the GTA.
Edmonton is a city of a million-plus and 300km away from Calgary, another city of a million-plus people. I cannot overstate the level of isolation of Timmins compared to Edmonton. Timmins and Edmonton are not terribly comparable living experiences, except for maybe weather.
You either like the small town in the boonies, or you don't. If one is new to a country, one tends to stay in larger centres, because you're more likely to find people who are similar to you.
That being said, if such a housing crisis is indeed happening in Timmins (debatable), clearly the big wave of immigration has exacerbated it. So in that sense, Timmins is just getting a taste of what the rest of the country has been experiencing for awhile now.
What Timmins allegedly needs is what the rest of the country is crying for -
skilled labour. That's the knock, though. We're not importing skilled labour and if one is skilled, one generally has choices about where to live and find employment. Timmins is usually low on that metric.