Statistics Canada Reports II

[theman23]

Originally Posted by GreaterMontréal

Quebec will have added 110k people in the last 6 months, so the rate is not coming down.

Quebec +292k since Q2 2023.
Alberta +267k
BC +242k

Ontario +730k , maybe a problem in the near future

If we look at Texas, they always had rapid growth, adding about 3 to 5 million every 10 years since the 70's. Ontario is not used to the same growth. Not even 1 million every 5 years. Texas has a lot of cities that are exploding in size, Ontario only has 2, or 1.

Texas is very sprawl friendly so it's easy to growth without problem. Its GDP is also growing very fast , + $300B USD in 5 years.

What is the plan for Ontario ? ?

The hope is the Feds come to their senses and slow down immigration. Any talk about adjusting to the new fast growth reality is met with anathema (see the flip flop on the green belt).

Anyways, do you have a source on this? This would put our population growth above 1.5 million for just those 4 provinces alone. That would be a new record (breaking the record set last year, which broke the record set the year before).

[trece verde]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Because the population surge of recent years (ie. population growing faster than we can build new infrastructure to accommodate the added demand; thus increasing congestion) is almost entirely the responsibility of the federal government.

What's being missed here and in statements by others is the claim in the original post that I was musing about that this has been an issue for 20 years. in other words, not just as a result of the current government's policies that some of you find so anathemic, but of their predecessors as well. Elementary school, indeed.

Yes, it's bloody obvious that if you add demand faster than you add capacity things don't work. My point was that if you intend to point fingers over that period of time, there's more wrong than just dodgy immigration policies of the past 9 years.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by trece verde

What's being missed here and in statements by others is the claim in the original post that I was musing about that this has been an issue for 20 years. in other words, not just as a result of the current government's policies that some of you find so anathemic, but of their predecessors as well. Elementary school, indeed.

This is sort of misleading. The problem may trace back that far but the rate of population growth was lower and the stock of infrastructure was relatively more robust so the situation wasn't as dire and priorities were different. In that period, federal government spending was also more restrained. In recent years the debt exploded, reducing the capacity for future action, but fundamental problems like infrastructure and housing affordability didn't improve. I'm not sure we even saw healthcare improvement despite all of the pandemic-era investment.

I don't think Canadians are wrong to feel a sense of malaise over the past few years. Life is getting more challenging for a lot of people as costs rise and quality of life degrades, though thankfully inflation seems to be subsiding finally (with a now potentially permanently lower standard of living than what might have existed without that inflation). The overall picture was very different in 2004 or 2014.

It depends on the city but I think Vancouver might be worse for infrastructure investment now than it was in the 2000's or 2010's. We got major highway improvements and complete new transit lines back then. Right now the road work is minimal and by the time the Broadway extension opens I think there probably will only have been a few km of train expansion in recent years (~6 km Broadway extension that won't even reach UBC; Canada Line is around 20 and Millennium around 25). Why is it that this city is so much larger and growing so fast now but building less than in the past?

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by someone123

It depends on the city but I think Vancouver might be worse for infrastructure investment now than it was in the 2000's or 2010's. We got major highway improvements and complete new transit lines back then. Right now the road work is minimal and by the time the Broadway extension opens I think there probably will only have been a few km of train expansion in recent years (~6 km Broadway extension that won't even reach UBC; Canada Line is around 20 and Millennium around 25). Why is it that this city is so much larger and growing so fast now but building less than in the past?

This is also misleading. There's also a 16km $4bn+ SkyTrain line under construction from Surrey to Langley, and TransLink are acquiring new buses for the region's first three Bus Rapid Transit routes that are expected to start operating around 2027.

The delay between the Canada Line opening, and any further transit line construction was thanks to the conservative BC Liberals (since rebranded as BC United), who failed to support significant transit investment, although they funded construction of the Evergreen Extension began in 2013 and was completed in late 2016. The NDP were elected in 2017, and approved their funding for the Broadway Subway extension in March 2018.

[csbvan]

There are two major Skytrain expansions ongoing and 3ish major BRT routes that are coming very soon. The last major expansions to mass transit were Canada Line and Evergreen expansions 8 or 9 years apart. This is a much bigger period of transit expansion. Not misleading so much as just plain wrong. Comparing length is silly. Running 6km through a dense urban area is different than elevated transit through fields.