Statistics Canada Reports II

[Nouvellecosse]

It's true that the primary driver of housing demand tends to be population growth. Decreasing household sizes and internal migration contribute some, but growth is the big one. But it's also true that we're not growing that fast nationally that we should have so much trouble providing housing. We have a lot of immigration, but we also have low birth rates and some emigration which would see our population actually decline without newcomers, so much of the high immigration numbers just offset that decline rather than cause growth.

The issue is that immigration tends to be uneven with certain hotspot cities attracting a disproportionate share, while at the same time, those cities have housing supply problems. Most of them have sprawl limiting measures which prevent greenfield development which is good since sprawl creates as many or more problems as it solves. And the sprawl limiting measures would be fine if equal growth could occur as infill, but many of the cities have restrictions on much of their residential land getting higher density infill. So that's why the feds have correctly offered incentives to municipalities to soften these restrictions so that there are less obstacles to building housing where demand is highest.

So it was definitely not a waste. It's was an excellent decision that should have happened sooner in fact. But now that the problem has gotten so big, that policy isn't enough to solve the problem on its own. So they should be criticized for that (being so late) but we also can't pretend it's a bad policy or that it doesn't exist.