At no point did I mention the current immigration rates in Canada, over the last five years. Instead, I mentioned historic growth, which is not necessarily immigration, going back 100 plus years.
In the early 1900s, on farms, Canadian families were much, much larger than they are now. Immigration was certainly a thing, and contributed to those numbers, but most of that growth was through simple population growth domestically.
Speaking to the development of cities in the past, that development was within certain strictures and guidelines, but entirely handled by the private sector.
No state-owned companies were developing houses. There were very, very rare exceptions where during situations like the end of World War II, Canada paid for base housing for its soldiers returning from war. Yet these were extraordinary circumstances. This was during the tail end of a wartime economy, and part of the transition to a peacetime economy.
This was not, and is not the normal way that Canada operates as a democracy. Not only was it to provide housing for all of the returning soldiers as they slowly left other countries that they were stationed in, it was also to provide jobs for people leaving factories that were producing munitions and other instruments of war.
Canada managed this transition exceptionally well, primarily due to projects just like this.
The point in all of this is that growth was driven organically by people simply moving to the cities. Again, yes, the cities have a planning department which dictates what may be where, how much residential space can be in a certain area, if there are going to be shops or malls or local shopping locations, where roads are going to be and so on. But that is an overall contributed by the community development plan. Developers have a say. Citizens have a say. This is called democracy.
Do not confuse nimbyism, which is primarily an American problem, with issues that have to do with building in Canada.
Again, I did not say there are no issues, I said NIMBYism is primarily in the US.
The real problem in Canada, and this is a solid show of how democracy works, is that people are concerned about things like the environment.
It's a little difficult to stomach that the very same people that will scream their heads off if environmental issues are not handled correctly, then get upset that building a house requires environmental assessments of land, environmental assessments of how population density will affect the land, insistence is that developers build parks, paths and green spaces.
When you hear the astronomical cost of building a house, when you hear the cost of red tape, what's being left out is that parts of the red tape are commitments to build things like parks, green spaces, paths, places for people to bike and walk without getting hit by cars.
All of these things add cost to the price of a house. They also add cost because developers do not follow plans, but constantly want to renegotiate over and over, and this indeed stretches out the time to build an entire subdivision.
Developers are also on hook for certain things, if they're building an entire subdivision. Roads, traffic lights, all sorts of things like this, including making sure that there's space for a local grocery store, so you don't have to drive or walk endless miles. Even things like the sidewalks when you're building a whole subdivision.
As a democracy in Canada, we like this. We prefer this. We prefer that you can get around with a car, but also you can get to your local grocery store if you want to just walk or take a bus a short distance.
If you are a person buying a single lot and wanting to build on that lot, things are not anywhere near as complex or onerous.
Yes, there are still environmental assessments. But who wants those environmental assessments? That's right, everyone, including the person buying the house, unless, of course, it might mean that they don't have a house quite as cheaply. Then, suddenly, they aren't environmentalists.
As someone who has bought land, that was pretty much the largest block on building. When it came to digging a well, when it came to building the house, when it came to the building plan that I submitted to my local municipality? All of that passed with flying colors unless of course I was doing something weird, such as building too close to the edge of the property or something else that was covered by simple, easy to understand bylaws.
I certainly support environmental assessments, but again I reiterate for a single person building a house they are typically not a problem.
There are certain segments of any society which believe that there should be no government involvement, in almost any portion of a society. These people are too far on one side, just as communism or dictatorships are too far on the other side. As with almost anything, moderation is key.
In Canada, we try to enable free enterprise. We try to keep red tape and other such issues as easy to bypass, and easy to work with as possible, while simultaneously ensuring that there is some degree of central planning and management that also has democratic citizen input.
Yet you will constantly see people of that belief trying to claim that all the issues with building houses have to do with some amount of red tape. Of NIMBYism. Yet when I look in my local community, I see people of all ages. I don't see the disparaging term that you used, boomers, causing a problem. There are people young, there are old people, there are people in their 30s, all owning houses.
Most people in Canada do not buy houses until their 30s or 40s. You may think this is a strange claim, but who wants to buy a house when they're in university? Who wants to buy a house on the first couple of years of their first job? Who wants to buy a house before they're even married? It doesn't make sense. It's not logical.
While I am an older person, I'm certainly not a boomer, as you call it, yet at the same time I did not buy a house until I was in my late 30s.
In Canada, housing pricing is where it is because of two primary reasons. The first is foreign investment. It's been so bad that in the past, that we have actually had motorandums on people that are not Canadian citizens buying houses. We have put, for example, in cities like Vancouver, taxes on empty houses because so many people from China were buying houses as investment structures.
The second reason is the lowest rate of inflation for the longest period of time, for decades.
Prior to the last few years, interest rates have been lower than they have ever been, and for a period of time longer than they had ever been.
This made housing cheaper than it has ever been before. Cheaper because when the low interest rates appeared, what the cost of a house is, is set by something called the market. Pricing is market derived. Pricing is predicated upon by what people will pay. So when interest rates drop dramatically from an amount of say 10 or 12% down to 0 or 1 or 2% over a period of about 5 or 6 years, suddenly housing is immensely more attractive. If you go to any mortgage calculator and use Canadian mortgage calculators, you can see the moving of interest rate from 1 or 2% at the bank, which I have had personally, up to say 11 or 12%, will literally more than double your monthly payment.
This means that if this condition exists for a long period of time, say almost 20 years like it did in Canada, slowly the price of houses will increase because people can afford more. This is how markets work. If people can afford more for housing then housing prices will go up just like any other type of free market competitive economy.
You can see this happening on any graph with the average price of housing compared to the price of inflation and you can see over 20 years the pricing of Canadian houses going up more than the rate of inflation and this is primarily why. Conjoin that with the massive speculation in the Canadian market and the pricing increases more.
If you take a house at $200,000 at 12% interest and you take a house at $400,000 at 2% interest, you will pay the same monthly payment approximately.
Canadian housing was quite affordable until interest rates went up. And slowly, as interest rates are higher, the price of Canadian housing cooled off and had started to come down a little bit, but now once again rates are dropping.
There are always blips in the marketplace. There are always shifts and changes. I have personally been through three separate recession events including the 2008 recession event, and all of these situations cause hardship for people first entering the housing market.
But this will pass. And it will pass and be solved. It won't be solved by turning to communism, to dictatorships. It won't be solved by getting rid of environmentalism or getting rid of planned communities.
It will be solved over a period of a few years as the market adjusts, and people can once again afford housing.
It will do so because the very people making the decisions, are not demonic old people. People have children. They have grandchildren. They want the best for their children and grandchildren. They want the best for their community.
You can be any age and be on the town council. You can be any age and be an MP.
Canada has had MPs who are under 20 in the last decade. Canada has had many MPs that are in their 30s.
There is no conspiracy. There is no attempt to stop young people from getting houses. There is no attempt to stop there from being a higher density housing in communities. We have plenty of land in Canada. We have plenty of space in Canada.
This lengthy response was engendered by the fact that you quite literally put words in my mouth. It was also engendered by the fact that people seem to think, even in Canada, that problems existing in Silicon Valley or in high-density US cities are the same problems that exist in Canada. They aren't. They are not the same problems. They are not caused by the same problems. It is not like you can copy and paste issues from American megacities into Canadian, much smaller cities.
The best way to fix some of the problems in California is to enforce open bidding on houses. When you do that, you reduce the uncertainty in bids, you reduce market pressures to increase the price of housing.