One of the biggest crises that everyone should be talking about is Canada’s housing crisis. It is a clear failure of our government. Whether they remove the GST for first-time homebuyers or not, houses remain painfully expensive.
There are so many reasons why young people can’t afford to buy a decent home. Many are still stuck living in their parents’ basements. This housing crisis is also why young people can’t afford to start families or get married — everything is connected. After COVID, the situation went from bad to worse. We were already struggling with rich corporations buying up single-family homes, driving prices out of reach for regular families. Then we flooded the country with millions of immigrants without ever asking a basic question: Do we have enough infrastructure and housing to support them?
No one in government seemed to think about where these millions of newcomers would live. No one considered the impact on young Canadians. Once you import millions of people, they naturally need places to live. New homes don’t magically appear. As I learned in economics, when demand greatly exceeds supply, prices rise sharply. That’s exactly what happened in our housing market.
Meanwhile, wages stagnated. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck with little ability to save. Corporations that already owned apartment buildings and single-family homes became even greedier, pushing rents higher. The cost of living skyrocketed, and we are still feeling the heat of this crisis today.
Before 2015, nobody talked about needing a side hustle. One job was usually enough. Now, even with two jobs, many young Canadians still can’t afford a decent home. No wonder so many are depressed.
What needs to be done:
• Ban corporations from buying single-family homes
• Curb mass immigration to sustainable levels
• Build more houses specifically for Canadians
• Cut unnecessary government spending
The housing crisis is real, and it remains unsolved despite millions of dollars already spent on it.