Canada

They keep talking about this big grey trunk, a tail at the end of a big mass of grey animal, four big lumbering limbs, two big floppy ears and the fact that the thing is huge ... but no one ever wants to acknowledge the wealth inequality elephant.

The big fat elephant of wealthy elites and corporations that continually live off the of the economy like some parasitic vulture that constantly takes but never gives and then sits back and wonders why no wealth is going around and wonders why people are always poor.

But experts and economists say that targeting immigration broadly won't bring the cost of housing down. What's required, they say, is a more nuanced approach.

These damn experts and their complicated answers to problems! I don't understand any of it! I just want someone to give me a simple answer!

"It's very simple math. If you have more families coming than you have housing for them, it's going to inflate housing prices," Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told an audience in Winnipeg recently.

Ah! There we go!

All of the commentary I've seen about immigration and the housing crisis has acknowledged that the crisis had multiple causes and needs every level of government needs to make significant policy changes.

Most commentators say we need to build more homes, reduce the financialization of homes, provide more affordable housing, and yes, temporarily reduce pressure on the system by temporarily reducing immigration.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

With rising rents and house prices making it increasingly hard to find an affordable place to live, some are pointing the finger at Canada's record-level immigration rates.

High interest rates, increasing building costs and red tape at the municipal level that can slow down or halt home construction are all part of the picture.

But to tackle the pressure being created by immigration, some are now openly discussing forging a public policy link between how many people Canada takes in each year and the state of the country's housing stock.

Pomeroy said that while the annual immigration target has been well managed, provincial and federal governments have lost control of non-permanent resident programs that bring in students and temporary workers.

"There are some institutions in different parts of this country that, I have the sincerely held belief, have come to exist just to exploit the program for the personal financial gains of the people behind some of these schools, if we can call them that," he said.

"I think what's happened probably since the 1990s is that different corporations in Canada, business lobby groups, have seen more immigration as just an unambiguously good thing," said Christopher Worswick, economics chair at Carleton University.

The original article contains 1,426 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 86%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

The immigration rate sure as hell isnt helping things.