Surging demand for scarce resources is making Québec‘s cost of living crisis particularly acute – and immigration into the province could be worsening the situation.
Montreal is among the North American leaders in annual immigrants received. But while immigration is vital for economic growth in a country that doesn’t adequately reproduce itself, Montrealers are struggling to pay rent, suggesting more people are moving to the city than it can support.
“There’s room for growth but there’s also a capacity issue when we consider issues such as housing and accessibility to healthcare and education,” Chedly Belkhodja, a professor at Concordia University’s School of Community and Public Affairs, told True North. “It’s popping up all over the place. Some places have no capacity to welcome more people, even the big cities.”
Montreal was once touted for its low cost of living, but now studio apartments rent for an average of $1,300 a month—a 2% increase from May. One-bedroom rents rose by 1% to $1,600, and while the average rent for two-bedroom apartments decreased by 1% from May to June, they run $2,069 a month.
Those increases suggest demand is growing rapidly.
Belkhodja says it didn’t help that asylum seekers entered Québec from the United States through the now-infamous Roxham Road crossing, but the Safe Third Country Agreement has since been amended.
“Again, there was a capacity issue. Montreal had it with the Syrian refugees coming in 2015-16 and then the asylum seekers from 2017 has been ongoing, with higher numbers arriving after Covid,” Belkhodja said.
“Montreal is a city where you have many, many different dynamics when you think about immigration. Some immigrants have more accessibility to services and others are more vulnerable and can be in a situation where it’s difficult, and we see them in food banks.”
But it isn’t just newcomers who rely on food banks.
According to Martin Munger, executive director of Les Banques alimentaires du Québec, a food bank distribution network serving 32 regional members province-wide, demand for their services has grown by 34% since 2019.
“But it was different at the beginning of the pandemic,” Munger said. “We had big growth of 50% of demand. Between 2021 and 2022, it stabilized to 20%, but with inflation it’s coming back.”
Les Banques alimentaires du Québec’s 1,200 agencies used to serve an average of 500,000 Quebecers every month, but by 2021 that number grew by 100,000 and it peaked at 671,000 last year.
Munger attributes inflation to the growing need for food bank services in Québec, adding that roughly 81% of food bank users are renters.
“Food is part of the budget, and when people have to pay more and more for their rent, they have less for food at the end of the month,” Munger said.
Munger added rent isn’t the only expense eating away at families’ food budgets.
“If you’re outside of a big city, you need a car to do everything you have to do, and cars are a lot more expensive,” he said. “Even used cars are also expensive.”
Statistics Canada reported Canada’s inflation rate declined to 3.4% in May from 4.4% a month earlier, but only because gas prices decreased. If gasoline were removed from the calculation, the inflation rate wouldn’t have changed.
“The pandemic had a big effect because people have more money available and some bought houses and increased the prices,” Munger said. “It put pressure on the rental market too.”
In tandem with increased immigration, rents should continue climbing because rental housing construction in Quebec is estimated to have fallen by 40% this year, according to l’Association des professionnels de la construction et de l’habitation du Québec, which represents provincial homebuilders.
“It’s not only immigrants for whom housing is an issue,” Belkhodja said. “It’s an issue for a lot of people.”
