Newly appointed Liberal Minister of Immigration Marc Miller told reporters this week that he has no intention of tempering Canada’s reckless plan to let in a million new people into the country every two years even when confronted with a bleak housing crisis.
The Trudeau government has perpetuated a myth that more immigrants equates to more houses built, but have not offered a shred of evidence to substantiate their fairy tale thinking.
In fact, several measures indicate that Canada’s housing supply is not meeting the increased demand forced upon the market by irresponsible hikes based on Ottawa’s ideological commitment to elite-driven “open society” models championed by the likes of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, George Soros and the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab.
The Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey numbers are in for July and it’s not looking good by any measure.
Canada lost nearly 45,000 jobs in construction last month. Before that, the economy shed 14,000 construction jobs in June. It’s peak construction season in Canada and we’re losing construction workers by the tens of thousands. Can you believe it?
And before you ask, no, this doesn’t happen every year. Last year, Canada saw a net gain of 7,700 construction workers from June to July.
The shocking decline in construction jobs this year comes after Ottawa let in a record number of immigrants in the first quarter of 2023 – 145,000 newcomers to be exact.
If the Liberal line is true and flooding the country with newcomers is a part of the solution, where are all of the new immigrant builders and construction workers?
If you were to listen to the self-assured remarks of mass immigration ideologues currently in government like outgoing immigration minister Sean Fraser, you would think that immigrants are stepping out of the airport, picking up a hammer, donning a high visibility vest and heading to the closest work site.
“When I talked to developers, in my capacity as a minister of immigration before today, one of the chief obstacles to completing the projects that they want to get done is having access to the labour force to build the houses that they need,” said Fraser in his final statement in the role.
That’s simply not happening. Only a sliver of a fraction of newcomers will enter the home-building business. Even labour force statistics show that utilities and construction jobs are not the preferred jobs of new and recent immigrants. New immigrants are more likely to take a job in accommodation and food services, the health sector, transportation or manufacturing. It’s not that those jobs are not needed but we can’t ignore the reality that every single person we take in will require housing and we’re not building those homes fast enough.
Recent figures presented by Bloomberg based on Statistics Canada and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation data shows that for each new unit of housing constructed in Canada, there are 4 to 5 immigrants arriving into the country. This is a tremendous discrepancy.
What is Miller’s proposed solution? Apparently, it is to “have a conversation” with immigration critics which now include economists and housing advocates. Yet, there’s little conversation to be had when one party (the federal government) has no intention of revising its record immigration targets.
Instead of reaching out to concerned Canadians who face the increasingly likely prospect that they will never be able to own a home anytime in the near future, Miller wants to ramp up immigration even further.
Simply put, he’s a zealot and there’s no conversations to be had with ideological zealots.
Miller has even resorted to the same old tactic of painting those who have concerns about the Liberal juggernaut immigration targets as uncaring, racist or some such divisive label.
This is all meant to ensure that immigration remains a taboo in Canada but polls and public opinion is turning.
But think for a moment what is more compassionate?
To offer both residents and newcomers a nation where everybody who works honestly and hard an opportunity to own their own home where they can raise a family and settle down?
Or to shuffle them into shelters, hotels and God-forbid the streets only to tell them we require their labour without any promise of a prosperous future?
I think we all know the answer.
