The project intends to explore how immigration may be impacting the housing crisis in Canada.

The Canadian government is bringing in immigrants at a record number. The key driver behind it is to ease labour shortages in the country and stabilize the country’s ageing population. At the same time, Canadians are feeling the pinch of housing affordability. The project intends to explore how immigration may be impacting the housing crisis in Canada.

According to Statistics Canada (2023), just over 1.3 million new immigrants settled permanently in Canada from 2016 to 2021, the highest number of recent immigrants recorded in a Canadian census. The government aims to continue to invite ½ million immigrants to Canada each year for at least the next 3 years. These historic levels of newcomers increased the Canadian population by 1 million in a year. In 2022, another million international students arrived in the country for studies. Increasing interest rates, raised ten times in just over a year, have had little impact on the runaway housing prices. The Government of Canada contends that higher level immigration is needed to address the “acute” labour market shortages, expand the housing sector and build a strong economy into the future. However, estimates of both government and big Canadian banks show that the Canadian economy shrank for four straight quarters. Some experts argue that the root causes of this housing shortage are unrelated to immigration. In fact, it is the delays created by red tape and anti- development sentiment at the municipal level are responsible for the bottleneck in the housing supply.

These conflicting signs of government rhetoric, economic data, housing supply, and

immigration level lead to several interrelated questions:

  • Are high levels of immigration and students arriving in the country causing the housing crisis?
  • Was the housing crisis already in making that got exacerbated with the more people looking to own or rent?
  • Is immigration a panacea to address Canada’s economic challenges and labour shortage?