Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he has apologized to a woman in Niagara Falls, Ont. for calling her home a 'tiny little shack' in an attempt to illustrate high housing costs in the area.
Just another example of a disconnected politician that use the plight of the people for their thin veiled arguments in their circle jerk of "we care about the people but not enough to actually be productive in finding an appropriate solution".
Wild that Poilevre has never come across one of these houses considering they line the Lakeshore corridor and are an important part of our pre/post war history.
"Grew up a house similar" to this one but describes it as a shack. So which is it? Is it a shack or the home that's in the real-estate listing (which clearly isnt a shack) cause those are very different descriptions.
And this isn't just Poilevre, all three parties do the same shit. These people don't care about the average Canadian just what makes them look good in the moment.
PP trying to frame income/property-value disparity as a purely Canadian problem that has only happened under Trudeau is just pure fallacy. It's happening in countries all over the world and it has been growing under every government in Canada for decades.
And this isn't just Poilevre, all three parties do the same shit. These people don't care about the average Canadian just what makes them look good in the moment.
Yup. And none of them offer any solutions, like limiting how many housing units any single entity can own.
Rampant unfettered capitalism has bought and paid for damn near every politician and we pay for it in the end ... fuck 'em all.
It'd stop landlords from hoarding housing. A large part of the issue is that we have a newly-minted class of investor-dudebro that's snapping up housing and redlining rent to maximize profit.
Because people could (hopefully) buy into the market instead of renting, it'd minimize the number of people in the rental market out of necessity instead of choice.
I'm in the latter camp: would love to buy, but got kicked out of the market via divorce and I can't see a path back in ever.
You're correct that it might see a net-negative number of available rentals, but that's a solveable problem (via purpose-built rentals and public housing).
Both solutions, though, require government intervention, curtailing of the accumulation of wealth, and deliberate policy decisions. Both Team Red and Team Blue are allergic to stuff like that.
In the long run, purpose-built rentals (including 3+ bedroom units for families) is far more important to addressing the root cause of the housing issue. IMHO limiting independent landlord ownership is a bit like cleaning out a gunshot wound.
I know this isn’t a popular thought in some circles, but reigning in immigration until the housing stock has recovered is a vital part of the solution going forward.
The trouble is our current demographics mean that reducing immigration would have massive downsides to the economy too.
There are just too many people retiring (now and over the next decade). Without immigration to have a large enough workforce to support the people retiring, the economy will contract. Contracting economies are terrible for citizens and their countries.
The on top of that, the people retiring have a proportionally large amount of wealth. That will cause a lot of demand on our economy. If we do not have equally high immigration to increase the supply of our economy, inflation will go very high to balance supply and demand by decreasing the value of retirees savings.
Not an easy problem to deal with, big tradeoffs every way. But compared to other countries we are better situated because we can avoid the worst tradeoffs by using immigration to solve this problem. If we can figure out how to significantly increase the amount and density of our housing, Canada will be in a great position globally.