Condos are shown in Toronto's Liberty Village community on, April 25, 2017.COLE BURSTON/The Canadian Press
Lisa Lalande is chief executive officer of Century Initiative.
Two pillars can be characterized as the lifeblood of modern economies – immigration and infrastructure.
Ideally, they’re dance partners – one always moving attentively in response to the other. A careful, constructed harmony.
In reality, they can and do fall badly out of step.
Right now, Canadians are experiencing the pain of that reality. Homes are desperately needed; too few are being built. Hospital wings and hospital beds are called for, none can be found. Overcrowded schools, roads and transit systems require renovation, and no workers can be hired to repair them.
This challenging reality is affecting our attitudes. Research shows declining public support for Canada’s immigration levels. But, crucially, that same research also illustrates this waning support is tied to that very same pain and frustration – to crushed dreams of home ownership, interminable wait times and unpaved roads.
We have not fallen into a pit of nativism. But we are falling into an overriding sense of pessimism, and the Band-Aid solutions that sense so readily provides. And, by far, the very worst is to simply curtail population growth.
Easy answer. Bad idea in both the short term and the long. Because this is also the answer that would result in an aging, less-skilled work force, less foreign investment, less diversity and less influence on the global stage.
The more ambitious, yet critical, task is building and planning for growth. And that requires us to rethink our approach to housing and infrastructure.
I say “rethink” because, as much as anything, it’s a question of mentality. The orders of magnitude we’re talking about are monumental. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says Canada needs to triple its homebuilding output by the end of 2030 to restore affordability.
On this front, the federal government’s recent pledge to revive its wartime homebuilding strategy by adopting a catalogue of preapproved home designs to reduce the costs and approval timelines is welcome news.
A wartime effort might sound hyperbolic. It’s not. It expresses the urgency of the problem rhetorically, but it also suggests the definitive, long-term infrastructure planning needed to marshal and free up concrete action – planning that depends on immigration to succeed.
As with any wartime effort, we won’t fix the problem with one department or initiative alone. We need a sustained push from all levels of government and partners in the homebuilding industry, finance and not-for-profit sectors.
While many of the most cumbersome roadblocks to construction exist at the municipal level, the federal government must use its cheque book and political capital to eliminate barriers. Legalizing six-plexes as-of-right, lowering development costs, cutting red tape and prioritizing housing near city-led developments such as libraries, community centres and subway stations are all critical priorities. Early “strings attached” housing agreements between the federal government and municipalities including Kelowna, B.C., Calgary and Toronto are a promising start.
It also means working with the provinces on skilled trades strategies that simplify pathways into home construction, both for newcomers and long-time residents looking to contribute to the effort. And it means reviewing public land from top to bottom, with an eye toward identifying opportunities to increase affordable housing stock.
We can’t blame the problem exclusively on land speculation, but should use available tools to ensure construction permits result in quick development. This may include the adoption of “use it or lose it” levies and enhanced efforts to combat money laundering in the housing market. Governments should invest at a level that matches the urgency of this crisis with stronger commitments to subsidize affordable, non-profit and co-op housing development and operation.
Like any wartime effort, there isn’t a silver bullet that will make the problem go away. The key is using every tool at our disposal.
Such an approach is not only essential for housing supply, but for the infrastructure projects that must accompany population growth. Canada needs widespread broadband coverage, new bridges, wastewater treatment facilities, and public transit. While, on the housing front, we have the clear political will to execute a wartime strategy, we must continually reproduce the imperatives of co-operation, efficiency and determination this effort represents.
George Bernard Shaw once observed, “Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity.” It’s a pithy challenge to the fallacy of rationalism, that all can be set right by the seemingly logical. And the temptation toward the brutishly sane is, in this case: cut out immigration and thus cut out the problem. It’s a line of thinking all too real in recent weeks.
But, in today’s Canada, calling for an end to immigration, or a vast reduction in our targets, is like trying to fix an engineering problem by standing on the sidelines and calling it a problem of overengineering. It’s unhelpful. It’s outside the bounds of the functional. And, worst of all, it doesn’t solve the problem. It doesn’t result in a country that can compete in a highly competitive world, support its seniors, or promise a better future for the next generation.
It doesn’t result in a country that will thrive.
Recent conversations about immigration levels should be a wakeup call – not to try and cut the problem in half, parse it, or leave it for tomorrow, but to face it down with uncommon planning, investment and effort.