Blaming immigration for the country’s housing crisis disguises the real problem, analysts say  | CBC News

It’s an argument that comes up time after time whenever there is a discussion about the housing crisis that plagues Metro Vancouver or anywhere else in Canada. 

If Canada can’t house the people who already live here, we should stop letting more people into the country. 

On Friday, the country’s population hit 40 million, with nearly all of last year’s growth due to immigration. The federal government has signed on to allow up to 500,000 newcomers into Canada annually by 2025.

By many standards, the influx of immigrants is a boon, especially given Canada’s aging demographic and labour force shortages. Many economists agree the economy would not be able to sustain much growth if it weren’t for the influx of newcomers. Culturally, immigrants provide innovation and vitality to Canadian society. 

But that growth comes at a time when most municipalities have little housing available, and most of it is already too expensive. 

Immigration advocates and housing experts say criticism of newcomers as the cause of the housing crunch is misguided. They say immigrants are too often the scapegoats for societal and governmental failures. 

Instead, they point at the federal government for setting large targets while failing to ensure the infrastructure needed to support population growth.

‘It is disheartening’

Calls to keep immigrants out because of the cost of housing are frustrating for Meheret Bisrat, the senior manager of community development with DiverseCity Community Resource Society based in Surrey, B.C.

Bisrat says immigrants are some of the people who suffer the most from the effects of the housing crisis. 

“It is disheartening to hear those kinds of comments because I feel like it lacks a bit of compassion and understanding of … the realities of new immigrants,” said Bisrat, who oversees newcomer settlement and integration at DiverseCity.

Bisrat says newcomers often face obstacles that those already living here do not. For instance, they are likely to lack references and may not have a credit history to draw on. 

“They don’t fully know their rights, and they’re taken advantage of,” Bisrat said. 

‘We need them’

Newcomers often face discrimination as they search for a home because of their religion, the size or composition of their families or their reliance on social assistance if they are refugees, she says.       

The difficulty or inability of new immigrants to find a home makes it extremely difficult for them to settle into their new country and become fully integrated into their surroundings. 

“They are new members of our community. And we need them, actually, to be here,” she said. 

That was the argument the federal government made in November 2022 when it announced its target of 500,000 new immigrants per year.

Ottawa said newcomers were one of the main reasons Canada’s economy was able to recover from the pandemic and are an integral part of the country’s continued prosperity. 

In a written statement, the feds said immigration accounts for nearly 100 per cent of Canada’s labour force growth and is expected to account for 100 per cent of the country’s population growth by 2032.

By then, the ratio of workers to retirees is expected to shift from seven to one 50 years ago to two to one. 

The Canadian dream vs the Canadian nightmare

Andy Yan, the director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program, agrees that immigrants are an essential element of Canadian society.

Yan also sees a gap in government policies. 

“The federal government hasn’t necessarily connected the role of immigration with the need to fund infrastructure in this country,” he said. 

“While we make the promise of the Canadian dream, we seem to be very willing to expose new immigrants to the Canadian housing nightmare.”

Reticence to allow more newcomers into the country goes beyond housing concerns, Yan says. It also exposes latent racism in Canadian society. 

In Metro Vancouver, Yan says, that has often taken the form of a fear of cultural inundation from various groups of immigrants. 

“That racism avoids the deeper problems we have in terms of how we produce housing and for whom.”