Will immigration fix Canada’s housing crisis？ (ft. Cosmin Dzsurdzsa)
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Summary
In this episode of The Andrew Lawton Show, Andrew Lawton, host of the Daily Brief and host of The Andrew Lawrence Show, sits down with his colleague, Coshon Gerja, to discuss immigration and the housing crisis in Canada.
Transcript
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let's just drill down for a moment here on the math on this on the economics because the
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government says that the only way we can fill the labor shortage is through immigration okay
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there's some basis for immigrants being necessary to filling up the workforce when there are
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vacancies but the government is claiming that there's not actually going to be a housing
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issue because when we have more immigrants we'll be building more houses that's the argument
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they're putting forward and it's one that didn't quite add up to my colleague cosmon gerja host of
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the daily brief and a fantastic investigative journalist at true north who joins me now
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cosmon thanks for coming on the show here uh what do you make of this here what where is the
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government getting this idea from that uh houses will just be built you know a dime a dozen once
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we open the floodgates on immigration yeah i think it's preposterous and in my piece i call it
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a myth it doesn't really make sense that immigrants are going to come to canada and suddenly start
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building houses when you look at the statistics last month statistics canada released the labor
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survey and it found that 45 000 construction jobs were lost the month before that it was about 16 000
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so it really doesn't add up who are where are these immigrants that are building houses
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yeah it's a valid question and i know and you and i spoke about this a little on the the daily brief
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yesterday a lot of them go into the service sector and and we know there are vacancies in that sector i
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mean we've all had issues where you try to get your coffee poured and it takes you know like 25 minutes
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or something because no one's working at whatever the local cafe is and yeah that's a thing that happens
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but these are jobs that are very low paying jobs they're not a job that you're ever going to be able
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to build a house with a salary on typically in cities like toronto or vancouver especially
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whereas construction jobs pay considerably well and you can actually do very well with this so
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why is this not happening has there been any research done into this has there been any effort to
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get people into that track because that's an area where we desperately need labor in canada
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yeah no i don't think there's been much research when i looked at the statistics from 2019
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uh it shows that the most popular jobs for immigrants are service jobs health care jobs
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uh bureaucratic jobs they're not necessarily coming here building the infrastructure that we need to
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sustain such high levels of immigration they're all going to high density areas you mentioned this
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earlier and with that comes a host of problems like increases in rent uh increases in the price
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of housing increases in the price of goods also high density areas have generally have higher rates
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of crime we see this happening in in toronto and uh vancouver and other major cities so what what
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solutions uh are the liberal government proposing none really what mark miller said last week was that he
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wants to increase the number of immigrants he's he's proposing to actually make it even higher than
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than the uh one million target every two years we have right now yet we know that there's not enough
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houses being built so i i'm not sure i i don't think they even have a solution to the housing crisis and
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a part of me thinks that there's a cynical uh sort of desire to keep the housing prices high
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yeah and i i'm wondering just i want to drill down on that point with you in a second but i would also
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add here that this is not an issue of saying oh immigrants are making things difficult for native-born
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canadians because immigrants are making it difficult for other immigrants and i don't mean that in a way
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that is blaming them individually but it also means that people that are coming to canada in two years
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are dealing with what i'd say is a bill of goods that's been sold to them that's not really here that
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you can have this economic fortune in canada when they come here and find that the immigrants that
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came in a year and two years before them are still looking for homes as well and there's nothing left
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for them no you're absolutely right and i immigrated here with my family in 2003 and back then in
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kitchener where we lived you could rent a three-bedroom apartment for about a thousand dollars a month and
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that let my parents get the necessary accreditation and the the training they needed to to enter the
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professional workforce while they were doing you know cleaning jobs and watching the kids so i don't
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think that that is an opportunity that is present to many uh new immigrants anymore they have to get
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full-time jobs uh both parents usually and then they're left stuck in a position that they didn't see
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themselves being in in the first place so i think these uh high levels of um immigration targets
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we're actually cheapening the immigration experience we're making it worse for the new immigrants and
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as a country we should pride ourselves on on providing a flourishing and positive experience when
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we come to canada so making it worse is simply not the solution cosmon georgia host of the daily brief and
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investigative journalist here at true north thanks so much cosmon thank you thanks for listening to
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the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news