Canada’s housing crisis might be getting a lot more intense with its population boom accelerating even faster than its previous record. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) data shows permanent residents were up significantly in February. Beating last year’s record growth isn’t easy, but it’s on track to easily surpass the growth.
Canada Admitted 33% More Permanent Residents
Canada has ramped up the number of permanent resident admissions in 2023. Admissions hit 49.5k people in February, up 33% compared to last year. It follows a 44% increase to 50.9k in January. Needless to say, those are record months for permanent resident arrivals.
Canada’s Permanent Resident Admissions Are 38% Higher So Far
The full first quarter isn’t in yet, but it’s about to be crushed. Only the first two months hit 100.4k permanent resident arrivals in 2023, vs 113.8k for all of Q1 2022. Growth this year is about 38% faster than last year, with nearly a quarter of 2022’s total already accomplished.
Ontario, BC, and Alberta Attract The Largest Share of Permanent Residents
Typical immigration and economic hubs are the intended destinations for permanent residents. Ontario managed to capture the largest share (41% of the total), in line with its typical share. It was followed by BC (17%), and Alberta (12%)—both capturing large but significantly smaller shares of the total.
Smaller Provinces Are Seeing Fast Growth
Economic hubs captured the largest share, but smaller regions saw the most growth. Newfoundland only saw 505 permanent residents in February, but it was 159% more than last year. Saskatchewan (+105%), and Manitoba (90%) also represented a small but fast growing share of the total for the month.
Canada’s plan to expand its population for economic growth is a bit of a mixed bag. At first, it was bolstering GDP data—at the aggregate at least. Currently, it might be applying so much pressure on housing that non-productive capital use is dominating. Investment in machinery and productivity have dropped, as shelter costs consume a very large share of the economy. The dependence of the economy is now heavily slanted towards just sheltering its rapidly growing population. This comes at the expense of long-term economic growth, with the OECD forecasting Canada will perform more poorly than its advanced economy peers.
I feel sorry for the majority of new immigrants that they will not find what they are looking for.
They’re letting immigration expand knowing full well the housing crisis we’re in. Food banks
are at their highest use in history of Canada. If this isn’t intentional sabotage then I don’t know what is.
This is amazing for Canada. Keep those numbers heading up!
Pathetic
If population is growing faster than GDP, then GDP per capita is dropping, meaning that people are on average getting poorer. Adding more people may automatically make the GDP stats look nicer, but it doesn’t have that effect on an individual level.
If higher population growth means more competition for housing and therefore higher prices, while reducing the incentives for employers to compete for a limited pool of workers, then workers, house-hunters and renters are being harmed financially by increases in population while landlords and employers benefit.
For this reason I am not a fan of sending immigration numbers into the stratosphere during a housing crisis.
One would be interested in seeing the statistical breakdown of the people we are bringing in. Are they all employable? Are they all young and able to make a contribution?
Or, are they like the people I see when you go to the hospital and the emergency room is full of elderly people who can’t speak English or French, are older than 60, and using up the health care budget they had nothing to do with sustaining?
I went to an Emergency Room in Ottawa, and there were 9 people sitting there with me. 7 of them were clearly not Canadian born, and over the age of 60. If you want to know why our health care system is in the condition it is; or why it’s impossible for your Canadians to buy a house…..start by looking at who we bring in. If they can’t support themselves – sorry, we can’t afford you right now.
We have an excellent immigration system and we are definitely bringing in productive immigrants. I see it at work and I have seen it over a couple of decades. Other countries try to emulate our immigration system to boost their GDP. This presents a problem for native Canadians who now have to compete with these well paid productive guys in the RE market. I think these 60+ unhireable guys who can’t speak EN/FR you’re saw at the ER aren’t outbidding you on the 1M$ homes or 500K$ condos.
The IRCC gives stats on who we bring in for what jobs. A lot of it is IT and programmers, finance guys and people in the restaurant industry. 2/3 of our immigrants are of working age. I assume most of the rest are kids, because our point system really favours families.
If you guys are upset, then why don’t you vote for another party?
People too lazy to work hard and buy a home are made politicians won’t do what they want, but are too lazy to vote for someone else.
It’s always someone else’s fault with these people.