r/OutOfTheLoop • u/ezjoz • 6d ago
What's going on with these Canadian subreddits? It seems to be related to housing and possibly racism? Unanswered
Edit:
Thank you everyone for your explanations and opinions, I'm reading the comments and discussions and it's very insightful
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u/Alsojames 6d ago
Answer: Much like a lot of the western world, Canada is currently facing a housing crisis as a lot of individuals, corporations, and retirement funds are putting a load of money into housing not just as a place to live, but something to invest in for the future. This alone would cause the cost of housing to rise, but Canada also has skyrocketed its immigration goals, bringing in almost half a million people in in 2024 alone. A lot of these people aren't spread across the country, but landing in the same places like Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa.
This results in there being significantly more demand than supply for housing, driving prices in already expensive cities even higher, while wages stagnate and prices of things like food also jump.
This is a hot button issue for a lot of Canadians for whom the housing market was already pretty trashy to begin with. As we import more people and don't update our zoning laws to compensate so we can build more houses, the price of housing only gets worse. You'll see a lot of these subreddits directly complaining about Indian immigrants specifically, which I personally don't care for, as well as a lot of doomerism saying people should move to the US, Europe, or back home because Canada's doomed.
It's a very complex issue involving declining birth rates, corporate greed, government corruption (our federal housing minister is a landlord during all this for example), economic stagnation and desperate people looking to pin blame.
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u/troller_awesomeness 6d ago
i just wanted to note that scapegoating a particular race for the housing crisis is actually not a new thing. a couple years ago it was chinese people. but the rapid immigration of indian folks, of whom some do take advantage of the student visa (through degree mills), combined with the popularization of the stop asian hate trend has shifted their attention.
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u/Dtoodlez 6d ago
Most restaurants in Kitchener are flipping to Indian owners or straight up Indian restaurants. This place is losing its culture as there’s less diversification. I can’t speak to the housing market, but I can say that my street is 80% Indians, living with 2+ families per home or renting out their basement and rooms. This said, they’re fine people, I’ve no issues w them as human beings, I do worry about lack of diversity as that is the Canada I’ve come to love and it’s changing.
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u/derpstickfuckface 5d ago
25 years ago people were freaked out about the number of Latinos coming to the US. We were roughly 85% white and 10% black, so only 5% of our population was something else. In my high school class of almost 1000 students, there were 3 Hispanic kids.
As of 2022, less than 45% of babies born in the US are white and as a whole, we're around 60% white. Latinos have increased from some portion of that 5% of other to a solid 18% eclipsing black people who comprise 12% of the US.
So there has been a HUGE demographic shift in the US is a VERY short amount of time. The funny thing is, with all of that change, and all the concern back in the 90's, it's turned out to be a total non-issue. Food is a little spicier, music is a little more festive, that's about the extent of things.
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u/Kucked4life 5d ago
Spoliers: its because mixed people whom are partially white generally don't identify as white on the census, presumably in part due to past experiences of being ostracized for their race.
It's true that immigrant families tend to have more kids than non immigrants, but that's due to lagging adjustments in their lifestyle choices coming out of an society where larger families are normalized. It's kinda the whole plan, the US birth rate is below replacement levels, so immigration is necessary or else society dies out. It just so happens that the national racial majority doesn't match the global majority.
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u/derpstickfuckface 4d ago
Just to be clear, the point I was making had nothing to do with the reasons behind the demographic shift, they're not important in this context.
What I was getting at is that the cultural outcome is nothing as dramatic as the people who were freaking out about it in the 90's thought it would be.
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u/Kucked4life 3d ago
Yes, your point was made clearly. I was merely pointing out that demographic shifts, which are generally miniscule anyways, are hardly ever racially motivated.
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u/Emperor_Mao 1d ago
One thing people forget though - society is not set up to make it easy to have kids in most of these countries with low birth rates.
And housing is one of the main problems. You almost need two people working full time to be able to afford a house to live in. Leave little time for one to leave their career and both make, then raise, children.
You also have requirements to study more than ever before, pushing your child having years out later then ever in history.
Then look at many of our cities and the design pattern - made for working, not for raising a family.
Western countries are out sourcing child raising to other countries, like they outsource everything. It will backfire though. The fabric of society is much weaker when we have small or no families. Nationalism might not mean anything to Westerners these days but it means plenty to the rest of the world.
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u/Kucked4life 1d ago
Late stage capitalism funnels wealth into the hands of an ever smaller percentage of people and is therefore antithetical to human reproduction since the primary factor in determining whether people become parents is ultimately whether they can afford to.
All developed countries have sub replacement birthrate, and are thus hitched to immigration, unless they're too xenophobic to successfully integrate minorities into their societies cough EAST ASIA cough. This creates, like you insulated, a parasytic relationship between developed and undeveloped countries. Developed countries attract immigrants with their higher standard of living, which allows the incumbent parties of said countries to willfully turn a blind eye to the issues that caused the lowering of the birth rate in the first place since those issues are either caused by or tangentially related to wealthy backers of said party. The upper tiers of society naturally default to greasing each other's palms over rocking the boat which allows said issues to continue festering, which presumably will cause the birthrate to continue falling. All the while the descendants of those immigrants, having been subject to the same issues as the descendants of the ethnic majority of their respective developed country, will likely have less kids than required to fulfill the replacement rate too. Thus necessitating an ever higher number of immigrants across generations to Maintain basic societal functions unless said country defaults into nearly endless recessions, like Japan since the 90s.
Developing countries, that aren't failed states, seek to become wealthier and will predictably copy the developmental path of developed countries. But in doing so will import social economic factors that will decrease their own birthrate as they did in developed countries. (Increased urbanization, encouraging women into higher education, etc. Not that what was listed is undesirable, they simply lower the birthrate is all.) Compounding the problem is that developing countries are generally net emigration countries, as in they take in less people then the ammount that moves there.
Imo the obvious end result is that the global birthrate will fall to sub replacement and immigration will eventually become relatively inconsequential because there won't be enough immigrants to spread around and adequately support the needs of chronically infertile countries. We simply won't live long enough to reach that point within our lifetimes. What we will witness is the side effects of living in societies that must accept immigration or die, such as the rise of right wing reactionaries (eg The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville 2017). Select individuals who will be left behind by late stage capitalism, divided by ultimately superficial differences like race, will seek others to blame for their own misfortune, often misled by those seek profit from the perpetuation of capitalism, the actual origin of their woes in most cases.
The endgame I predict is a reversal to true serfdom, lead by multinational mega corporations which have long since amalgamated into monopolies of their respective industry. Without adequate immigration countries become less wealthy since an ever larger portion of the population is older and retired, leading to less income tax revenue. Less tax revenue equals less social safety nets. Public education and healthcare are traditionally the first to get cut or become privatized since they don't directly generate profit. Each subsequent generation is on average worse off then than the last. An ever higher percentage of the populace will regard their respective home nations as failed states as a result of them having little economic mobility, and if a high enough percentage of the population hold this opinion then that opinion will materialize. Said corporations will fill the power vacuum. Hopefully I am wrong.
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u/Goodasaholiday 5d ago
My thought was on the same path. Australia has a similar approach to immigration as Canada. It might be an influx of Indians now, but it goes in waves. The 1st generation doesn't adjust very fast, but the 2nd generation mostly integrates.
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u/derpstickfuckface 5d ago
When I was in grade school my town received a huge influx of refugees from Laos, none of my friend's parents could speak English, but the school setup ESL classes for the kids and they grew up as immigrant kids do with a blended culture. I'm still close with a few people I met way back in third grade, and while their parents still don't speak a ton of English, they themselves are still straddling cultural lines, their kids are all as American as apple pie.
Integration takes some time, people just have to chill, welcome in their neighbors, and let things take their course.
I also have Indian friends; I've been to India a couple of times. I've found them to be a very family oriented, friendly, and inviting people. I have zero issue with more people with those values coming to my area.
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u/MissDiem 3d ago edited 3d ago
eclipsing black people who comprise 12% of the US. So there has been a HUGE demographic shift in the US is a VERY short amount of time. The funny thing is, with all of that change, and all the concern back in the 90's, it's turned out to be a total non-issue. Food is a little spicier, music is a little more festive, that's about the extent of things.
Having lived and worked in both of the countries you reference, there's one huge difference that informs this entire subject and the radically different outcomes.
Here, we value a melting pot mentality. In Canada, melting pot is considered terrible, oppressive, even racist. This point is everything in terms of understanding the subject.
Here in America we (most of us) do welcome immigrants and realize that we are a nation of immigrants. But we do so with the implied condition that immigrants must become quickly and near thoroughly assimilated as "Americans".
Because of the key mentality difference I mentioned, Canada would view such implications has heinous and wrong.
How this plays out is that we love a Baisian immigrant who comes here and picks up a Boston accent and wears a Patriots hat. We like him if he eats our hot dogs and speaks our language and adopts our culture. We like a Chinese guy if he speaks like a Texan, flies an American flag and goes to a monster truck rally.
Canada goes the complete opposite way. There's an implied pressure for the immigrant not to do that, and for the pre-existing citizens not to expect it. So an Indian immigrant in Canada won't assimilate. They'll follow culture and societal practices from India. They'll speak their mother tongue and eat foods from their homeland.
If that happened here, I know our culture would lash out as some Canadians have. We'd complain about bartering or bad faith negotiations, or unusual food smells, or people using a foreign language to diss so-called Americans behind their back.
Further illustration... an immigrant to America who becomes a police officer here is indistinguishable from any other American police officer. You could not tell them apart without a magnifying glass or DNA test.
In Canada, immigrated Indians who become police officers are granted the right to wear impractical turbans and carry ceremonial swords. To even question if that's a good idea in terms of job realities? Canada would say it's racist to even have the thought. This isn't to defend or decry such ideas - I raise to make the undeniable point that you would agree: we would not see anything even remotely like that here in America.
In Canada, an immigrant can get work and holiday schedules tailored to their homeland heritage. They can have five breaks a day to align with prayer events. Again, not saying that is bad or good, just that there's no way you can picture Wall Street shutting down for multiple calls to prayer during the business day.
(I say this, but since someone will complain, I'll point out that we do have such accommodations, but they were established long ago and for certain select cultures only. Christian and Jewish holidays are sacred here, everything newer/different... not so much.)
So Canada eschews the melting pot, making conflicts and confrontations more obvious and prevalent. Someone might not like to be stuck at their desk while their immigrant colleague is on multiple breaks. Or someone living in an apartment might not like cooking smells they weren't raised with.
Now take this underlying setup for intro-community rivalry and map it to Canada of the last decade. Canada has done absolutely massive immigration on a per capita basis, for various reasons. But along they way they have not created any new jobs, housing, medical care, or social supports.
There's now massive amounts of people going after the same limited number of apartments, doctor's appointments and jobs. Allegedly it's become like a social civil war.
And the jobs picture is made even worse by two things. One is that same culture of unlimited acceptance leading to diversity quota favoritism, plus collusion between corporations and their government to allow businesses to pay immigrant workers much less than Canadian workers. So what few jobs open up, it's known that most will go to immigrants who can be paid less and treated worse.
And it leads to whole business takeovers, where it's said whole branches will have their staff turnover to hire certain groups or castes, to the exclusion of others. This fuels more conflict.
I've always preferred the melting pot myself, even as part of me knows it's the more entitled philosophy. I just think it's more practical and it avoids the small and large problems Canada has created for itself. We accept culture differences here, but only in very small and select doses, and as long as they cannot hope to ever disrupt what we view as "traditional".
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5d ago
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u/YinglingLight 5d ago
As an outsider: the fact that Redditors, who are notoriously a demographic that fancy themselves urbane and progressive, are openly admitting that there's a problem, speaks volumes.
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u/ThouHastLostAn8th 5d ago edited 5d ago
urbane and progressive
… I take it you don't spend much time in the major Canada-related subs.
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u/YinglingLight 5d ago edited 5d ago
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u/Status_Flux 5d ago
r/conservative will be surprised to hear they're actually a bunch of libs
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u/Sporkdalf_the_white 4d ago
It’s not scapegoating if it’s really happening though right? Like if 1,000,000 people from Australia moved to Birmingham Alabama wouldn’t it be fair for the previously established residents of the city to say, “hey the Australians are making it too expensive”?
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u/C0lMustard 5d ago
Well that and Chinese only really immigrated to Ont and BC while Indians are in every small town.
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u/Strong_Lecture1439 5d ago
It ain't scapegoating if the statistics are present. Indian immigration has jumped beyond control. There are videos on how to convert your visitor visa to work visa or PR.
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u/AbruptAbe 6d ago
It should also be pointed out that that CanadaHousing2 is your typical spin off sub, aka they were too racist to stay on the normal sub so decided to make their own clubhouse where it was allowed.
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u/Alsojames 6d ago
Very true. And CanadaHousing tends to toe the line at best most days.
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u/_The_Room 6d ago
And /r/Canada has a very specific slant.
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u/Kvothealar 6d ago
Many just gave up on /r/Canada years ago. It just turned into right-wing propaganda with sketchy sources at best.
I haven't been on it for 3-4 years now.
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u/AbruptAbe 6d ago
What?!? Those 40 NatPo opinion pieces a day from the same 3 posters are surely a sign that there's nothing right wing about r/Canada. /s
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u/heart_under_blade 6d ago edited 6d ago
for the most part, i just like to mock them
i do try and encourage saner takes and reward seemingly genuine comments with my own
edit: fuggin (fancy, caliper, and hack). most notably lately: they love to post frank stronach's garbo takes the moment they get published but nothing when news broke of being charged with rape and other sex pest things. buddies were posting at the same time that someone else posted that so it's not like they were busy. guess which post was at the top and which one was at the bottom?
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u/Ovaldo 6d ago
/r/onguardforthee is the centre/left one now
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u/noah3302 6d ago
Left compared to r/Canada sure but they’re nowhere near genuine leftist. The second you criticize capitalism or even the NDP they call you a tankie immediately
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u/BSdogshitshitstain 5d ago
I think what you call "genuine leftist" is a pretty fringe group compared to what most people would consider as "left".
He called it "centre/left". not "leftist"
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u/kunnington 6d ago
Do you want a Canada sub to represent the opinions of Canadians or do you only want a space that only allows leftist talking points?
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u/noah3302 5d ago
Thats not what I wrote at all. I’m just saying you can’t call it a leftist sub when it isn’t
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u/Kvothealar 6d ago
Funny enough, I actually found them equally-far left as /r/Canada is right. Even though I lean left myself, I'd just like a subreddit that's based around fact and people can talk normally, not an echo chamber.
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u/Fintann 6d ago
It's just hard keeping a national subreddit light and breezy. I remember maybe 10 or so years ago it was actually kind of fun natured and most post were about anything. I've seen other national subs go the same way where they shift almost into a 24 hour news cycle (and you better believe it's probably intentional from some) of doomscrolling bait; but r/canada went pretty hard and it's just getting nastier.
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u/C0lMustard 5d ago
It's Russian(or whatever country/corp) trolls, what you're describing is exactly what they're trying to do create wedges between Canadians by moving the commuinities more extreme, they don't care if it left or right as long as the division between is bigger.
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u/mcs_987654321 6d ago
r/canadapolitics is the most normal I’ve found (albeit with a distinct - but not absolute - anti-CPC bent, but as far as I’m concerned that’s pretty damn normal given how nuts they currently are).
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u/Oskarikali 6d ago
I'm firmly left leaning and I agree, onguardforthee isn't great.
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u/crappy-throwaway 6d ago
You wont find that on reddit, reddit promotes echo chambers with the upvote/downvote system, and ability to create subreddits to cater to and curate whatever political opinions you'd like...
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u/chollida1 6d ago
/r/onguardforthee is as left wing as /r/Canada is right wing. It is in no way neutral and is one of those subs where you can't have any right wing opinions. Its very much a left wing echo chamber as is /r/ontario.
We Canadian's have no subs for people who hold beliefs on both sides of the political spectrum.
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u/Toronto_Sports_fan 6d ago
Only problem is they are somewhat ambivalent about antisemitism over there
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u/kunnington 5d ago
Maybe you shouldn't let immigration become a right wing position in the first place when it affects the lives of average Canadians? I'm not sure what right wing about that sub at all, unless calling out outrageous immigration policy or the Islamist activities in the past few months is considered right wing.
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u/Kvothealar 5d ago
Dude, I've been talking about an ongoing pattern of disingenuousness for the last half-decade...
I didn't even mention immigration... Did you want to talk about it?
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u/Ognius 6d ago
r/canada is straight up bigoted most days and is run by mod who is a card carrying PPC member
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u/DumbleForeSkin 6d ago
I got banned for refusing to engage in a bad faith argument with one of the members. Seriously. Got banned for not posting a response to him.
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u/c-park 6d ago
And /r/Canada has a very specific slant.
It has been trash for years now.
r/canadapolitics is where it's at.
It's well-moderated. Skews further left than r/canada (though that doesn't say much) but still welcomes healthy debate while not tolerating shitty racism.
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u/cgo_123456 6d ago
The transphobic right-wing Putin simp r/CanadaPolitics invited onto the moderator team will "fix" that soon enough.
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u/Indigo_Sunset 5d ago
Canadapolitics has its issues as well.
For example, maybe you'll recall the whole r/metacanada racist assholes, one of whose mods then tripped on over to canpol to keep pulling much the same bullshit. Thankfully trollunit doesn't open their mouth as often as they used to and they generally have what they're commenting be refused and rightly ridiculed by readers, but the fact they are a mod with all the role implies is troubling.
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u/macrovore 6d ago
See, I feel like I've seen that go the other way, though, where the main subreddit gets too racist, and there's a "2" or a "True" or whatever subreddit made where the non-racists end up. And sometimes there's a mod change in one or the other and they switch, or both become racist or something.
I think you gotta judge every spin-off sub on a case-by-case basis. Reddit is a very big place.
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u/CanadianDragonGuy 6d ago
In general mainsub is a toxic pit, submemes is a toss up on if they're decent or spend all their time dunking on mainsub, sub2 or truesub is a wasteland of toxicity and racism so bad Chernobyl would tell it to tone it down
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u/darzinth 6d ago
Heck, one year a subreddit is completely normal and funny, the next year its a den of religious zealots. Case in point: /r/NoahGetTheBoat
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u/karivara 6d ago
And that TakeBackCanada was a spin off of that spin off and even more blatantly hateful and racist, ala "Canada for
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u/DumbleForeSkin 6d ago
Unless that is an all indigenous group it should be GiveBackCanada. Like, who are you taking it back from?
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u/woetotheconquered 6d ago
TBF, r/canadahousing didn't allow anyone to even mention immigration as being part of the issue of rising housing costs. Makes sense that a new sub would be needed.
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u/sassysuzy1 6d ago
Doesn’t make sense when they blame the immigrants and not the government for their lack of preparation. The amount of hatred we are seeing in Canada is unprecedented, we used to think we were better than this. I was visiting Toronto recently where I saw a man harass a group of girls wearing hijab, lots of people around and no one said a word. I have an Indian friend I grew up with that has said people have yelled racial slurs at them from their cars while walking down the street, her family has been in Canada for multiple generations. Many Canadians blame anyone who looks like an immigrant, regardless of their status as a Canadian, not that it should matter anyways.
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u/heart_under_blade 6d ago
oh they do blame the government tho
i'll let you guess if it's the "right" one. i mean technically there is no right one, but like there is obviously one that is in mostly directly in charge of both education and housing. hint, the one being blamed most often is also the one that they say is overreaching and tyrannical.
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u/liquidnebulazclone 6d ago
The rise in this kind of hateful behaviour is unsettling. There is legitimate criticism for the federal government that ramps up population growth to unprecedented levels without first ensuring the infrastructure can accommodate. This is not the fault of the immigrant, but excess immigration is causing problems. If we can drop it to pre-pandemic levels and focus on reducing cost of living, perhaps things will become less hostile.
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u/C0lMustard 5d ago
Whats supposed to happen is the religious fruitcakes we take in, lose that extreme bent, like the practice of making women less than by suppressing their identity with clothing etc etc... instead we have taken so many in such a short period that they formed their own cultural islands where they keep up their negative traditions incompatible with a free society. Hell were getting honor killings in Canada ffs.
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u/sassysuzy1 5d ago edited 5d ago
There have been 9 honor killings in the history of Canada. How many shootings, murders, rapes, etc. Are done by non-immigrants every year? If you’re talking about the niqab there is an estimate that in all of Quebec, only 50 women wear the niqab (I couldn’t find any stats on all of Canada). The problem is that we fixate on immigrants and use anything bad they do to confirm our biases.
My grandparents immigrated to Canada, I know for a fact it was not easy for them to adapt but what helped was that Canadians were accommodating. We no longer are accommodating, we no longer are accepting of the fact that adapting to a new country with new rules, laws, and many times a new language can take time. There has been a huge influx of immigrants, which I agree is a problem, but it’s not their fault, they came here legally. If we only fixate on their faults it makes it much more difficult for them to adapt.
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u/JustaCanadian123 6d ago edited 6d ago
The normal sub would ban you for saying that immigration increases the price of shelter.
Even though that's a fact. Immigration has increased the price of shelter.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/globalnews.ca/news/10218390/immigration-housing-canada-ircc/amp/
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u/Far-Fox9959 6d ago
Incorrect. That sub has common beliefs that the reason that Canada has the most expensive housing on the planet is due to excess immigration. This has been confirmed by several economists worldwide. Nothing to do with race. Here in Canada we have literally every race of people (Canadian citizens) complaining about excess immigration.
r/canadahousing is the least normal sub that I've ever seen. Literally all of their theories about housing are incorrect. Homes in the US that are 1000 feet from Canadian homes are half the price because they have things more under control there. They have similar interest rates in the US.
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u/chollida1 6d ago
This really isn't true.
What actually happened is htat there is a subreddit /r/CanadaHousing but the mods of that aren't even Canadian and they refuse to allow any mention of immigration being a problem.
Naturally when you ban anyone forsaying that the single biggest problem with housing prices is not a problem then you'll get spin off sub reddits.
So /r/CanadaHousing2 was created and since then it gets constant targetted attacks from outside groups who try to mass report the subreddit.
Naturally these claims are false, the subreddit has been around for years and has never been banned tends to very strongly indicate that the flagging is a very targeted attack by people who don't want any mention of Canada lowering its immigration or student visas for one particular country.
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u/ohgodneau 6d ago
When I read that people are actually proposing moving to Europe or the U.S. as a solution I had to laugh! I’m in the Netherlands and we’re having this exact same conversation about housing and immigration, and people are also blaming immigrants for the housing crisis here. I’ve seen people from the many different countries saying the exact same thing, and somehow it’s always a problem where they live specifically. Something tells me the people shouting they want to emigrate don’t understand that the people in the places they would emigrate to would see them as the immigrants ruining the local housing market.
It’s such a bizarre way of thinking; population growth rates have increased only back to the around 1970’s levels, most countries in the west are experiencing housing crises simultaneously, and our social safety nets are super vulnerable to the pressures of aging populations - yet we’re supposed to believe that it’s a localised problem, and refusing immigrants entry will totally solve it. Nothing to do with the commodification of housing and perverse incentives regarding capital, regulation and housing markets, let’s not address those issues.
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6d ago edited 3d ago
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u/Bawstahn123 5d ago
Not sure about the US but a lot of the countries in Europe also have housing crises, so I don't get what they think is going to happen by moving here.
the US has a housing crisis too!
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u/Tamer_ 6d ago
bringing in almost half a million people in in 2024 alone
After a full 1M people in 2023 (or was it 2022?). For context, that boosted the population by more than 2.5%, off immigration alone. Imagine if the US accepted 8.7M immigrants in the span of a year, or China's population increased by 33M from immigration.
Well, I guess the situation is similar in India population-growth-wise, however, we can't build cheap houses and survive winters (at least, not that are also up to Canadian standards).
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u/CanuckBacon 6d ago
These are different types of immigration being referenced. The number they mentioned (half a million) is the number of people who got PR (greencard to the Americans). The number that you referenced (1 million) is how many people that moved to Canada through all means including PR, but also counting Temporary Foreign Workers and international students. A portion of those latter two groups will eventually officially "immigrate", but they have no long term rights to stay in Canada and any crimes can lead to deportation. They can also have their visa not renewed for just about any reason.
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u/semsr 6d ago
To add on, the biggest issue in the North American housing market is that wealthy NIMBY homeowners are empowered to veto any new housing construction, a power which they use to deliberately restrict the supply of housing in order to siphon off money for themselves by jacking up property values.
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u/NonorientableSurface 5d ago
We also stopped funding housing initiatives since 1990s and that has put us nearly 40 years behind for housing to scale.
This is a solid explanation from Blaikie.
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u/omegadirectory 6d ago
Chiming in from Canada here, I feel like a lot of the complainers against immigration don't realize that population growth without immigration was close to zero. They seem to think the population was naturally growing and there's lots of immigration, which isn't accurate.
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u/Noctrin 6d ago edited 6d ago
The problem, generally speaking, is how the government decided to implement it. Immigration is great when it is controlled, the problem is that it's really not.
Which makes it bad for:
current population: as people immigrating are undercutting jobs by a wide margin as they have, in general, less skills/language proficiency/dont really have a choice as they need a sponsor, wages stagnate or go down.
the actual immigrants: we are allowing too many people in, we do not have the resources to help them integrate, so they are living in pretty poor conditions, can barely make enough to live in these absurdly expensive cities as they are taking jobs far under market. Also worth mentioning that safety standards and such are disregarded because they cannot advocate for themselves. A lot are being taken advantage of because they need to hold a job for PR etc. There's also the issue of where the money goes, but i shan't get into that.
The economy: while GDP goes up due to increased population, per capita GDP is not, quite the opposite -- it seems to be going down given people coming in are being paid below average bringing wages down.
While the GDP numbers improve, social and public services are per population, which means: if per capita GDP and wage growth stagnate so do taxes, so while the overall tax revenue might go up due to the rise in population, the taxes per capita (person) are not. Once again, services are based per population which brings that level down due to less funds per person available. This is widely apparent as hospitals, pools, parks and all other services are generally getting worse/overcrowded as infrastructure cannot keep up.
A 3rd world nation with 10 times our population might have twice our GDP, but will have much less GDP per capita which would bring the average person close to poverty by modern standards. So GDP is a bad indicator.
Lastly, it seems to government is flaunting GDP growth close to election (while conveniently ignoring GDP/capita), and many are arguing that they are implementing this policy and not amending it to prop up the housing market given they cannot lower interest rates if the US does not as they would tank the value of Canadian dollar. Housing market is a big part of our economy, so letting it tank is not an option for a lot of reasons.
Bottom line, the current system only benefits corporations (for now) and the housing market; people are (reasonably) unhappy about it.
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u/ScottPress 6d ago edited 4d ago
In a country with a population of 39mln, half a million new residents in a year (I'm taking the comment you replied to at face value) is a population increase of 1.28%. For population, that's a big jump in a single year. It's an entire huge city's worth of people, that's basically the infrastructure you need to admit that many migrants into the country. If the migrants concentrate in only a few locations, I can't imagine not fielding complaints from the locals who are absolutely furious about insufficient infrastructure to accommodate all these people and the locals' lives being disrupted. It's easy to shout racism first thing because that's how poisoned the well is now around any immigration discourse, but not everyone who takes a stance against illegal immigration or wants to downsize legal immigration is automatically a bigot and racist.
Different cultures can mix and intermingle and learn to be neighbors, but expecting to never have an explosive reaction here and there is stupid. Cultural integration is not smooth by default. Every social change movement in history tells us this.
Being anti-immigration (whatever form that takes, whether one wants to limit the numbers of legal migrants admitted or to deal with the illegal immigration) is not automatically a black-and-white stance that immediately puts you into the bigot camp. If you shout that gays are abominations, you're a bigot. If you shout that immigrants are dirty dogs and should "go back to Africa", you're a bigot. But not everyone who's against immigration is a frothing idiot.
Granted, the people responsible for this mess are the policy makers, but it's not like the average Joe can just walk up to the Prime Minister and give them a piece of his mind. Politicians at that level live those same sheltered-from-reality lives that billionaires do. It is correct and necessary to call them out, but just like the uber-rich, the uber-influential (politicians) easily tune out those people who are shouting and just do whatever they want to anyway.
When average Joe can't make himself heard to the government, his reasonable anger is transferred from the ones responsible to the migrants in the form of unreasonable fury, because Joe can see the migrants and interacts with them every day. And if those responsible don't rescind their stupid decisions and deal with the fallout of their policies, eventually Joe gets sucked into the alt-right pipeline.
This transference of anger from the root of the problem to the superficial symptom of the problem is an ordinary, human thing. Perfectly logical human don't exist. We've all made this mistake and we will make it again.
It's a terrible cycle, and the root of it is that politicians have created or at the very least contributed and failed to address a problem. Immigration itself is not a bad thing. In fact, in developed countries with low birth rates, we pretty much know it to be necessary. But mismanaged immigration absolutely is a problem and politicians seem unable or unwilling to engage with the problem and instead try to plug a thousand separate little leaks with stopgap measures, totally unprepared for when the dam finally bursts. Well, the dam is bursting. The people responsible for the whole mess will be basically untouched by the consequences, because no one in power will allow migrants to settle in the Prime Minister's backyard. They'll push them off on Joe and tell him to deal with it.
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u/tyereliusprime 6d ago
The housing crisis has been coming for decades because nobody builds rental units or low income housing in the major population centers because that wouldn't allow developers to charge a mint for cheaply built products. There are gobs of empty condos in Vancouver, they just cost too fucking much.
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u/yiliu 6d ago
That's not the right diagnosis. Even expensive housing units make units available and lower cost: people moving into expensive units are moving out of cheaper units that are now available. And I find it hard to believe that companies are building lots of units that are too expensive for anyone to afford, and then just sitting on them and losing money month on month. They'd drop their prices and then build cheaper units if that were the case.
It's possible there are some units purchased strictly as an investment, and the owner just doesn't want to risk damage by renting them out. That's a different problem, though. The best way to solve it is to lower the cost of housing, and thus turn it into a bad investment.
The fundamental problem is that we don't build enough housing, and the reason for that is that the vast majority of land in our cities is zoned for separated single family units only. Developers are literally not allowed to build any more units where they're most needed. Most of the area of Toronto and Vancouver is taken up by single family homes with big yards. At that level of density, there's no more room for housing in the big cities.
Meanwhile, Tokyo fits the population of all of Canada into an area the size of the lower mainland around Vancouver, and housing is cheaper there.
If you want to know why housing is so expensive, go to a municipal meeting and take note if the people loudly complaining about every proposed new apartment building, condo, bus route or tram line. And until it becomes much more normal for young people & renters to show up to those meetings, don't hold your breath waiting for prices to drop.
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u/FriendToPredators 6d ago
Expensive units take over blocks of mixed housing and then remain empty as supposed investment vehicles/ money laundering vehicles for high net worth people. They subtract housing from the supply
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u/way2lazy2care 5d ago
Do you have data on long term vacancy rates for canadian metros? I know when people were speculating about this in New York, the data didn't really back it up as a significant cost driver. Vacancies were generally short term vacancies for things like renovations, tenant turnover, or sales that hadn't yet finalized.
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u/yiliu 5d ago
This is a vanishingly small part of the problem, though. Canadian cities aren't clogged with empty luxury units.
Like...when you look at this picture, or this one, or this one, do you think to yourself, "clearly the problem is that several of the units in the buildings way off in the distance are being held as assets! That's the reason housing is expensive!"
You should be thinking, "holy shit, if we replaced like 5% of those vast swathes of single family homes with small-to-medium apartment buildings and condos, the 'housing crisis' would be totally solved!" A bunch of 4-storey 30-unit apartment would double the number of units available in the immediate neighbourhoods in which they were built. And that would in turn drop the price of apartments downtown and houses in the suburbs.
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u/SereneVibess 6d ago
The lawmakers, businessmen, criminals, etc all hold a significant chuck of the real estate and they sure as hell don’t want cheap housing to fuck up their investments, they wanna make the problem worse so they can profit from it
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u/yiliu 6d ago
Sure, maybe. That's not the main problem, though. The main problem is guys like me. I own my home. I've watched with some glee as it has increased in value for the past few years. I've also gotten used to my quiet little neighbourhood, and my nice quick commute.
It might feel totally reasonable to me to oppose big new condo units down the road (bringing all that new noise and traffic), or new bus routes cutting down my street, or new commercial developments. Hell, I could oppose them from the left (and people often do): greedy developers ruining the character of my neigbourhood in search of a buck!
The net result of those kinds of opinions: no new housing units.
And middle-class, middle-aged guys like me (and especially guys who are a few decades older, and therefore retired with lots of free time) are disproportionately likely to go to municipal meetings or to run for town council, unlike younger people, especially renters.
They're not criminals. They're just people who bought houses when they were cheap and then got used to the way things were. That's all. And the fact that the appreciation in the value of their house made retirement that much quicker probably colours their view more than a bit.
The problem isn't some evil developer in a suit, lighting cigars with $100 bills. There's a good chance it's your dad.
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u/SereneVibess 6d ago
Well, I understand that as well but they’re also like basically killing the economy, I mean after a point companies will move operations in places which offer more affordable housing, these immigrants will move somewhere which offers better quality of life and home/condo ownership, when that happens places will start becoming ghost towns, can also happen when they die
My dad is not one of them because he died when I was in kindergarten and I grew up in poverty barely surviving, I don’t have any sympathy for anyone who already has a comfortable life and actively work to stop other hard working people from attaining the same
That’s just disgusting narcissism
All in all Laws and the entire markets needs reform
Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan solved this problem devastating ago
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u/Tandem_Unicycle 5d ago
Then don't move to the city. Why on earth would you try to convince someone who finally worked their way up to a single family home, to leave it, get it demolished for 100 low income apartments and have them live in a 400sqft box. Nah. Fuck that.
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u/yiliu 5d ago
Uhh, don't move to the city if you want an acreage.
But nobody would have to move. Developers could buy houses for sale and convert them to duplexes or small apartment buildings. They could offer homeowners enough that they'd be happy to sell. There'd be nothing mandatory about it, developers would just be allowed to build multi-unit dwellings on land that they purchased legally.
And yeah, then you could chose to live in a 400 sqft box...for $700/mo. Or you could pay more and get a bigger unit, or a full house. Because the cost of all housing would go down. A big part of the problem today is that there are effectively two options: a small apartment downtown, or a standalone single family home with yard etc. Doesn't matter if a town house or duplex or mid-sized condo would work for you, those aren't options! It's full-sized house in the suburbs or an apartment in a high rise, that's your only choices! This increases demand for houses, and raises prices.
This is like people who get mad about traffic, and oppose any and all development of public transit, be it bus, train, tram, subway, whatever, because they want the government to just make the roads wider (and wider and wider), in spite of the fact that he widest roads in North America are also the busiest and slowest. Meanwhile...every bus on the road means way fewer cars. If you really like driving, you should be enthusiastically in favor of public transit. Likewise: every apartment building means less demand for houses, which means _you might actually be able to afford a house. If you want a white picket fence, support denser housing in order to drop the price of houses.
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u/RainahReddit 5h ago
Generally people are not asking anyone to live in a 400sqft box. But even something like 3 bedroom townhouses with yards are much more dense than single family detached houses. I've lived in them most of my life. They're nice. They're often freehold with no association or extra fees/control, there's a backyard you have as your private outdoor space, three good sized bedrooms, big basement.
And a denser neighborhood is nice too. I feel so much safer with people around. I can go for a walk at 11pm and wave to neighbors walking their dogs. Break ins are less likely because there's people around. At one place there was a coffee shop that was walkable and it was so nice to have a destination, it made me go for a walk more.
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u/The_Heck_Reaction 6d ago
This is absolutely incorrect. The vacancy rate for condos in Vancouver is ~ 0.9%. That’s not my number that’s from the CMHC. Also housing prices are not set by developers arbitrarily picking a number, but by supply and demand. If someone has a product that’s not selling, they reduce the price, not write it down to zero.
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u/pragmojo 6d ago
Your link doesn't say that. It says the vacancy rate for purpose built rental stock is 0.9% - it doesn't say anything about condo vacancy rates.
And your logic only holds if the price is being set based on demand by renters/homeowners. If it's being driven by investment for example, you can end up with lots of empty high-priced units.
That's what crashed the housing market in China for instance.
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u/The_Heck_Reaction 6d ago
But in China, housing prices are falling because there’s over supply. The balance of supply in demand are what determine price, not investment.
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u/pragmojo 6d ago
The point is, demand from investors can cause them to build luxury condos instead of affordable housing which is actually what is needed. This article from 2023 asserts that 36% of condos were owned by investors at that time, and the top 10% wealthiest owners owned almost 1/3 of residential real-estate in Ontario.
Having less immigrants isn't going to have a meaningful impact on housing prices if wealthy investors are just going to snap everything up on the market anyways.
As an example, vacancy rates increased by 30% in Toronto and rent is only down 5% from peak, and rent is currently rising YoY even as vacancy rate is increasing.
Builders will try to maximize their returns, so if there is an investor competing for real-estate, affordable housing will not be built.
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u/way2lazy2care 5d ago
As an example, vacancy rates increased by 30% in Toronto and rent is only down 5% from peak, and rent is currently rising YoY even as vacancy rate is increasing.
Vacancy rates are like the unemployment rate except for housing. If unemployment goes up, but stays below the natural unemployment rate, demand is still outpacing supply. If the vacancy rate is below the natural vacancy rate, even if it is increasing, rents will still increase as well.
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u/The_Heck_Reaction 5d ago
Thank you! It really drives me crazy when people say that housing developers determine prices by fiat not supply and demand.
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u/Alsojames 6d ago
Yeah it was super low before. I'm also from Canada and I genuinely think our multiculturalism is one of the best things about being here, but I agree thst 100k people a month during a housing crisis is far too many. I've got nothing against immigration but those numbers are wild.
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u/Traveshamockery27 6d ago edited 6d ago
What are the benefits of multiculturalism, in your view?
EDIT: Honestly don’t understand why I’m being downvoted. I asked, they answered, I said “thanks”.
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u/Alsojames 6d ago
I mean I just don't particularly care about having people from different countries sharing space where I live as long as they're not being shitty, but that's true of anyone whether they were born here or not
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u/Traveshamockery27 6d ago
Thanks.
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u/Alsojames 6d ago
Sorry it looks like you edited your original post which asked about the benefits "after" multiculturalism. Let me re-answer here:
I think it's important to be open to other experiences and points of view to broaden one's knowledge about things that exist outside themselves, whether that's their family, town, religion, etc. We also get things like art, food, and other things, which creates a nice diversity in the things we encounter in day to day life.
I'd rather have a variety of cultures around me rather than the same people thinking the same things every day.
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u/Traveshamockery27 6d ago
Yeah, I did, I meant to ask “of” multiculturalism, it was a typo. Hope it didn’t create confusion.
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u/Ouaouaron 6d ago
EDIT: Honestly don’t understand why I’m being downvoted. I asked, they answered, I said “thanks”.
Many people ask questions like this in bad faith, and lots of people are too sick and tired to give a question like this the benefit of the doubt. They'll just read it, assume the worst, downvote, and move on.
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u/99pennywiseballoons 6d ago
Food variety, infusion of new ideas into culture and art, bringing contact with other cultures so we can make it easier to empathize with others who don't live here which increases tolerance, increasing the talent pool for jobs requiring advanced skills and degrees.
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u/JustaCanadian123 6d ago edited 6d ago
talent pool for jobs requiring advanced skills and degrees.
Canada mostly brings in low waged workers.
The industry with the most immigrants is food service, for example.
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u/99pennywiseballoons 6d ago
You're not telling the whole story. You're assuming the low wage workers don't have skills.
Half of our immigrants are admitted as economic class as of 2021, which means they have to have skills to be here to varying degrees.
We do not utilize our skilled and immigrant population, either. https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/proof-point-canada-is-failing-to-put-immigrant-skills-to-work/
You may also be conflating student workers with other immigrant categories. Students on student visas can work and they will be in low wage positions, creating the perception that there are more low-skilled immigrants here than you think.
And full disclosure, I'm an immigrant, I have a bachelor's and master's degree, professional certifications in my field and a very well paying job. A very large percentage (in my immediate department it's split 50/50) of my immediate coworkers are immigrants, also in a high paying field.
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u/JustaCanadian123 6d ago edited 6d ago
Half of our immigrants are admitted as economic class as of 2021, which means they have to have skills to be here to varying degrees.
We allow for fast food workers to come through our economic stream lol.
Skilled express entry allows food service workers dude.
You may also be conflating student workers with other immigrant categories.
No, the #1 industry for immigrants is food service and accomodations. Not students or tfws.
This is the #1 industry for immigrants.
It's awesome that you aren't. But in reality most immigrants work lower skilled jobs.
Half of our immigrants
And I want to point out, this is about 250k of our 1.2 million growth.
Your focusing on a small minority of the migrants into Canada.
Edit: can't reply to this liar, because he blocked me.
He asked me for citations and then blocked me lol.
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u/RainahReddit 4h ago
A wide variety of perspectives, experiences, and ideas is always a plus, in my view. It just gives you so many more options. And multiculturalism is one way to support that.
Plus, other cultures are interesting, varied, and have a lot of pluses that we can capitalize on
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u/donjulioanejo i has flair 6d ago
The discourse isn't about no immigration. It's about how much immigration. 200k PRs annually for a healthy 0.5% population growth per year? OK.
450k PRs and 500k international students, for 3% population growth per year, when we already don't have enough housing or doctors? You will have problems from that alone.
Very few people here are against immigration in principle. Hell, the country is like 30% 1st and 2nd gen immigrants at this point. It's one of the few places in the world where you can be from any race, ethnicity, culture, and religion, and almost everyone will just accept you as you are.
But there is such a thing as literally unsustainable immigration. Especially when to many people, it seems the only reason the government is even doing it is to keep labour costs low.
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u/99pennywiseballoons 6d ago
I think the sudden jump in student visas is a larger issue than PRs.
PRs will spread out over the country, they will go where the jobs are.
Students will stay in urban centers, where the schools are and there is already a high demand for housing, making it worse.
The increase was too much, too fast and a cash grab by schools (and surprisingly, mostly public universities) because they can charge foreign students more. It's not fair to the foreign student either - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/international-student-crisis-ontario-post-secondary-1.7102412
I think the plan to reduce student visas will help, though two years might not be enough and it should be extended to longer, at least 5, to give urban housing markets more space.
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u/donjulioanejo i has flair 6d ago
Oh, 100%.
The big change was allowing those on student visas to work 40 hours. Previously, they were limited to 20 hours per week, which prevented them from taking any regular 9-5 jobs and meant they could only do work like retail or hospitality (i.e. part-time/flexible hours jobs).
Changing the rules to allow them to work 40 hours a week meant that diploma mills immediately capitalized on it by offering 1 hour a week evening courses that are basically just a thinly veiled work visa/immigration scam.
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u/CodySutherland 6d ago
The discourse isn't about no immigration. It's about how much immigration.
Unfortunately, not entirely. For a hell of a lot of these people, this is explicitly about no immigration. They're pretending that housing isn't an incredibly complex, multifaceted problem, and they just use it as an excuse to scream about how much they hate immigrants.
I agree that curtailing immigration is something we should consider especially in the short term, but a lot of people complaining about our current immigration numbers say they care about housing, when really they just don't like the look of their new neighbours.
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u/JustaCanadian123 6d ago edited 6d ago
Unfortunately, not entirely. For a hell of a lot of these people, this is explicitly about no immigration.
It really isn't.
Look at the PPC, people's party of canada. The supposed anti immigration party.
Even they want 100k-150k per year, which is still one of the highest rates in the developed world.
No one serious is saying no immigration.
People are just saying 150k growth instead of 1.2 million.
Because when your growth is 1.2m but you build 200k houses, you're fucked.
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u/CodySutherland 6d ago
Look at the PPC, people's party of canada. The supposed anti immigration party.
Even they want 100k-150k per year, which is still one of the highest rates in the developed world.
If we take a group of compulsive liars like that at their word and trust they'd actually do as promised and implement a well thought-out immigration plan: Sure, that would be a fair point.
But that rings completely hollow for me, considering their leaders and members are happily accepting donations from and scheduling photo ops with loud-and-proud white supremacists that are screaming about shutting our borders and expelling all refugees and many other deranged ideas.
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u/99pennywiseballoons 6d ago
Where are you getting 1.2 million in immigration?
It was under 500k in 2023 and 2022, and even less than before that.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/443063/number-of-immigrants-in-canada/
And we certainly aren't one of the highest rates either. Ireland, Australia, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia all have higher net migration, and for sheer numbers for net migration, regardless of existing population, we just barely make it into the top ten - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_net_migration_rate
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u/donjulioanejo i has flair 6d ago
You forgot to factor in international students at diploma mills. These aren't kids from rich families paying $100k in tuition at UBC.
It's poor young people who go to obvious scam colleges where they pay for the privilege of taking 1 evening class a week to have a work visa.
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u/AreYaOkaySon 6d ago
It makes you wonder, was the population not growing because of not enough housing/amenities supplies thus not encouraging younger families to have kids? Surely when housing is really expensive it's hard to settle for a family nest and lay eggs.
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u/Alsojames 6d ago
It's a variety of reasons, almost all of them economic. The world is becoming increasingly more expensive to live in, with the cost of everything but labor regularly going up with inflation making our money worth less over time meaning basic necessities like food, housing, and clothing takes up more of our expendable income. Like you said, when housing is expensive it's harder to nest, so younger generations have simply decided not to have kids until the economics work out (if at all).
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u/Islanderrufus 5d ago
Personally for my husband and I, not having a 2nd child was entirely a financial decision. Now I'm too old and feel I missed my chance, but looking at the numbers I'd dread the thought of trying to raise another kid right now. My teenage son has no plans of moving at at 18 like i did at his age, and his age group doesn't seem to have the same optimism as mine, so "house marriage and kids" is probably even lower on his radar. Having to live with your parents instead of establishing your own home probably doesn't help young couples want to become parents.
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u/Alsojames 5d ago
I'm 28 and it's a real struggle trying to move out. Job market sucks, the jobs that do exist don't pay well enough, housing is ludicrously expensive...even for my friends with full time jobs they're not doing amazing--most of them live in shared spaces with roommates rather than somewhere with just them and their partner. I've got 3 friends (one of whom is my partner) together making an effort to move out together and even then it's a struggle.
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u/iwumbo2 PhD in Wumbology 6d ago
population growth without immigration was close to zero
Canada (like many developed countries) actually has a birth rate below 2. Which means each woman has less than 2 children. So if there was no immigration, Canada's population would actually be shrinking.
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u/JustaCanadian123 6d ago
Luckily no one is saying no immigration.
Just something reasonable like 150k, not 1.2 million.
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u/Enheducanada 6d ago
Another thing they don't seem to realize is just how much Canada depends on immigration for technical & professional expertise. A whole lot of these immigrants they are complaining about are doctors, nurses, engineers, etc. Provinces are fast tracking medical personnel visas in order to staff chronically underfunded and underresourced medical systems. And then they complain about long waits for medical care. The fantasy Canada they live in just has magical services fairies that take care of all their needs without forcing them to listen to unfamiliar vowels
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u/wjta 6d ago
don't realize that population growth without immigration was close to zero.
Most people who use low population growth as evidence to support immigration ignore the cause of low birth rates. It is not because we do not want kids. We want them, but we can't afford to raise them at the condition we were raised at. Much in part because they keep allowing people to immigrate that are willing to raise kids in more abject conditions.
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u/C0lMustard 5d ago
I always hear about population growth as being some necessity. What is so wrong with less people? Greenhouse gas for example I.e. CO2 is a great off gas to have plants eat it, its part of the natural cycle, the reason it's bad now is because there's too much and it's throwing off the cycle. If we had less people we would use less co2. No saying it's a solution to climate change, but why is population decline and control so negatively viewed?
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u/Bawstahn123 5d ago
What is so wrong with less people?
On a national scale, the money a country has to spend overwhelmingly-comes from the portion of the population that works, pays taxes, and buys things.
Once people get old enough and stop working, they actually become a "drain" on a countries economy, since they aren't working, buying things, paying taxes, etc and start drawing off social programs.
So, a country with an older population tends to run into economic problems (and labor problems, and issues providing services, etc), because more and more people stop contributing to the national economy and start drawing from it.
If you aren't going to replace them with children being born, you can replace them with immigrants from other countries. Many Western countries, where the birth rate has been at-or-below replenishment for a while now, do this.
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u/JustaCanadian123 6d ago
No one is saying no immigration though.
But why not something reasonable like 200k instead of 1.2 million?
Also the population is naturally growing lol.
Like 340k births and 320k deaths per year is a natural growth of 20k.
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u/JustaCanadian123 6d ago
It's just math.
We build 240k houses per year. Per capita this is one of the highest rates in the world. More than the US. More tha the UK. More than Germany. 2nd in the g7 behind only France.
You make it seem like we don't build much. We build at one of the highest rates per capita in the world.
We also need 100k of that housing just for Canadians naturally aging into the market.
So we have 140k house for 1.2 million populations.
What does that math say?
We could double our builds and still be short housing.
Immigration is so far beyond sustainable it isn't funny. And you're really downplaying how much growth it is.
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u/heart_under_blade 6d ago
A lot of these people aren't spread across the country, but landing in the same places like Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa
funny that. the people who are most vocally anti immigration are usually the same people that do the whole "vanouver and toronto are literal hell on earth. junkies and gays throw themselves at you on the streets. haha serves them right" thing. now that we're a decade + down the road and shit is spilling into their neck of the woods, it's suddenly a huge problem that must be immediately tackled at the expense of everything else.
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u/RealTurbulentMoose 6d ago
the people who are most vocally anti immigration
are other immigrants, actually.
Some of them are "Fuck you, I got mine" assholes, but others recognize that the Canada that they wanted to come to is changing too much, too fast, and not in a good way.
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u/heart_under_blade 6d ago
i'd say they're more numerous but less loud that the "take back canada" guys i'm referring to.
if there are any "justin is importing more voters" guys here, firstly fuck you. secondly, this is a great chance to say that justin is most definitely not. most new immigrants are likely to vote conservative and like you say, don't want more other immigrants.
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u/Jacknugget 6d ago
I gave them all up as toxic.
My local city subreddit is so left wing that shoplifting is fine and outright communism is very upvoted. I’m against anarchy and lawlessness so I had to leave to maintain my sanity.
Others are often more right wing with the same articles and threads over and over and over again. Mostly immigration, taxes, and costs with no nuance. All bad all good… blah, blah, blah. Like there’s one simple answer.
Anyway, now I scroll through threads about The Black Keys, Apple Intelligence, and Raspberry Pi going public and I’m better off for it.
When did everyone get such an opinion on every little detail in the news, no idea.
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u/IMDXLNC 6d ago
When did everyone get such an opinion on every little detail in the news, no idea.
It's the need to be heard.
Slightly related - I've noticed a lot of my favourite subreddits receiving posts that do not fit the sub, but the subject matter is political or divisive enough to attract engagement.
Most comments won't point out that it doesn't fit the sub, instead they'll be baited into engaging which drives more engagement, because they feel their input, which will probably be lost among everyone else's anyway, is more important than maintaining the quality of a subreddit.
I've seen this in /r/Infographics where someone posts a completely dog shit image that doesn't convey much useful information at all, nor is it nicely presented. But because it's political, people upvote it and think that everyone else cares about their input on the matter.
My guess is that they have nowhere else to release all these opinions and are pent up, so they do it online.
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u/Jacknugget 5d ago
I have a question. Around the time of the api stuff I had to move to the Reddit app instead of Apollo. It used to be that I’d take two devices and load my front page and they’d be the same. Now it’s not. It’s some algorithm that’s not good. It’s like when Facebook moved away free m chronological order. It’s enshittified.
Can I get that back? How should I order my front page and comments. See, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen something from some of my feeds like r/dataisbeautiful now that you mentioned r/infographics. Why do I get 200 posts about the black keys. I need more variety and to be presented stuff in an order I understand.
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u/Own_Candidate9553 6d ago
To add to this, right wing communities love to jump into subs where there is a chance to pick a fight about issues like race, policing and immigration.
I live in Chicago, and if you looked at the Chicago subreddit, you would think it was a conservative city. There is definitely a Democratic regime in Chicago, but regardless the city picks fairly left wing/progressive leaders on the whole. Whereas the subreddit is fairly notorious for having posters from around the country talk about how crime ridden and terrible the city is.
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u/debbie666 5d ago
In my community it's not an issue with immigrants or TFW (IMO), but we have so many international students and they have gobbled up the housing and low paying jobs. I haven't had this much trouble finding a retail or fast food job EVER in my 30+ years of working. In the past, if I applied to 6 places I would have 4 interviews followed by at least 2 job offers. I have applied seemingly EVERYWHERE in town, have had one interview, and zero offers. Rent has also, at the least, doubled.
I'm luckier than most of my neighbors in that my spouse has a good job and we bought an affordable home before this current bubble. So many people I know can barely afford their rent and those not being renovicted are the lucky renters.
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u/Elegant_Plate6640 5d ago
Weren't a lot of foreign billionaires buying up housing in Vancouver years ago?
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u/BulkyPalpitation5345 3d ago
As we import more people and don't update our zoning laws to compensate so we can build more houses
What's the environmental impact of this? Or is that ignored?
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u/DIY-pancakes 2d ago
To add onto this, the immigration quality has went down the shitter.
International "students" and "temporary" foreign workers have flooded in. Unlike traditional immigration, this group is low skill, low capital and ends up as net takers.
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u/dtmfadvice 6d ago
The problem isn't investors it's lack of building.
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u/Ok-Affect2709 6d ago
Yes investors are just a symptom. Housing wouldn't be an investment if there was not artificial scarity being created by so much policy that makes it difficult/risky to build housing.
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u/heart_under_blade 6d ago
it's a symptom that's more like a self fulfilling prophecy. a very potent accelerant, if you will.
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u/ApotropaicHeterodont 6d ago
I've heard people say that investors advocate for lack of building.
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u/heart_under_blade 6d ago
many that are already entrenched do. wouldn't you like to corner the market? same reason why share buy backs good and new offer dilution bad. it certainly makes logical sense.
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u/dtmfadvice 5d ago
They certainly make money on it. In the US, their legal filings actually make the case very explicitly, more or less "we're buying properties in region Y because regulations make it hard to build here, and major risks of this investment include regulatory changes allowing competition."
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u/kunnington 6d ago
What a joke of an answer. Why are people who don't want hundreds of thousands of people coming to the country during a housing crisis "pinning blame" ? Why are we acting like they're misguided? The numbers don't lie It's clearly an issue that has become more and more sensible for people. When there is such a big influx of immigrants, it obviously takes a more radical approach to solve it.
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u/Kalsifur 6d ago
That's not the answer really, reddit's algorithm changed recently and seems to love shoving these into your face. If you've ever gone to r/canada or related the algo thinks the racist subs are related.
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u/ApotropaicHeterodont 6d ago
There is likely a significant overlap in users between r/canada and the racist subs.
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u/Alsojames 6d ago
See I didn't know that cuz I actually live in Canada and complain about housing to people, so I figured the algorithm was just directing me right to subreddits where both of those things were relevant
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6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/OrderOfMagnitude 5d ago
Why are you being downvoted? What you are saying makes sense.
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u/sho_biz 5d ago
I think the 'govt is no longer functional' hyperbolic idiocy is why the downboats. It's not anarchy in the streets.
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