Canada’s Immigration has gone batshit crazy

[AbsolutSurgen]

How Canada's recruitment of foreign students failed to match labour market needs | CBC News

T.CO

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Canada’s recruitment of international students has tilted strongly toward filling spots in business programs, while doing little to meet the demand for workers in health care and the skilled...

Canada’s immigration system is broken. 
We now have 7% of the population that don’t have permanent residency. 
 

Our community colleges/private schools have become an entry point for immigrants. 

We now have Indians paying $35k to go to a fucking community college to get a business degree, and expecting to get a decent job in Canada. 
It sucks because they think they are paying for a better life, and they are spending big bucks to get a diploma that, at best, leads them to be a manager at a fast food restaurant. 
And, believe it or not, we don’t need a 300k of those a year. 
The immigrants are getting fucked over. 

[Xbob42]

1 hour ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

The immigrants are getting fucked over. 

[GeneticBlueprint]

I was just in Bolivia not too long ago visiting my wife’s family. One of her cousins left for Vancouver with his wife and kids a few days after we got there. His wife is going to a masters program for something I can’t even remember. Something business related but not an MBA. Anyways, they were aware of a lot of these factoids but still had more hope for their future going to Canada than they did where they left from. 

[CitizenVectron]

Obviously a lot of factors at play here:

• Universities (and diploma mill colleges) trying to exploit ignorant immigrants for useless degrees since they can charge them 3x tuition. Fortunately, governments are starting to crack down on this
• Canada does need immigration to keep our tax base (and therefore social services) healthy
• Canada doesn't have enough houses, and immigration makes this situation worse
  • The solution to this isn't to stop immigration, it's to build more houses
    • This is a provincial matter, but the provinces are run by conservatives almost everywhere in Canada, and their donors don't want housing prices to drop if a glut of supply hits the market

So yes, we need to massively curb the entire exploitation of immigrants for useless degrees, but that also won't really solve anything.

 

EDIT - There are some good proposals being made at local levels (supported by some higher levels of government) for quicker home building. An example is pre-approving a number of home designs which could then be made quickly and easily by any builder. This was done in Vancouver back in the 1970s, I think, and worked very well. It allows for easy supply ordering and faster construction. 

 

However, the big thing that is needed is just many, many more dense buildings in and around cities. We need tonnes of 3-8 story apartment/condo buildings, like 1+ million units. Conservative governments (including PP, if he wins the federal election next year) are going to do things like slash environmental reviews and other "red tape" which will do nothing to speed up construction (but will earn culture war points) as well as open up federal land and parks to home construction. But really we just need municipalities (and thus, provinces) to approve any density to be built anywhere. Also some kind of limit on corporate/private equity ownership of private dwellings.

[chakoo]

5 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Obviously a lot of factors at play here:

• Universities (and diploma mill colleges) trying to exploit ignorant immigrants for useless degrees since they can charge them 3x tuition. Fortunately, governments are starting to crack down on this
• Canada does need immigration to keep our tax base (and therefore social services) healthy
• Canada doesn't have enough houses, and immigration makes this situation worse
  • The solution to this isn't to stop immigration, it's to build more houses
    • This is a provincial matter, but the provinces are run by conservatives almost everywhere in Canada, and their donors don't want housing prices to drop if a glut of supply hits the market

So yes, we need to massively curb the entire exploitation of immigrants for useless degrees, but that also won't really solve anything.

 

Isn't the issue of Diploma mills also a provincial issue? Which as noted they started to crack down after the federal government put caps on the number of international students. Still, it goes without saying the big issue is housing and years of provinces sitting on their hands (which all provincial parties hold fault for).

[CitizenVectron]

1 minute ago, chakoo said:

 

Isn't the issue of Diploma mills also a provincial issue? Which as noted they started to crack down after the federal government put caps on the number of international students. Still, it goes without saying the big issue is housing and years of provinces sitting on their hands (which all provincial parties hold fault for).

 

Exactly. Provinces are to blame for this, primarily, as they control zoning and housing. Conservative governments are generally beholden to boomers and developers, however, and both groups benefit from high housing costs. The solution is just 2+ million houses to be built, and everyone knows this, but provinces won't do it. Hell, in Saskatchewan the federal government offered a bunch of cash to cities to allow fourplexes to be built anywhere that single detached homes are...and the extremely conservative provincial government is trying to fight it, saying that fourplexes "don't fit" local needs. It's because people in suburban areas don't want 4 cars parked on their street in front of their 30+ foot yards.

[BloodyHell]

4 hours ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

Exactly. Provinces are to blame for this, primarily, as they control zoning and housing. Conservative governments are generally beholden to boomers and developers, however, and both groups benefit from high housing costs. The solution is just 2+ million houses to be built, and everyone knows this, but provinces won't do it. Hell, in Saskatchewan the federal government offered a bunch of cash to cities to allow fourplexes to be built anywhere that single detached homes are...and the extremely conservative provincial government is trying to fight it, saying that fourplexes "don't fit" local needs. It's because people in suburban areas don't want 4 cars parked on their street in front of their 30+ foot yards.

Does Canada even have the contractor and trades capacity to build two million homes in any reasonable timeframe, while keeping up with all other construction? 

[AbsolutSurgen]

14 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

Does Canada even have the contractor and trades capacity to build two million homes in any reasonable timeframe, while keeping up with all other construction? 

No.  And with present interest rates, housing starts are actually decreasing.

 

Immigration is completely federally controlled.  They decide how many, and which types of visas to hand out, and to whom.

*Other than Quebec which has some control for language.

[BloodyHell]

4 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

No.  And with present interest rates, housing starts are actually decreasing.

 

Immigration is completely federally controlled.  They decide how many, and which types of visas to hand out, and to whom.

Yeah, I don’t think people understand the manpower and capital involved in building two million homes in a few years in a country of 40 million. 
 

Edit: and swathes of the country with a limited build season 

[CitizenVectron]

7 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

No.  And with present interest rates, housing starts are actually decreasing.

 

Immigration is completely federally controlled.  They decide how many, and which types of visas to hand out, and to whom.

*Other than Quebec which has some control for language.

 

There are two levers here:

• Immigration goes down (federal, which will temporarily help housing pressure, but do nothing long-term, and will hurt Canada long-term)
• Housing goes massively up (provincial, which will help both short and long-term)

It's fine to decrease immigration a bit (especially the exploitative kind, as well as temporary foreign workers used to depress local wages), but the only actual solution is to build more homes. That will require 100% provincial buy in, including provinces being willing to overrule any city-based objections to densification (like they are doing in BC). Ironically, the most left-wing government in Canada is the one making it the easiest for private developers to just build a shit tonne of apartments, condos, and homes.

 

4 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

Yeah, I don’t think people understand the manpower and capital involved in building two million homes in a few years in a country of 40 million. 

 

This is a 30-plus-year shortage we're talking about, so it can't be solved in the next few years. But we can start making headway. The issue, as I've said, is that right-wing governments have zero incentive to do anything (or centrist governments, like the Liberals) since they are beholden to people who already own most of the homes (and who don't want prices to drop when more supply hits the market).

 

Honestly, I don't care to listen (and don't take seriously) anyone who focuses on the immigration talking point while refusing to give the same or more energy to the fault of local/provincial conservative governments unwilling to take on the baby boomer and private equity groups. Then only way to solve this crisis is to force the devaluation of homes in Canada by 50%+ through the construction of millions of more homes.

[Jason]

4 hours ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

Exactly. Provinces are to blame for this, primarily, as they control zoning and housing. Conservative governments are generally beholden to boomers and developers, however, and both groups benefit from high housing costs. The solution is just 2+ million houses to be built, and everyone knows this, but provinces won't do it. Hell, in Saskatchewan the federal government offered a bunch of cash to cities to allow fourplexes to be built anywhere that single detached homes are...and the extremely conservative provincial government is trying to fight it, saying that fourplexes "don't fit" local needs. It's because people in suburban areas don't want 4 cars parked on their street in front of their 30+ foot yards.

 

A friend who lives in I think New Westminster has been trying to build an ADU (laneway house in BC parlance) for like four years. As of March he said he was finally very close to actually breaking ground. He also said he could have probably broken ground at the same time if he'd been starting now due to recent provincial reforms. 

 

Now granted he said one of those years was COVID-related delays but it still shouldn't take 3+ years to break ground on a single fucking ADU.