For several decades Canada’s population growth rate hovered at about 1.0 percent annually. This rate has more than tripled in a few short years, up to 3.3 percent in 2023.
For several decades Canada’s population growth rate hovered at about 1.0 percent annually. This rate has more than tripled in a few short years, up to 3.3 percent in 2023.
But government can do much to speed it up. Why are we just taking the rate of new housing as a given, and not taking the rate of new immigration as a given?
They can mandate and make laws but they can’t make more framers, plumbers, electricians, roofers, etc. We can train more but there will still be a 2-4 year gap which leaves us another 1M houses behind. There has to be a combination of increased construction, increased services, and reduction of population growth. Once prices of and access to housing and other services normalized then open the doors again but try to tie the population growth to the growth of infrastructure.
Why not try to tie the growth of infrastructure to the population growth?
When you control both it make sense to do so but there isn’t the manpower, right now, to do so. Even when we get enough people to support that much construction the wages are not that great and the work literally destroys your body. Not many people want to do it and the ones who do can’t do it for long.
Wth so much demand for housing, wages should be pretty good? Here in California we have a housing crisis but construction wages are good, especially for skilled workers.
Depending on the trade construction is 25-35 an hour for the grunt work, around 40 for electrical/hvac/plumbing. In an industrial job you can get 25 bucks to push a broom and >45 in the maintenance department.