Are you tired of “Experts” yet?
The cost of housing in Canada has exploded. The reason for this is simple. Supply has not kept up with demand. The reason for that is also simple; Government caused another expensive problem. Since taking office Justin Trudeau has dramatically ramped up immigration and refugee acceptance. Canada has always taken in a lot of people relative to our size as a nation. For years this number was relatively stable but now Trudeau has increased the number by 600%. There is no way to find homes for these people without increasing how many homes we build each year and that has not happened, also because of government.
Governments love regulations because regulations require bureaucrats to enforce and increased taxes to pay the bureaucrats. Some regulations are necessary; most are not. Most regulations are just the way bureaucrats justify their existence and high salaries. Canada has a lot of bureaucrats and regulations which always spawns more bureaucrats and more regulations. That is why government is the only real growth industry in the country where the highest salaries are paid.
The highest-ranked Canadian city is Ottawa because bureaucrats have higher incomes on average than private-sector workers.
Canada’s runner-up is Edmonton (54th), another government town full of well-paid civil servants.
All of these bureaucrats with imaginary jobs have very real impacts on the actual economy. It is expensive and difficult to get anything done in Canada. 5 years ago I bought about 500 ft2 of land from my neighbor. The lots were large and the way they were situated it was land he could not use but I wanted it for a parking pad next to my garage. It took 5 minutes for me to reach an agreement with my neighbor and then more than a year to get government approval. If it takes more than a year to transfer 500 ft2 of unusable land between 2 agreeable parties, how long do you think it takes to get the approvals to build a condo or apartment building?
So at the same time the federal government dramatically increased new arrivals municipal and provincial governments have been working diligently to make sure nothing can get built. It does not take a genius to predict that this would be a problem. But in Canada when we are faced with problems we don’t turn to geniuses. We turn to “experts”, which is exactly what the Communist Bureau of Canada did to produce this article. Below are some of their expert solutions.
Tranjan said one argument against rent control is that it slows down housing starts and makes it harder for landlords to afford repairs and maintenance. But empirically, he said, those arguments only held true in the 1950s and ’60s when rent control was more “blunt” — like a straight freeze.
Pick something that has never worked and fundamentally can’t work and do it again.
While Tranjan argues governments need to rely less on incentivizing the private sector to build homes. He believes when profit is removed from the process of developing housing, affordability can grow.
Right removing incentive always makes people work harder.
Spassov also pointed to the National Housing Strategy announced in 2017, that provides billions in low-interest loans to developers who build units below market rents.
So you lower initial capital costs (by transferring them elsewhere) but you also lower future revenue. The net does not change or may even be negative.
Not one of these “solutions” addresses the government policies that caused the problem in the first place. They all involve some sort of rent control which always results in less supply which will just make the problem worse. Do you really think any of these “experts” have ever solved a problem in their life? Do you think even one of them has done a single day of productive work? After 3 years of watching the public health experts get everything wrong don’t you think it is time to start ignoring “experts”?
