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New report highlights housing affordability challenges across Canada

Published

1 year ago

6 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Wendell Cox

The year 2022 marked a concerning increase in “severely unaffordable” housing markets, extending beyond the scope of the six major markets.

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy’s Demographia Housing Affordability in Canada report, released today, cast a spotlight on the pressing issue of housing affordability in Canada. This comprehensive report offers a detailed analysis of middle-income housing affordability during the third quarter of 2022, focusing on 46 housing markets referred to as census metropolitan areas.

The report goes beyond the conventional analysis of property prices, delving into the intricate interplay between house prices and income. Price-to-income ratios, a crucial metric for assessing housing affordability, have gained global recognition. Esteemed institutions, including the World Bank, United Nations, OECD, and IMF, have endorsed this measurement. The Frontier Centre for Public Policy’s housing affordability index adopts a similar approach, utilizing the “median multiple” calculation. This calculation involves dividing the median house price by pre-tax median household income.

The report sheds light on the historical context of housing affordability within Canada’s six major markets – Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa – each with populations surpassing one million. The period from 1970 to the mid-2000s witnessed relative stability in the housing affordability landscape. However, by 2005, Vancouver’s market initiated a significant shift towards unaffordability, a trend that has only intensified since the mid-2000s.

The year 2022 marked a concerning increase in “severely unaffordable” housing markets, extending beyond the scope of the six major markets. The number of severely unaffordable markets surged from 18 in 2019 to 24 among the surveyed 46 markets. In contrast, the count of “affordable” markets dwindled from eight in 2019 to a mere three.

The advent of remote work, or “telecommuting” during the pandemic led to a surge in households seeking more spacious living spaces. This surge in demand outpaced supply, resulting in a “demand shock” that further exacerbated the challenges of housing affordability.

The epicentre of unaffordable housing primarily lies in British Columbia and Ontario. Notably, Vancouver and Toronto emerged as the most severely unaffordable major markets, ranking third and 10th least affordable among 94 markets in Demographia’s International Housing Affordability Report 2022. This phenomenon extended beyond Vancouver, impacting other markets in British Columbia. Similarly, the trend reached markets beyond Toronto, prompting a net interprovincial migration as households pursued more affordable housing options.

Amidst these challenges, four markets – Moose Jaw (SK), Fort McMurray (AB), Saguenay (QC), and Fredericton (NB) – have managed to uphold their affordability. The Canadian housing market faces intensified scrutiny, with analyses highlighting the formidable task of addressing the nation’s housing crisis. This includes restoring affordability and enabling home ownership amidst obstacles such as the scale of the issue and the capacity of the home-building sector.

At the heart of the crisis lies urban containment regulation, which has driven land prices to unsustainable levels, constraining housing supply for middle income households. This scenario arises from the deliberate intent of urban containment policies to inflate land prices. Disparities in land costs across markets play a pivotal role in housing affordability disparities. Government policies, like urban containment, unintentionally contribute to government-induced inequality by inflating land prices. Practical alternatives exist to revitalize housing affordability.

Migration to more affordable housing markets has become a priority for many, as evidenced by an unprecedented population shift away from major metropolitan areas towards regions with more affordable housing options. Ensuring affordability remains in these markets is pivotal. Neglecting this could lead to replicating the ongoing affordability crisis in regions that are currently more affordable, which could limit opportunities for future generations and impact Canada’s attractiveness as an international migration destination.

About the Frontier Centre for Public Policy The Frontier Centre for Public Policy is an independent, non-partisan think tank that conducts research and analysis on a wide range of public policy issues. Committed to promoting economic freedom, individual liberty, and responsible governance, the Centre aims to contribute to informed public debates and shape effective policies that benefit Canadians.

Wendell Cox is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He is principal of Demographia.com, author of Demographia World Urban Areas and an author of Demographia International Housing Affordability (19 annual editions) and Demographia World Urban Areas. He earned a BA in Government from California State University, Los Angeles and an MBA from Pepperdine University. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers in Paris, a national university.

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Business

Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

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From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute
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Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.

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