Business
Costly construction isn’t the culprit behind unaffordable housing

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Wendell Cox
Land restriction creates what amount to land cartels. A now smaller number of landowners gain windfall profits, which, of course, encourages speculation
The latest Demographia report on housing affordability in Canada, which I produce for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, reveals that over half of the 46 Canadian housing markets we assess are severely unaffordable. In fact, Vancouver and Toronto rank as third and 10th least affordable, respectively, among the 94 major global markets included in our latest international housing affordability study.
To evaluate housing costs, we utilize the “median multiple,” which divides the median house price within a given market (census metropolitan area) by its median household income. A multiple equal to or less than 3.0 is categorized as “affordable,” while anything exceeding 5.0 is labelled “severely unaffordable.”
Among the major Canadian housing markets, Vancouver (with a median multiple of 12), Toronto (9.5), Montreal (5.4), and Ottawa-Gatineau (5.2) fall into the severely unaffordable category. Vancouver has maintained a high median multiple for several decades, while Toronto has been in this range for approximately two decades. The increased prevalence of telecommuting has recently contributed to Montreal and Ottawa-Gatineau’s affordability challenges, leading to a surge in demand for larger homes and properties in more distant suburbs. In contrast, housing in Edmonton (4.0) and Calgary (4.3) remains comparatively affordable.
In Toronto and Vancouver, the implementation of international urban planning principles, particularly those promoting anti-sprawl measures like greenbelts and agricultural preserves, has led to unprecedented price hikes. This “urban containment” approach has consistently driven up land values where it has been adopted. And high land values rather than increased construction costs are what explain the substantial disparity between severely unaffordable and more budget-friendly markets.
Land restriction creates what amount to land cartels. A now smaller number of landowners gain windfall profits, which, of course, encourages speculation. Maintaining or restoring affordability requires eliminating windfall profits by ensuring a competitive market for land.
Another issue arises from urban planners’ preference for higher-density housing, such as high-rise condos. Some households may prefer high-rise living, but families with children typically seek housing with more land, whether detached or semi-detached. When they’re priced out of good housing markets, their quality of life suffers and they may even fall into poverty.
The troubling paradox is that unaffordable housing is far more common in markets like Vancouver and Toronto, which have embraced the planning orthodoxy — which is supposed to produce affordable housing. The same applies to international markets like Sydney, Auckland, London and San Francisco, where urban containment and unaffordable housing have gone hand in hand.
What’s the solution? Give up on urban containment and make more land available for housing. But wouldn’t that threaten the natural environment, as critics of Ontario’s recent attempt to allow development of a sliver of its greenbelt argued?
Not at all. It’s true that land under cultivation in Canada has been declining steadily over the years. But the culprit is improved agricultural productivity, not urban expansion. According to Statistics Canada, between 2001 and 2021, agricultural land shrank 53,000 square kilometres. That’s about equal to the land area of Nova Scotia. And it’s about triple all the area urbanized since European settlement began. Even in Ontario and B.C. where most of the severely unaffordable markets are concentrated, urban expansion from 2016 to 2021 took up less than one-quarter of the agricultural loss over that period. Urban expansion is not squeezing out agricultural land.
Given all this, what should we do about affordability? In my view, three things:
First, it’s essential to acknowledge that Canadians are already addressing the issue by relocating from pricier to more affordable regions. Housing is more affordable in the Atlantic and Prairie provinces and areas in Quebec east of Montreal. So it’s not surprising there is now a net influx of people to smaller, typically more affordable, locations. In the past five years, markets with populations exceeding 100,000 have collectively witnessed over 250,000 people moving to smaller markets.
Second, make more land available for development in increasingly unaffordable markets like B.C., southern Ontario, and the Montreal-Ottawa corridor. One way is with “housing opportunity enclaves” (HOEs), in which traditional, i.e., not high-density, housing regulations would apply, but essential environmental and safety regulations would. The aim would be to provide middle-income housing at the price-to-income ratios that were typical before urban containment came along and housing across the country was largely affordable.
Market-driven development would be ensured by relying on the private sector to provide housing, land, and infrastructure, a model that has been successful in Colorado and Texas. Current residents would maintain their property rights but could sell to private parties and First Nations for development.
HOEs would be situated far enough outside major centres to take advantage of low-priced land, prioritizing areas with the largest recent agricultural land reductions. Communities likely would resemble Waverly West in Winnipeg or The Woodlands in Houston, with ample housing space and yards for families with children.
These new communities would attract people working at least partly from home. Jobs would naturally follow, creating self-contained communities where most commutes occurred within the HOE. To ensure a competitive market and prevent land cost escalation, HOEs must have ample land available.
Third, public authorities should allocate an ample amount of suburban land to safeguard reasonable land values in the Prairie and Atlantic provinces, as well as in Quebec east of Montreal. This would allow currently more affordable markets such as Quebec City, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Moncton and Halifax to accommodate interprovincial migrants without jeopardizing their affordability.
Provincial and local governments would need to monitor housing affordability multiples on at least a five-year cycle, and legislatures, land use authorities and city councils would have to allow enough low-cost land development to maintain price-to-income stability.
It’s not enough just to provide enough building lots to meet projected demand. The goal should be to enable builders to provide housing at prices middle-income households can afford. The key to that is affordable land.
Wendell Cox is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He is the author of 2023 Edition Of Demographia Housing Affordability In Canada and has been featured on Leaders on the Frontier – Cost of Living Under Crisis With Charles Blain.
Business
Cuba has lost 24% of it’s population to emigration in the last 4 years

MxM News
Quick Hit:
A new study finds Cuba has lost nearly a quarter of its population since 2020, driven by economic collapse and a mass emigration wave unseen outside of war zones. The country’s population now stands at just over 8 million, down from nearly 10 million.
Key Details:
- Independent study estimates Cuba’s population at 8.02 million—down 24% in four years.
- Over 545,000 Cubans left the island in 2024 alone—double the official government figure.
- Demographer warns the crisis mirrors depopulation seen only in wartime, calling it a “systemic collapse.”
Diving Deeper:
Cuba is undergoing a staggering demographic collapse, losing nearly one in four residents over the past four years, according to a new study by economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos. The report estimates that by the end of 2024, Cuba’s population will stand at just over 8 million people—down from nearly 10 million—a 24% drop that Albizu-Campos says is comparable only to what is seen in war-torn nations.
The study, accessed by the Spanish news agency EFE, points to mass emigration as the primary driver. In 2024 alone, 545,011 Cubans are believed to have left the island. That number is more than double what the regime officially acknowledges, as Cuba’s government only counts those heading to the United States, ignoring large flows to destinations like Mexico, Spain, Serbia, and Uruguay.
Albizu-Campos describes the trend as “demographic emptying,” driven by what he calls a “quasi-permanent polycrisis” in Cuba—an interwoven web of political repression, economic freefall, and social decay. For years, Cubans have faced food and medicine shortages, blackout-plagued days, fuel scarcity, soaring inflation, and a broken currency system. The result has been not just migration, but a desperate stampede for the exits.
Yet, the regime continues to minimize the damage. Official figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) put Cuba’s population at just over 10 million in 2023. However, even those numbers acknowledge a shrinking population and the lowest birth rate in decades—confirming the crisis, if not its full scale.
Cuba hasn’t held a census since 2012. The last scheduled one in 2022 has been repeatedly delayed, allegedly due to lack of resources. Experts doubt that any new attempt will be transparent or complete.
Albizu-Campos warns that the government’s refusal to confront the reality of the collapse is obstructing any chance at solutions. More than just a demographic issue, the study describes Cuba’s situation as a “systemic crisis.”
“Havana (Cuba, February 2023)” by Bruno Rijsman licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED.
Business
Tariff-driven increase of U.S. manufacturing investment would face dearth of workers

From the Fraser Institute
Since 2015, the number of American manufacturing jobs has actually risen modestly. However, as a share of total U.S. employment, manufacturing has dropped from 30 per cent in the 1970s to around 8 per cent in 2024.
Donald Trump has long been convinced that the United States must revitalize its manufacturing sector, having—unwisely, in his view—allowed other countries to sell all manner of foreign-produced manufactured goods in the giant American market. As president, he’s moved quickly to shift the U.S. away from its previous embrace of liberal trade and open markets as cornerstones of its approach to international economic policy —wielding tariffs as his key policy instrument. Since taking office barely two months ago, President Trump has implemented a series of tariff hikes aimed at China and foreign producers of steel and aluminum—important categories of traded manufactured goods—and threatened to impose steep tariffs on most U.S. imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union. In addition, he’s pledged to levy separate tariffs on imports of automobiles, semi-conductors, lumber, and pharmaceuticals, among other manufactured goods.
In the third week of March, the White House issued a flurry of news releases touting the administration’s commitment to “position the U.S. as a global superpower in manufacturing” and listing substantial new investments planned by multinational enterprises involved in manufacturing. Some of these appear to contemplate relocating manufacturing production in other jurisdictions to the U.S., while others promise new “greenfield” investments in a variety of manufacturing industries.
President Trump’s intense focus on manufacturing is shared by a large slice of America’s political class, spanning both of the main political parties. Yet American manufacturing has hardly withered away in the last few decades. The value of U.S. manufacturing “output” has continued to climb, reaching almost $3 trillion last year (equal to 10 per cent of total GDP). The U.S. still accounts for 15 per cent of global manufacturing production, measured in value-added terms. In fact, among the 10 largest manufacturing countries, it ranks second in manufacturing value-added on a per-capita basis. True, China has become the world’s biggest manufacturing country, representing about 30 per cent of global output. And the heavy reliance of Western economies on China in some segments of manufacturing does give rise to legitimate national security concerns. But the bulk of international trade in manufactured products does not involve goods or technologies that are particularly critical to national security, even if President Trump claims otherwise. Moreover, in the case of the U.S., a majority of two-way trade in manufacturing still takes place with other advanced Western economies (and Mexico).
In the U.S. political arena, much of the debate over manufacturing centres on jobs. And there’s no doubt that employment in the sector has fallen markedly over time, particularly from the early 1990s to the mid-2010s (see table below). Since 2015, the number of American manufacturing jobs has actually risen modestly. However, as a share of total U.S. employment, manufacturing has dropped from 30 per cent in the 1970s to around 8 per cent in 2024.
U.S. Manufacturing Employment, Select Years (000)* | |
---|---|
1990 | 17,395 |
2005 | 14,189 |
2010 | 14,444 |
2015 | 12,333 |
2022 | 12,889 |
2024 | 12,760 |
*December for each year shown. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics |
Economists who have studied the trend conclude that the main factors behind the decline of manufacturing employment include continuous automation, significant gains in productivity across much of the sector, and shifts in aggregate demand and consumption away from goods and toward services. Trade policy has also played a part, notably China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 and the subsequent dramatic expansion of its role in global manufacturing supply chains.
Contrary to what President Trump suggests, manufacturing’s shrinking place in the overall economy is not a uniquely American phenomenon. As Harvard economist Robert Lawrence recently observed “the employment share of manufacturing is declining in mature economies regardless of their overall industrial policy approaches. The trend is apparent both in economies that have adopted free-market policies… and in those with interventionist policies… All of the evidence points to deep and powerful forces that drive the long-term decline in manufacturing’s share of jobs and GDP as countries become richer.”
This brings us back to the president’s seeming determination to rapidly ramp up manufacturing investment and production as a core element of his “America First” program. An important issue overlooked by the administration is where to find the workers to staff a resurgent U.S. manufacturing sector. For while manufacturing has become a notably “capital-intensive” part of the U.S. economy, workers are still needed. And today, it’s hard to see where they will be found. This is especially true given the Trump administration’s well-advertised skepticism about the benefits of immigration.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the current unemployment rate across America’s manufacturing industries collectively stands at a record low 2.9 per cent, well below the economy-wide rate of 4.5 per cent. In a recent survey by the National Association of Manufacturers, almost 70 per cent of American manufacturers cited the inability to attract and retain qualified employees as the number one barrier to business growth. A cursory look at the leading industry trade journals confirms that skill and talent shortages remain persistent in many parts of U.S. manufacturing—and that shortages are destined to get worse amid the expected significant jump in manufacturing investment being sought by the Trump administration.
As often seems to be the case with Trump’s stated policy objectives, the math surrounding his manufacturing agenda doesn’t add up. Manufacturing in America is in far better shape than the president acknowledges. And a tariff-driven avalanche of manufacturing investment—should one occur—will soon find the sector reeling from an unprecedented human resource crisis.
Jock Finlayson
Senior Fellow, Fraser Institut
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Cuba has lost 24% of it’s population to emigration in the last 4 years