Economy
Federal government’s turbo-charged immigration helping drive housing demand

From the Fraser Institute
Unusually brisk population growth is putting considerable strain on public services and infrastructure, in part because the federal government did essentially nothing to plan or prepare for the dramatic surge in immigration that its own policies sanctioned.
According to a recent Statistics Canada report, Canada’s population has just hit the level it was previously expected to reach in 2028. That startling finding underscores the extraordinary growth of the country’s population since the pandemic, driven by record inflows of both permanent and “temporary” immigrants.
A rapidly expanding population can bring some benefits, notably by stimulating overall economic activity and providing additional workers. But it’s not an alloyed good. The number of Canadian residents is increasing faster than economic output (gross domestic product), which has translated into an unprecedented series of declines in per-person GDP over the last several quarters. Productivity is stagnant, as newcomers struggle to find their way in the economy and job market. In addition, a significant share of new immigrants don’t seek or obtain employment, dampening immigration’s contribution to the growth of economic output.
Meanwhile, unusually brisk population growth is putting considerable strain on public services and infrastructure, in part because the federal government did essentially nothing to plan or prepare for the dramatic surge in immigration that its own policies sanctioned. The “downstream” challenge of managing the pressures flowing from turbo-charged immigration falls mainly to provinces and municipalities, not faraway Ottawa.
All of this has implications for the hottest issue in Canadian politics today—housing affordability and supply. Like the rest of us, newcomers need a place to live. Immigration is the predominant source of incremental housing demand in much of the country, particularly big cities. Demand for housing also comes from the existing Canadian population, as young adults establish separate households, marriages dissolve, and people move to other communities or neighbourhoods for work, education or to retire.
Unfortunately, homebuilding has been running far behind what’s necessary to accommodate immigration, let alone meet the demand from household formation among current residents. In 1972, when the population stood at 22 million, roughly 220,000 new homes were added to the Canadian housing stock. In 2023, with a population of 40 million, housing starts were only a little higher than half a century ago.
This brings us to the Trudeau government’s multi-faceted housing plan, rolled out over the past year and finalized with great fanfare in the 2024 federal budget. The government has pledged to somehow build 3.9 million new homes by 2031—just seven years from now. This is equivalent to 550,00 housing starts per year. It’s an aspirational target, but also a patently unrealistic one.
The federal government has little control over what happens in the towns, cities and provinces where most of the policy and regulatory decisions affecting homebuilding and community development are made. Moreover, the Canadian construction sector doesn’t have the spare human resources or organizational capacity to quickly double housing starts. Even today, the construction sector’s “job vacancy rate” is higher than the all-industry average.
The year 2021 marked an all-time record for Canadian housing starts at 270,000. Starts fell over 2022-23, amid higher interest rates. This year, RBC Economics projects housing starts of 251,000, rising to 273,000 in 2025. To put it mildly, these figures are inconsistent with Ottawa’s ambitious plan to deliver 550,00 new homes per year.
We’ll likely see more and faster homebuilding over the next few years, as governments at all levels direct more money and political attention to housing. But a doubling of housing starts simply won’t occur within the Trudeau government’s politically manufactured timeline. One thing seems certain—Canada’s housing “crisis” will continue to fester.
Author:
Business
‘Time To Make The Patient Better’: JD Vance Says ‘Big Transition’ Coming To American Economic Policy

JD Vance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” discussing tariff results
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
Vice President JD Vance said Thursday on Newsmax that he believes Americans will “reap the benefits” of the economy as the Trump administration makes a “big transition” on tariffs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,679.39 points on Thursday, just a day after President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs against nations charging imports from the U.S. On “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Schmitt asked Vance about the stock market hit, asking how the White House felt about the “Liberation Day” move.
“We’re feeling good. Look, I frankly thought in some ways it could be worse in the markets, because this is a big transition. You saw what the President said earlier today. It’s like a patient who was very sick,” Vance said. “We did the operation, and now it’s time to make the patient better. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We have to remember that for 40 years, we’ve been doing this for 40 years.”
“American economic policy has rewarded people who ship jobs overseas. It’s taxed our workers. It’s made our supply chains more brittle, and it’s made our country less prosperous, less free and less secure,” Vance added.
Vance recalled that one of his children had been sick and needed antibiotics that were not made in the United States. The Vice President called it a “ridiculous thing” that some medicines invented in the country are no longer manufactured domestically.
“That’s fundamentally what this is about. The national security of manufacturing and making the things that we need, from steel to pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, and so forth, but also the good jobs that come along when you have economic policies that reward investing in America, rather than investing in foreign countries,” Vance said.
WATCH:
With a baseline 10% tariff placed on an estimated 60 countries, higher tariffs were applied to nations like China and Israel. For example, China, which has a 67% tariff on U.S. goods, will now face a 34% tariff from the U.S., while Israel, which has a 33% tariff, will face a 17% U.S. tariff.
“One bad day in the stock market, compared to what President Trump said earlier today, and I think he’s right about this. We’re going to have a booming stock market for a long time because we’re reinvesting in the United States of America. More importantly than that, of course, the people in Wall Street have done well,” Vance said.
“We want them to do well. But we care the most about American workers and about American small businesses, and they’re the ones who are really going to benefit from these policies,” Vance said.
The number of factories in the U.S., Vance said, has declined, adding that “millions of workers” have lost their jobs.
“My town [Middletown, Ohio], where you had 10,000 great American steel workers, and my town was one of the lucky ones, now probably has 1,500 steel workers in that factory because you had economic policies that rewarded shipping our jobs to China instead of investing in American workers,” Vance said. “President Trump ran on changing it. He promised he would change it, and now he has. I think Americans are going to reap the benefits.”
COVID-19
Trump’s new NIH head fires top Fauci allies and COVID shot promoters, including Fauci’s wife

From LifeSiteNews
“During the pandemic Fauci’s bioethicist wife, Christine Grady, offered nurses a choice: Get vaccinated, or lose your job,” noted The COVID-19 History Project on X. “Yesterday, she was offered a choice: Transfer to an office in Alaska, or lose your job. What’s fair is fair. Everyone deserves a choice,” explained the COVID watchdog account.
On day one of his new job as head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Jay Bhattacharya removed four powerful agency heads, including Dr. Anthony Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, and others associated with the questionable handling of the COVID-19 shots.
Grady, who had served as chief of the agency’s Department of Bioethics, and other longtime Fauci allies in top posts at the NIH involved in the development and distribution of the untested COVID shots produced by Big Pharma were offered jobs in Alaska and other remote locales far away from the NIH’s sprawling Bethesda, Maryland, complex just outside Washington, D.C.
The purge came amid massive layoffs in health-related agencies under the umbrella of Health and Human Services (HHS), now headed by the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement’s founder, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long questioned vaccine safety and American medicine’s focus on treating disease rather than preventing it.
A total of about 20,000 personnel – mostly bureaucrats – or about 25 percent of the HHS workforce have been or will be handed pink slips amid Kennedy’s realignment of the agency.
MAHA critics were quick to call Tuesday’s axing of Fauci confederates as “one of the darkest days in modern scientific history” fueled by Kennedy’s desire to exact revenge on Fauci’s former trusted associates who represent the antithesis of the MAHA movement.
However, the revamping of the federal government’s side of the health industry is no more harsh than the treatment meted out by those formerly in control who, at best, suppressed, and worst, punished those who questioned their iron grip on health-industry regulations and standards.
For years, Kennedy’s critics have dismissed his quest to revamp healthcare and his questioning of the efficacy of the COVID-19 mRNA jabs as anti-science, labeling him as an “anti-vaxxer” in order to suppress his messaging.
Dr. Francis Collins – whom Bhattacharya replaced as head of NIH – in an October 2020 email to Fauci condemned Bhattacharya as a “fringe epidemiologist” because he had co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized harmful COVID lockdown policies.
“During the pandemic Fauci’s bioethicist wife, Christine Grady, offered nurses a choice: Get vaccinated, or lose your job,” noted The COVID-19 History Project on X.
“Yesterday, she was offered a choice: Transfer to an office in Alaska, or lose your job. What’s fair is fair. Everyone deserves a choice,” explained the COVID watchdog account.
“We spend 4X more than Italy on healthcare — and live 7 years less. Dead last in cancer rates. This isn’t science — it’s a system profiting off sick kids,” explained Calley Means, RFK Jr. HHS advisor during an interview with Laura Ingraham following the NIH firings.
“Firing the people who oversaw this? That’s step one,” declared Means.
Other NIH officials who were offered reassignments were Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, who succeeded Fauci as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Clifford Lane, a close Fauci ally who served as deputy director for clinical research at NIAID, and Dr. Emily Erbelding, NIAID’s microbiology and infectious diseases director.
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
WEF video shows Mark Carney pushing financial ‘revolution’ based on ‘net zero’ goals
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
‘Coordinated and Alarming’: Allegations of Chinese Voter Suppression in 2021 Race That Flipped Toronto Riding to Liberals and Paul Chiang
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
Three cheers for Poilievre’s alcohol tax cut
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
MORE OF THE SAME: Mark Carney Admits He Will Not Repeal the Liberal’s Bill C-69 – The ‘No Pipelines’ Bill
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
Liberal MP resigns after promoting Chinese government bounty on Conservative rival
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
‘I’m Cautiously Optimistic’: Doug Ford Strongly Recommends Canada ‘Not To Retaliate’ Against Trump’s Tariffs
-
Business2 days ago
Canada may escape the worst as Trump declares America’s economic independence with Liberation Day tariffs
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
Don’t let the Liberals fool you on electric cars