I have, with distress, been following the articles about mandated increases in public housing.
As I understand it, in order to support our economy, businesses need to maintain a perpetually increasing payment to shareholders. To do that, they need to grow sales, and in order to grow sales (whether that be gasoline at the pumps, mortgages, computers, trousers, groceries …), they require more people to purchase their goods.
Birth rates are declining in Canada (and in most countries). To keep the population at a level that supports corporate profit, we increasingly rely on immigration. But people moving here need somewhere to live and we don’t have enough places for them. And so, our government mandates that municipalities have to increase their housing availability. But increasing demand equals increasing prices; eventually we become trapped in a cycle where land becomes more expensive, scarcity (because of demand) drives up prices for, among many other things, building supplies, groceries, and so on.
This is not a process that takes into account the quality of individuals’ lives. (Decreasing population growth would likely lead to decreased housing costs, decreased grocery costs, decreased environmental degradation.)
I wonder if it is possible for municipalities to declare that they do not subscribe to a national policy of continuous population growth. This would signal that our present course requires significant and sane recalibration.
Robert W. Harwood
Oak Bay
