There are no simple answers to the immigration and housing question

On Thursday, Chrystia Freeland was asked whether Canada has an immigration problem. In her response, she suggested Canada has a housing problem.

Canada, she argued, is the most welcoming country in the world for newcomers and enjoys an economic and competitive advantage as a result. But «if we want to be a country that welcomes new Canadians — and I strongly believe that's the right thing for all of us,» she said, «we have to build more homes faster.»

The question for the finance minister was prompted by reporting by the Canadian Press that found senior public servants at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada were briefed in 2022 about a «misalignment between population growth and housing supply.» Such a divergence between demand and supply tends to drive up prices for housing.

But how the problem is framed — as a matter of too much immigration or too little housing, or some combination of the two — matters a lot. While it might seem like a straightforward issue of supply and demand, the question of immigration and housing defies the desire for simple answers.

As much as population growth is a factor in the cost of housing in Canada, it may be oversimplifying matters to consider it a problem of «immigration» writ large, rather than a problem with specific elements of the immigration system. It's possible, for instance, that the federal government needs to review the exponential growth in the arrival of non-permanent residents — specifically international students and temporary foreign workers.

«When we look at the past 30 years, we can see that the inflow of new [permanent residents] has long been a significant driver of population growth. In the last year or so, inflows of [non-permanent residents] have become more