Co-Host, "Missing Middle". Husband. Father. Brother. Son. Economist. Housing guy. I used to do other stuff. Details in link.
Whalen Corners, Ontario
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I'm saying it out loud: I don't think it's a great idea to force seniors out of their homes to meet some ideological definition of fairness.
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Out of budget lockup. I recently wrote: "Ottawa imposes a 10 percent luxury tax on yachts... yet a family buying a semi in Scarborough pays the equivalent of 15 percent in [DCs] and land transfer taxes."
Today the gov't addressed this by eliminating the luxury tax on yachts.
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Spoiler for an upcoming piece. I often hear people dismissing Canada's housing crisis by saying, "Mike, home prices skyrocketed everywhere, it's not just a Canada thing".
Turns out... nope. It really is a Canada thing.
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PROBLEM 1: THE SUFFOCATING VETOCRACY
Our housing crisis is a microcosm of Canada's larger challenges to build, well, anything, from rail lines to nuclear power plants.
Why? Because of the "suffocating vetocracy".
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We really need to stop solving our problems through exploiting temporary workers in a program that gives them almost no enforceable rights.
Anyone good enough to work here is good enough to stay here.
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That's my list of six economic problems. Again, I want to reiterate that Canada is better positioned than most.
But we really do have some big economic challenges that are going to require some creative solutions to fix.
End 🧵
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The Canada Child Benefit was absolutely vital in reducing child poverty. A victory for the federal government (and for Canada) that doesn’t get talked about enough.
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This was a deliberate move by the federal government to suppress wage growth for low-income Canadians, and increase the number of temporary workers, who have much weaker labour rights than permanent residents.
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Canada's celiac disease is obvious in housing, where a kudzu of harmful zoning rules, building code requirements, municipal "negotiations", NIMBYism, and old-fashioned anti-Asian racism "we can't allow our cities to look like Shanghai!" block much-needed housing.
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In Atlanta, I could go to a company with a $25,000 proposal, and they'd think "let's give it a try... if this works, it could help us a lot. And if it doesn't, it's not that much money lost".
In Canada, it was "if we're spending a dime, we have to be 100% sure it'll work".
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PROBLEM 3: OVERLAPPING JURISDICTIONS
For pretty much any public policy problem in Canada, at least two orders of government, if not three, have control over some part of the issue, and our governments do not coordinate with each other well. At all.
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This lack of state capacity is a big problem. I consider myself to be on the centre-left, and this should be a huge concern for our clan, who believes that government can be a force for good.
Canadian governments just need to be better at building and doing things.
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PROBLEM 2: STATE CAPACITY
Ever notice that our governments seem to have trouble doing basic things? Like procuring equipment for our military? Or building an LRT in Ottawa that isn't a complete dumpster fire?
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But it's a "suffocating vetocracy" because it's often not an outright "no", but rather it's a subjective approvals process, coupled with delays and fees that don't outright ban things, but rather render them uneconomical to build.
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Unless you're Canada, then you instead bring in a bunch of gonculator technicians as guest workers with fewer rights (as TFWs, international students, etc.), thus preventing companies from having to do things like raise wages, train workers, or invest in equipment.
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Reason why we'll never have high-speed rail in Canada (unless something changes) is that the "suffocating vetocracy" would block it at 99 different stages, and even if we could get around that, the lack of state capacity would turn it into the next Olympic Stadium. (RIP Expos)
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Exactly right. Start thinking about creating options, not simply punishing people for making decisions we don't like.
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I love my country. That said, boy do I wish our corporate leaders could have just a bit more Texan in them.
If they did, we'd be able to scale up our small and mid-sized businesses. We'd be able to innovate, to try new things.
And we'd be allowed to fail once in awhile.
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Take the massive growth (and massive exploitation of) international students in Canada. It got out of control because no one "owns" the issue:
- Higher ed institutions enroll the students
- Province regulates higher ed
- Federal gov't issues student visas
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I consider myself on the progressive side of the Canadian political spectrum, and I think we need to acknowledge that we've completely lost the plot on the TFW issue. Our side did this and needs to undo it. Refusing to talk about the problem doesn't help.
/🧵
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American companies, I found, thought about upside, whereas Canadian companies typically only thought about downside.
American companies are willing to experiment, to pilot, to try new things.
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In short, those who would argue that we have a "gatekeeper" problem absolutely have a point, but the issue isn't the people per se; it's the larger policy culture.
We need a cure for public policy celiac disease. And actual celiac disease. I want a donut.
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Public policy and governance should be like an immune system. They should prevent harmful activities (e.g. drunk driving, building aluminum smelters next to daycares) while allowing beneficial activities to occur.
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If companies don't have to invest in productivity-enhancing equipment, we shouldn't be surprised that our productivity growth is stagnant. Which brings me to problem 5.
PROBLEM 5: CORPORATE CANADA'S "NOBODY EVER GOT FIRED FOR BUYING IBM" CULTURE.
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Or how we don't have things like other countries have? Like why don't we have automatic filing of tax returns, like so many other countries?
Answer: Because it'd turn into the Phoenix pay system on steroids, that's why.
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When you've got an issue with overlapping jurisdictions, it's never quite clear who is supposed to solve it. So no one does.
And we find ourselves in the mess we are today, with our broken international student system.
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PROBLEM 4: "GUEST WORKERS" AS THE SOLUTION TO EVERYTHING
Speaking of international students...
In Canada, whenever there's any kind of labour market shortage, whether it be perceived or real, we have one go-to solution:
TEMPORARY FOREIGN WORKERS
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But the Canadian body politic suffers from an autoimmune disease. We not only attack the harmful, but that which can do us good.
As someone with celiac disease, I can relate to this phenomenon.
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Where the centre-left and left get things wrong is seeing any problem as a "lack of investment". That the reason why we don't have high-speed rail is because we just won't spend the money.
I'm afraid to say it's bigger than that.
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That said, I think traditional public policy can only help at the margins with Canada's innovation gap. Partly for the first four reasons on this list. But mostly because our problem isn't policy, it's culture.
Canada's corporate culture may be the most risk-averse on the planet
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As always, some background:
- Canada overall is in great shape. Most countries would trade our problems for theirs in a heartbeat.
- This list of 6 isn't about any order of government or party. They're larger. More structural.
- This isn't meant to be exhaustive.
Here we go...
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And I cannot stress this enough: This attack on labour rights happened a mere 13 days after the Liberals and NDP signed their Confidence & Supply agreement, which gave the federal NDP more power than they've had in my lifetime (and I'm nearly 50).
pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releas…
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Canada's corporate culture issue can be described as the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" problem. This is an issue everywhere, but in my experience no more so than in Canada.
Explanation of the phenomenon: quora.com/What-does-the-phra…
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We should note how destructive this program is for the TFWs themselves. The UN has criticized Canada:
"Agricultural and low-wage streams of the temporary foreign workers program constitute a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery."
Source: cbc.ca/news/politics/un-spec…
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Finally, and the most boring one.
PROBLEM 6: DEMOGRAPHICS AND THE AGING OF THE BOOMERS
This is an issue a lot of countries, and Canada is better positioned than most due to our immigration system.
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Let's say an industry is having trouble filling gonculator technician positions. It could:
- Raise wages
- Train people to become gonculator technicians
- Invest in productivity-enhancing equipment so fewer gonculator technicians are required
- etc. etc.
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That's rather black-and-white thinking. There are degrees of difficulty.
There's also what you're advocating for. I'm not a fan of taxing old people out of their homes, but YMMV.
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And the biggest concern about the deficit comes from folks who bought a two million dollar cottage in Muskoka in 1984 for $35,000 and are upset they’ll have to pay more tax on it.
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I really have trouble believing we can't find anyone to work at the Dairy Queen by Fanshawe College.
(Maybe they'd have more luck if they brought back serving ice cream in those upside down baseball helmets.)
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I had more clients, and was bringing in more revenue from one US city (Atlanta, Georgia) than in all of Canada.
Why? Differences in culture.
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And this is a well-known phenomenon. I remember being in Tahoe one time, having dinner with a few colleagues from Texas and Arkansas. After one too many whiskeys, one of my Texan colleagues drunkenly said, "Mike, you know why we buy from you? Because you think like a Texan"
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Someone is inevitably going to get a seriously case of heat stroke, and if the city doesn’t put out something like this, the media will be all over them saying “why didn’t you warn people?”
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
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Last one. Late 80s-ish home, same end of town.
Sold for $269,000 in 2014... and $630,000 in 2022.
The problem isn't that "kids today" have snobby preferences.
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I was based out of London, ON, and I quickly found that it was incredibly challenging selling to Canadian companies. They had their way of doing things, and they weren't about to change.
The Americans, however, weren't like that.
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We've got 7 conservative provincial governments in this country, yet the B.C. NDP are far and away the most bold on implementing pro-market housing reforms.
We live in odd times.
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WOW... this one is *huge* (and nerdy). The federal government is bringing back a 10% Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance for purpose-built rentals.
This was one of the key recommendations of both the National Housing Accord and Blueprint for More and Better Housing.
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Agree with this take from Matt Gurney (and not just because I'm cited in it). There's a surprising lack of urgency from the federal government on any file, particularly when compared to the standard they set out for themselves on the campaign.
Read here: readtheline.ca/p/matt-gurney…
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Here is the tool that maps out Temporary Foreign Workers - Labour Market Impact Assessments. Thanks to the Missing Middle viewer who sent it our way.
lmiamap.ca/
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There seems to be so many issues out there, from housing to international students, where the federal government takes the brunt of the blame, yet at the same time any federal government correctives are criticized as intrusions into provincial jurisdiction.
At what point, though, do we to recognize that blaming the federal government for everything inevitably leads to a federal government that has its' fingers in everything?
If you make the feds own something, the consequences are that, well, they now own it.
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Canada has all these tech and biz groups who want to bring in more talent. The political barrier is a lack of housing. Yet, as far as I can tell, they're spending zero resources trying to fix the housing crisis. I really don't get it.
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It's a bit strange because the way the Conservatives talk about the housing crisis is quite strong, but their policy prescriptions are incredibly weak tea.
If they want to do something transformative, here are some ideas they could consider: nationalhousingaccord.ca/
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Canada's spent the last 50 years trying to become more innovative through public policy. I co-authored a book on innovation policy solutions a few years back, and in 2017, I was hired by the federal government to help tackle this issue.
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Forgot to add - here is another argument I hear:
Them: “The government was trying to lower inflation, not wages!”
Me: “How does that fight inflation?”
Them: “By lowering input costs”
Me: “Which input costs?”
Them: “wages”
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Singh's framing of this issue is downright Trumpian. If he has any evidence that 370,000 affordable rental units were "bought up by developers", I'd ask him to show it.
/🧵
2016 data: recensement2011.gc.ca/census…
2021 data: www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1…
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If companies want people in the office, that's fine, but our progressive politicians shouldn't be insisting on it.
Note the huge drop in GHG emissions from transportation in 2020-21.
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Here's a similar-sized and age home in the same neighbourhood. Sold for $163,500 in 2006.
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Okay... one more. Sale price of this home in #ldnont (London, ON, Canada) by year:
2005: $257,500
2010: $275,000
2016: $428,000
2022: $1,080,000
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I know it’s probably asking too much, but could we have a society where we can simultaneously be inclusive and welcoming AND have discussions based in truth, facts, and evidence?
We shouldn’t have to choose between fear and ignorance.
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I get so, so sick of this shit. If you're a partisan and you think it's appropriate to tweet stuff like this because you disagree with a tweet, this father of an amazing intellectually disabled son suggests you log off and touch some grass.
Great. This sounds like the retards using GDP per capita to explain why Canada’s a shithole.
Love how you guys are so invested in using metrics inappropriately to paint Canada as broken.
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“But, Mike, some businesses wouldn’t be able to afford $19/hr, and would go out of business”.
Quite possibly. So what the policy does is keep a handful of marginal businesses in operation while suppressing wages for everyone else.
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I know I keep posting about this, but this is really something...
Together, Conestoga and Centennial Colleges had more international student visas issued than all the large U15 Canadian research universities... COMBINED!
(Reposted to correct math error)
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Demographics really are 2/3rds of everything. And the aging of the larger Boomer cohort has a double whammy, of seeing an exodus of skilled labour out of our companies, plus a massive rise in health care costs.
Care costs per capita rise massively by age: agassizharrisonobserver.com/…
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And if you prefer a graphical representation of the data...
In short, this "luxury condo" thing is utter nonsense, and our housing discourse would be so much stronger if we abandoned this myth.
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“Unemployment is low, and it’s giving workers the ability to bargain for higher wages, more benefits and more rights. What should we do?”
“Let’s bring in a bunch of low-paid temporary workers through a program that gives them few rights!”
Just awful. Absolutely awful.
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He's had a really rough couple of months. He's not sleeping. So we're not sleeping.
Poor buddy has been through so much and he's only 9.
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There should have been a whole visual campaign of people showing their rebates saying "My rebate came today, I'm getting hockey skates for my kids" etc. etc.
Instead the feds went out of their way to make the costs visible and the benefits invisible. Completely backwards.
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The fact that we have the potential to solve these problems, but we're choosing not to, is the dispiriting part.
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There had also been a rule that, for some occupations, a temporary foreign worker could not be brought in if the unemployment rate was 6% or higher.
That rule was waived, making employers in some high-unemployment regions now eligible.
Source: canada.ca/en/employment-soci…
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A lifetime ago, I worked in the chemical industry, helping companies with regulatory compliance, as well as selling into new markets.
We offered solutions that saved companies time and money, and provided higher quality outputs.
I did a fair bit of sales in the early years...
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One impactful change was weakening the rule that an employer could only have 10% of their workforce be temporary foreign workers. That got raised to 20%, and in some industries like "accommodation and fast food services" that got raised to 30%.
Source: canada.ca/en/employment-soci…
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This is likely to be Canada's housing plan going forward: Cutting demand, not increasing supply.
The budget will also include Carney's new immigration plan, which will likely forecast further cuts to temporary and permanent resident numbers #cdnpoli #ParlCA ipolitics.ca/2025/10/31/ever…
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This one is interesting (and I suspect will be quite popular): Canada banning "very large corporate investors" from buying existing single-family homes.
I don't think this really happens much at scale in Canada, but boy do I hear people talk about it a lot on Twitter.
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Made it out! 4.5 hours. Could have been a whole lot worse, but it's such a waste we got sent to ER for something that a GP could have handled. All just so we wouldn't lose our family doctor.
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Ultimately, if there is any "blame" to go here, it's not to the international students, but rather to Canadian policymakers.
It's not the job of some 17-year-old kid from Warsaw to make sure we have a functioning housing system. It's the job of government.
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It's a really useful exercise, because:
a. It shows that are politicians aren't even thinking about the middle-class anymore. They're only considering the very rich and very poor.
b. It shows how out-of-whack taxes and charges have become relative to middle-class incomes.
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FWIW, it’s fair game if the Conservatives also point out that I quite liked their golf ad.
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That said, “The Woke Death” sound like an amazing old-school wrestling finisher.
“Yeah, Killer Kowalski used the Woke Death on Gorilla Monsoon. Won the match in under 40 seconds.”
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The boy and I got to the ER about 4 hours ago, to deal with a health issue that a GP could probably take care of. No sign that our wait will soon be over.
This system is so wasteful and messed up.
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On April 4, 2022, less than two weeks after the Liberals-NDP signed their agreement, the federal government massively deregulated the Temporary Foreign Worker program to "address current job vacancies across many sectors and occupations."
Source: canada.ca/en/employment-soci…
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The low-wage stream allows Canadian employers to hire temporary foreign workers for jobs that pay less than the provincial median wage. Note that this doesn't include agricultural workers; that's a separate program. In Manitoba, that's $25/hr.
Source: canada.ca/en/employment-soci…
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But the federal government can't do this alone. The biggest bottleneck to housing construction right now are the provinces. By their own estimate, Ontario has only implemented 21/74 recommendations of their 19-month old Task Force report. canada.constructconnect.com/…
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The feds have:
- Eliminated the GST on apartment construction
- Re-introduced the 10% ACCA on apartment construction
- Prohibited cities with more than 300K persons from raising development charges
Meanwhile, Ontario is giving municipalities more powers to raise dev charges.
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Canadian youth are literally telling us its not in the top 50. And instead of trying to convince them that they're wrong, we'd be better off trying to listen to their concerns and addressing them.
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One thing I should add is that @carastern and I recorded an episode of Missing Middle on Canada's addiction to temporary foreign workers.
I have to admit - Cara figured out what was going on here faster than I did. She was right, I was wrong.
Watch now: piped.video/watch?v=sSXYgGt5…
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Heh... they felt the need to include a "who does what" page on housing. I don't see this debate/discussion ending any time soon.
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Of all the recommendations, I think the federal government should move next to re-introduce 1960s-style accelerated capital cost provisions to help get more apartments built. It worked back then, it would work today. theglobeandmail.com/opinion/…
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The "homes per capita" metric suffers from (at least) 3 problems:
1. It doesn't consider where the homes are located.
2. It treats the housing needs of a 5-year-old the same as a 50-year-old.
3. It treats a studio apartment and a 5-bedroom home as identical.
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I'll give a spoiler... if your answer has fewer than 3 bedrooms, or is more than $500,000 (and even that is stretching it), then you're placing the family in core housing need according to the federal government.
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But that doesn't mean that 370,000 homes were destroyed or "bought up by developers" (Wouldn't landlords be more likely to buy these than developers?!?).
What it mostly means is that the rents on those units went up because of the housing crisis!
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Let’s think about this for a second. What normally happens if a firm can’t find someone to work for $17 an hour? They raise their wage to $18 or $19 an hour, to get more applicants! But with the expansion of the low-wage temporary foreign worker program, they don’t have to!
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Like, folks, nobody cares that your international ranking from 2019 shows things here are swell when food bank usage has skyrocketed in the last few years.
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Of all the housing charts not made by MMI, this one is my favourite. It shows how, despite rhetoric, housing shortages aren't a global phenomenon, but they do seem to be an Anglo-American one.
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Here's the bananas thing - relative to 2022, last quarter we saw less immigration to Canada.
The big jump was in non-permanent residents. Up over 100,000 in Q3 2023 relative to Q3 2022.
I cannot understand for the life of me what our provincial and federal gov't's are thinking.
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