For immigrants, the Canadian dream is a lie

Immigration must be tied to housing, because too many immigrants are being sold a promise that they simply cannot afford.

By Sean Celi

Last year, 437,180 immigrants came to Canada, with approximately half settling in Ontario, where the average monthly cost of a 1-bedroom unit is $2,281. Prices in British Columbia are even higher — 61,215 immigrants settled there last year, where the 1-bedroom costs $2,389 per month. What’s more, many newcomers are low-income earners, so it is not surprising  that one-fifth of recent immigrants have expressed plans to leave Canada. Among 18-to-34-year-old newcomers, 30 per cent are likely to leave Canada within the next two years.

International students are experiencing similar struggles. At Cape Breton University, many are frustrated by the lack of affordable housing, with one student speaking anonymously saying she wanted to“grab the landing gear and fly back.” She was disappointed that she had to find housing on her own, as her previous university had a transition team that helped her find accommodations as an international student. 

This story is hardly the only one — it’s the norm. Insufficient housing supply is a  symptom of the federal government’s policy failures on immigration. Everyone needs somewhere to live, and immigrants are no exception. The solution is clear: the housing supply needs to play a bigger role in determining immigration targets.

The weaknesses of the immigration levels plan

In 2022, then Minister of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Sean Fraser tabled the 2023-2025 Immigration Levels Plan. The Minister is required under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to table a plan each year, and the latest iteration set targets of 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025.

The final report based on the immigration levels consultations considers the following factors in developing the Immigration Levels Plan:

• Government priorities and objectives for immigration, as set out in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act;

• Economic and regional needs across Canada, such as labour shortages and recovery from the economic challenges of COVID-19;

• Canada’s international humanitarian obligations;

• Processing abilities of IRCC and partner departments;

• Capacity to settle, integrate, and retain newcomers (such as settlement services, housing accessibility and affordability, and public infrastructure).

Even with these clear considerations, how the Minister calculates immigration targets remains unclear. Common sense indicates it is likely based on the number of permanent residents welcomed in previous years. But many of the factors mentioned above—labour demand, rental rates, housing supply—are not constant. Although Canada welcomed 406,000 permanent residents in 2021, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it would be an appropriate target for 2023, 2024 and 2025. In addition, the immigration levels plan does not include any targets for temporary residents such as temporary foreign workers and international students.

If we do not have targets for these immigration streams, how can we ensure that newcomers like international students don’t have to sleep in tents or cars when they arrive? 

How to tie housing with immigration policy

The changing economic and social realities in Canada should translate to proportional changes in the Immigration Levels Plan, so newcomers have an affordable place to stay. This can be accomplished by considering the housing supply when setting immigration targets. 

To be clear, immigration does not need to be reduced to zero. But, immigration targets should be set lower at least until Canada is able to build more housing. Ensuring immigration targets align with housing availability is even more pressing as international migration now accounts for almost 100% of the country’s population growth. 

Even Sean Fraser, now the Minister of Housing, agrees that the federal government needs to better tie immigration policies to housing strategies. Unfortunately, we have yet to see concrete steps from the federal government to put these words into action. Here are three ways the Government of Canada can do more to ensure newcomers have access to affordable housing:

1. Utilize existing housing supply data and projections

In order to provide immigrants adequate housing, immigration targets must be based on reliable housing data. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) regularly publishes a housing supply report that provides data on new housing supply in Canada’s cities and metropolitan areas. CMHC has also reported on housing shortages in Canada, and finds that an additional 3.5 million housing units must  be built to restore housing affordability by 2030. They caution against increasing the number of permanent immigrants without increasing housing supply and warn that while “ increasing immigrant numbers can be done quickly, the time it takes to approve and build new housing takes years.” 

2. Require colleges and universities to  accept international students only if they can guarantee student housing

Both on-campus and off-campus housing could satisfy this requirement. However, if an institution cannot guarantee on-campus housing, it will need to ensure — either through the creation of its own accommodations team or through partnering with external rental agents—that each student obtains off-campus accommodation. 

There are multiple benefits to this solution. First, this policy would make it more difficult for colleges and universities to exploit international students through high student fees by ensuring access to housing. Second, it would incentivize colleges and universities to build more student housing  to accept more international students. Third, this policy could be enacted despite the federal government’s lack of information on student housing needs. A reporting mechanism can be established where international students can file complaints if their college or university did not provide them with accommodation. Most importantly, enacting this policy removes any need for putting a widely suggested federal cap on international students. 

3. Improve collaboration between federal, provincial, and municipal governments

According to the Constitution, immigration is a joint federal-provincial-territorial responsibility, but it is the federal government who decides how many immigrants will be admitted to Canada each year. Although provinces and territories are consulted on immigration levels, provinces only provide direct input for the Provincial Nominee Program. Last year, four provinces — Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario—demanded to have more say in the selection of immigrants coming to their provinces. 

This demand is reasonable, given the percentage of immigrants  each province traditionally has the opportunity to select. In 2021, Ontario was  able to select only about 9.5% of the 198,085 immigrants who settled there, while Alberta was  able to select just 15%of its 39,950 immigrants. 

If the Canadian government is serious about improving its immigration system, it will need to yield more power to provinces to shape immigration targets. Furthermore, as many policy instruments designed to boost housing supply are under provincial and municipal jurisdiction, such as purpose-built rentals, training construction workers, and zoning by laws, their feedback would be required to inform immigration targets. But intergovernmental collaboration has so often been elusive, and this lack of collaboration is perhaps one of the reasons we have a housing crisis in Canada. 

The Government of Canada’s immigration strategy is premised on immigration being the key to growing the economy. And on multiple occasions, this strategy has been sound. For example, immigrants have filled labour shortages in trade, manufacturing, and technology sectors, which helped the Canadian economy recover from the pandemic. 

But this relationship cannot be one-sided. If the Government of Canada is going to continue to rely on immigrants to save the economy, then the least it could do is  ensure they have an affordable place to live.

Sean is an MPP Candidate at the Max Bell School of Public Policy and an Assistant Editor at The Bell. With four years of experience in the federal public service, he is interested in public service transformation, Canada's immigration policy, and sustainable solutions to economic inequality.