Immigration targets mean housing a large city every two years

November 21, 2022




It is important for municipal and provincial governments to realize both the implication and challenge in meeting employment and housing needs resulting from the federal commitment to increase immigration to 500,000 per year by 2025.
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser revealed the new plan on November 1, 2022. It puts a heavy emphasis on admitting more permanent residents with needed work skills and experience, alongside more-modest targets for family members and refugees.
“Make no mistake. This is a massive increase in economic migration to Canada,” Fraser said. “We have not seen such a focus on economic migration as we’ve seen in this immigration levels plan.”
To put this in perspective, Canada has only six cities that house more than one million people. The country, therefore, will have to generate the jobs, housing and other infrastructure equal to a large new city every two years to meet immigration demand.
Canada currently builds about 200,000 new homes a year. Although the seasonally adjusted rate in September 2022 touched on 299,000 units according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., this is considered an anomaly.
Clearly, experts note, home builders and various levels of government will have to work closely together to meet the housing needed if proposed immigration targets are reached.