BMO is a seller of mortgages, and therefore heavily invested in the financialization of housing. About 15-20% of their assets are in residential mortgages and HELOCs alone. Of course they want to talk about anything EXCEPT the root of the problem that is literally driving their profitability. This is like bringing up a study from the oil and gas industry to argue that greenhouse emissions are not a problem. And just like Oil&Gas keep pushing an inefficient and outdated energy technology stack and standing in the way of common sense electrification, the real estate financialization industry is keeping Canadian capital in an unproductive and parasitic sector. Imagine if we instead used all that capital not to invest in inert land, but to build up the Canadian economy.

Why is housing inelastic in the current system? Because it is not treated as a universal right, but as an asset. It is being hoarded by Real Eastate Investment Trusts who quite literally profit from maintaining scarcity. The solution is breaking the back of REITs and building non-market infill development across the country. Build the missing middle and keep it the fuck out of the profit-driven market, make it coops and public housing. Oh and guess what we need to do that. That's right, workers, of which we have a shortage, so therefore ...immigrants.

Here's what Avi Lewis' platform has to say about housing: https://lewisforleader.ca/ideas/housing-full-plan

If you call this "gaslighting" and "bad faith" argumentation, I honestly have no idea what you would consider "good faith" argumentation.

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GIKDuBWcjyo

I see you as Bernie says, a far right anti-worker non-empathetic sociopath, who doesn't care about housing prices or wages. I don't think we can convince each other.

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

You're not making any sense. Sanders is slamming precarious low wage temporary guest worker programs. Nobody is defending those. Look at the thing you objected to earlier. It was talking about empowering immigrant workers, precisely the opposite of a precarious work program:

"Gives workers real power — migrant workers will have clean path to permanency, open work permits, they can join unions and organize without fear, which means stronger unions and better wages for everyone;"

Edit: it also seems that Bernie Sanders has evolved in his positions over time: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21143931/bernie-sanders-immigration-record-explained

And yes, I can see that you don't want to be convinced by anything I wrote. You are not responding in substance to anything I've written. But you haven't actually made any substantive argument to try to convince me or anyone. You haven't tried to convince me in any real way. But you've accused me of gaslighting and bad faith arguing, when it's clear I'm not doing either. You're using inflammatory language ("sociopath") to describe my views, when I haven't. I think you're just trying to make it look like you're not losing the debate by desperately trying to making it look like the leftists are mean to you.

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Its unskilled labor being given PR into a housing crisis, while youth unemployment is extremely high. Which is being pushed by groups like the century initiative, which is funded by large corporations for their own ends.

There is no way that our economy can absorb people that fast, so it ends up being more bodies which cheapens labor, and leads to shortages of basic goods like housing. I feel it too axiomatic to really argue, like trying to convince you that water is wet, and I feel a gesture to the state of Canada is enough to see the damage where per-capita GDP has fallen off a cliff.

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Look, we can talk and argue about the rate of increase and it won't be controversial, with two caveats: a) that people already here should be grandfathered in (none of the PEQ fiasco). b) the rights of immigrant workers should always be equal to those of established ones.

I have explained above why I don't think the housing and unemployment crises are caused by immigration.

But I agree that if all else stays the same, a big increase in precarious immigrants exacerbates things. The point is that I don't think that we should accept everything else remaining the same and then play the game of blaming the immigrants. Front and centre should be a program to address the structural problems of our economic system, and immigration only secondary. Think about it: the Liberals just aggressively cut immigration rates, while keeping other things the same. The results are only small dips in the housing market, nothing that actually makes housing genuinely affordable: we're still in crisis but now we've run out of immigrants to blame.

Any politics that puts immigration at the forefront is just ceding the initiative to the (far) Right.

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Its not blaming immigrants, that is a common tactic used by lobbyists and politicians to shut down discussion. Its simply what the BoC and our institutions say.

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/reports-statistics/research/immigration-housing-prices-municipalities-canada.html#s6

The results show that, over the study period, the rise in the influx of new immigrants, who arrived in Canada within the past five years, on average, accounted for 11% of the rise in median house values and in median rents across municipalities with a population of at least 1,000. This association was notably more pronounced in larger municipalities. In the 53 municipalities with a population exceeding 100,000, which together attracted over 80% of new immigrants, the rise in new immigrants accounted for 21% of the overall increase in median house values and 13% of the increase in median rents. In these large municipalities, the effect on house values tended to be larger than on rents, possibly due to rent control policies in many provinces that can cap rent increases for certain properties (Gorski, 2023).

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2023/12/staff-analytical-note-2023-17/

The wage one is harder to quantify due to inflation, wages would have gone up far faster like in the US, but overall wages still rose. Wages just bought far less and people who dont own inflation hedged assets are far poorer on a per capita basis.

[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago

Our institutions are not talking about financialization of housing though! So it defaults to the "if all else remains the same, the factor to blame is immigrants". If we don't end financialization of housing, then even without immigration you're still going to have the exact same problem of housing scarcity because the system requires housing to be scarce so it's an asset that always appreciates.