Causality and accommodation | The Press

You cannot succeed in politics if you do not recognize causality, better known as “cause and effect”. It is impossible to change the effects without first clearly identifying and then acting on the causes. This is particularly true when we talk about immigration.

Unfortunately, many of our political leaders have chosen to easily conflate the housing crisis and immigration.

This is what Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre did again this week, who is calling for a significant reduction in immigration thresholds to resolve the housing crisis by making a dubious equation.

We must first clearly establish one thing: the housing crisis is far from new and it has also existed in periods when immigration was much more controlled.

In the greater Montreal area, for example, we can say that the crisis became almost permanent in the years following Expo 67. By the way, this is no longer exclusive to Montreal, but the historical reminder is useful.

In the 1970s, as Montreal began to depopulate, the president of the executive committee, Yvon Lamarre – the mayor still being too busy with his major projects – launched what would become “ Operation 20,000 housing units ». A first foray into community housing which was crowned with success.

But it wasn’t enough. In 1982, the president of the FTQ, Louis Laberge – showing that it is not only governments that can act – proposed “Corvée habitation”, which would lead to the construction of 50,000 housing units, especially in Montreal and the suburbs. Happy side effect: this will lead to the creation of the Solidarity Fund.

During the 1990s, it was the administration of Mayor Jean Doré who was responsible for revitalizing the downtown suburbs. Then, Lucien’s government Bouchard will invest significantly in community housing as part of economic recovery programs.

All this to show that the housing crisis is not new and that it is therefore inaccurate to blame it entirely on immigration. Which does not mean, of course, that immigration does not contribute to making it worse.

The causes of the crisis are diverse and the explanations are different depending on whether you are more on the right or more on the left. But they agree on the conclusions.

On the right, this week, the Quebec Employers’ Council (CPQ) recalled that immigration is not the direct cause of the housing crisis and that “other factors play a preponderant role in this complex situation.”

The Council cites “lack of productivity in the construction sector, economic fluctuations and high construction costs.” We could add the labor shortage and the pandemic which caused an almost complete shutdown of construction. From an even more right-wing point of view, we cite rent control which, ultimately, leads to an aging of the rental stock and a lack of incentives to renovate. It then becomes more profitable to carry out the current “renovictions”.

Interesting argument from the CPQ: “The cities in Quebec with the lowest vacancy rate are located in the regions, where the percentage of immigrant population is the lowest. » Example: Gaspé has a vacancy rate of 0% with 2% immigrant population.

The opposite is also true.

Montreal, which welcomes the most newcomers, is among the four large cities with the highest vacancy rate. In short, blaming immigration for the housing crisis is a huge shortcut.

On the left, same conclusions from different data. Last month, the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information (IRIS) published a study showing that new immigrants constitute less than 2% of the population and therefore “represent only a small part of the new demand for housing”. It’s like a return to the time “when immigrants were unfairly blamed for high unemployment,” believes IRIS.

Without forgetting an increasingly significant disengagement of governments from social housing, including a complete withdrawal of federal government subsidies in the 1990s.

The most recent shortcut comes from Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who said this week in Quebec that the solution must be mathematical: we cannot admit more immigrants than there are new housing units built during the year.

“If we increase the number of houses by 2-3% [par an], we cannot increase our population faster than that. It’s not even a question of being pro or anti-immigrant, it’s a question of being pro-mathematical,” said Mr. Poilievre.

An argument that seems full of “common sense” as the Conservative leader likes it, except that we cannot reduce such a complex situation to a simple equation.

With, as a bonus, an unjustified charge against mayors Bruno Marchand and Valérie Plante, which was nothing other than red meat for conservative activists who already hate these “leftist” mayors. It won’t cause him to lose a single vote.

But that doesn’t tell us that he is capable of identifying the real causes of crises, rather than to reduce everything to a slogan.