el_eh_chase

Proud victim of the Powertoys to Linux pipeline reporting in

Giant stadium style human writing that can be seen from a helicopter perhaps?

I'm not advocating for a system with infinite growth. I don't disagree with your first point, there's nothing inherently wrong with a country having a stagnant or declining population, but that's an over simplification. You need to look at the demographics. When more people are retired and drawing on services than there are people to work and pay for those services, that isn't sustainable. If you need more care homes for the elderly, than you need more people that work at care homes, for example.

If the housing prices are what they are now, with the current supply and demand, how would stopping new immigration cause a crash in housing prices? The aricle we're commenting under says that 1/5 of construction workers are immigrants. Would you want to stop bringing in more construction workers to build housing given the current crisis? Like I said before, immigration policy is complicated and needs to be nuanced and strategic, it isn't an all or nothing situation.

I'd say that's a fair assessment of things. No worries, I'm happy to get more context on matters I should be better informed on.

As I understand it, immigration is always a balancing act. We have a demographic problem in Canada. As more boomers retire there needs to be workers to take their place and pay taxes to fund services. Many critical industries are experiencing a labour shortage and those jobs need to be filled. Their isn't enough young Canadian citizens to accomplish this. Immigration can't just be stopped.

More immigrants will put pressure on the housing market, but the lack of housing is the result of decades of government complacency, as well as support for Canadian housing as an investment vehicle. The amount of houses/housing we need right now is huge. So huge that the current amount of construction workers in Canada cannot build it quickly enough. Immigrant workers will be needed. Undoing the decades of damage done to housing in Canada will take a sustained, long term, and bold effort. Does the current government have the will for that? I'm not super hopeful. Politicians have vested interests in keeping the housing market 'strong'. I hate to be fatalist, but even if the government does everything right, I don't expect the cost of housing to decrease any in the medium term.

Unfortunately, I don't have answers, besides the obvious that immigration policy needs to be nuanced and strategic.

That's my view of things anyway. I invite anyone to criticise and share knowledge on the subject.

These are tiny homes that are built in a shop and just dropped onto the little concrete pad once they're done. A small crew was able to build them out over time, so I can't say which option exactly is cheaper. One advantage was they were able to move people in as they were built too.

Edit to add a word

I get what you're saying 100%, but it's really not a struggle to decide which one is worse.

Alea iacta est

There is French territory just off the coast of Newfoundland too (see Saint Pierre and Miquelon), also Denmark is right next door because of Greenland. So while still pretty far fetched, there is some precedent for European territory in North America.

That too

It's a code red snowflake alert

If we were living in a rational world I'd agree, but with all the ludicrous stuff we've seen in the last few months I'm not convinced we are. We really shouldn't dismiss anything as impossible with Trump at the helm of the US. It's a hope for the best, prepare for the worst kind of time.

When Doug Ford was going to tax the electricity going into the US, Trump said on Truth Social:

I will shortly be declaring a National Emergency on Electricity within the threatened area. This will allow the U.S to quickly do what has to be done to alleviate this abusive threat from Canada.

I find that extremely worrying. With enough bluster and showing of force all it takes is one mistake to kick things off.