A new poll ahead of Alberta’s fall referendum finds that a majority of voters will likely vote in support of the five questions related to immigration.
This is truly scary
Remember: Remain in Canada + No to everything else
For sure but isn’t an anti-immigrant sentiment surge inevitable until we’ve built out our material base to support the larger population? In my mind, we have a material base shortage. That makes people’s lives worse. They connect the dots, want less immigration till the problem is fixed. I think that also neatly gives the solution to the anti-immigration sentiment - fixing the material problem as you suggested. Fix that and people would welcome immigration again.
Housing prices went up because since COVID most companies have been making record profits. These all went to shareholders/hedge funds who are flush with cash and bought up all the properties. They’re doing it because “it’s good to own land”. In Ottawa, in most neighborhoods, the cost of the empty lot is the same whether or not there is a house on it.
This is combined with the inflation and layoffs that affected the regular people who aren’t shareholders. Politicians have been freezing or cutting municipal taxes rather than keeping them tied to inflation to “try to help the little guy”. Unfortunately that benefits the rich more than anyone else.
Without strong tax revenues our cities have been cutting back on public transit, amenities, and even road maintenance.
This happened regardless of immigration.
The only way to fix our material base is to tax the rich and reinvest in cities, and public housing to drop housing prices. But the middle class sees housing as “an investment” instead of “a place to live” and would rather their 3br townhouse be worth a million bucks than have their kids and grandkids be able to afford a house. So anytime the government talks about public housing they lose the election.
Immigrants would be a huge asset if we wanted to fix the problem because they’re significantly overrepresented in the trades we need to build our way out of this if we find the political will to do so.
Think about it from a different point of view. If you had a big piece of land and a bunch of construction workers asked to live on it with you, wouldn’t say “we can’t invite you in until we build you a house first” you’d say “here’s some lumber, get cracking”. We haven’t fixed the base capacity problem because we (the rich and to some extent middle class boomers) don’t want to.
I agree with almost everything you said. I’m not saying immigration is the cause or is a primary driver to the material shortages people observe. I’m saying there are real shortages, in healthcare capacity, in transportation capacity, housing probably less an actual shortage but that too. And then people read about immigration numbers, see the new people around them, waiting in the ER, on the barely crawling highway, in the packed subway, etc. They see those new people and they make the obvious, surface level conclusion that they’re suffering because there’s more people using these resources. I’m saying this is an easy conclusion to make, not that it’s the right one. It’s also easy to make because it’s valid if one freezes all other variables, like the ones you mentioned. Worse, to my mom, those variables just don’t exist. They’ve never been in her consciousness. And then there’s PP and Trump assuring her that the simple explanation is the right one. They’re Occam’s-razoring her. I’m just explaining the process of anti-immigrant sentiment surge. I think given how easily it emerges from our material conditions, it can’t be waived away by the people who believe immigration is a net positive and especially by such politicians. It has to be taken into account and the root causes solved, like doing most of what you suggested. Otherwise I think we’re going down the same path the US and Europe is going down, no matter how nice and immigration-friendly we’ve been so far. I think fixing the shortages would halt and even reverse that, calling people bigots (not saying you’re doing that) would work for some but probably not most.
For sure but isn’t an anti-immigrant sentiment surge inevitable until we’ve built out our material base to support the larger population? In my mind, we have a material base shortage. That makes people’s lives worse. They connect the dots, want less immigration till the problem is fixed. I think that also neatly gives the solution to the anti-immigration sentiment - fixing the material problem as you suggested. Fix that and people would welcome immigration again.
That’s a red herring.
Housing prices went up because since COVID most companies have been making record profits. These all went to shareholders/hedge funds who are flush with cash and bought up all the properties. They’re doing it because “it’s good to own land”. In Ottawa, in most neighborhoods, the cost of the empty lot is the same whether or not there is a house on it.
This is combined with the inflation and layoffs that affected the regular people who aren’t shareholders. Politicians have been freezing or cutting municipal taxes rather than keeping them tied to inflation to “try to help the little guy”. Unfortunately that benefits the rich more than anyone else.
Without strong tax revenues our cities have been cutting back on public transit, amenities, and even road maintenance.
This happened regardless of immigration.
The only way to fix our material base is to tax the rich and reinvest in cities, and public housing to drop housing prices. But the middle class sees housing as “an investment” instead of “a place to live” and would rather their 3br townhouse be worth a million bucks than have their kids and grandkids be able to afford a house. So anytime the government talks about public housing they lose the election.
Immigrants would be a huge asset if we wanted to fix the problem because they’re significantly overrepresented in the trades we need to build our way out of this if we find the political will to do so.
Think about it from a different point of view. If you had a big piece of land and a bunch of construction workers asked to live on it with you, wouldn’t say “we can’t invite you in until we build you a house first” you’d say “here’s some lumber, get cracking”. We haven’t fixed the base capacity problem because we (the rich and to some extent middle class boomers) don’t want to.
I agree with almost everything you said. I’m not saying immigration is the cause or is a primary driver to the material shortages people observe. I’m saying there are real shortages, in healthcare capacity, in transportation capacity, housing probably less an actual shortage but that too. And then people read about immigration numbers, see the new people around them, waiting in the ER, on the barely crawling highway, in the packed subway, etc. They see those new people and they make the obvious, surface level conclusion that they’re suffering because there’s more people using these resources. I’m saying this is an easy conclusion to make, not that it’s the right one. It’s also easy to make because it’s valid if one freezes all other variables, like the ones you mentioned. Worse, to my mom, those variables just don’t exist. They’ve never been in her consciousness. And then there’s PP and Trump assuring her that the simple explanation is the right one. They’re Occam’s-razoring her. I’m just explaining the process of anti-immigrant sentiment surge. I think given how easily it emerges from our material conditions, it can’t be waived away by the people who believe immigration is a net positive and especially by such politicians. It has to be taken into account and the root causes solved, like doing most of what you suggested. Otherwise I think we’re going down the same path the US and Europe is going down, no matter how nice and immigration-friendly we’ve been so far. I think fixing the shortages would halt and even reverse that, calling people bigots (not saying you’re doing that) would work for some but probably not most.