I’ve seen the aftermath of a line of solar panels (up by Elbow SK) after a prairie hailstorm. That’s impressive. Might be worth a google earth hunt in the daylight. Think it’s close to Elbow on Grid #749 if I remember correctly.
Canada’s cities see immigration-driven population surge after pandemic lull
- Thread starter The_Foxer
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It always amazes me at how big B.C. Is , all the valleys running off the main highways . The same in the prairies RR number 26 etc .
I have been caught in one of those hail storms , had something like 340 dents on my rented car . I am sure that it would have destroyed a solar farm .
I was the one driving when we went past it on the way to camping on Canada day weekend…. Or I would’ve taken pictures.
This was a big string in a single line for a big farming outfit (not a solar farm itself), and they were absolutely trashed….
I guess they cheaped out and didnt buy (or the grant didn't cover) the hail netting that prevents that. Shitty.
Do I want to see "all the land" covered with solar panels rather than "nature?" Absolutely not!!
We build far more housing than what would be required for just BC residents. Worse we are building retirement money for outsiders. Totally unnecessary.Well that's not quite true - in fact as far as labour markets go we make more from film and software development just to name a couple. And it may seem like we build a "lot" of homes but compared to any other part of the world it's actually pretty mild. It's just that people look at the value of the homes and add that up and think THAT is the value of the economic activity, but really it isn't.
Well that part is true
For the last 15 - 20 years we havent' even built ENOUGH homes just for bc residents. There is a housing shortage, and even when you take into account the vacant homes we still come up very short. And new home starts aren't keeping up with increases in population so the problem is going to get worse before it gets better.
IF that WASN'T the case, then we wouldn't have an issue with foreign buyers because the value of homes as a limited commodity wouldn't shoot up 20 percent or more per year. There would be no particular reason for foreign investors to buy here rather than somewhere else. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter - fi a person is living in a home that's owned locally or by a foreigner they still take up one home, and there's not enough to go around.
The solution lies where it always has - build enough homes and all the other problems go away. There is no problem then will foreign owners, there is no problem with rental rates shooting up, there is no problem with houses becoming unaffordable to buy. We don't build enough homes and the way our systems are set up right now we never will. We have to make a number of changes to encourage advanced planning and home construction beyond just municipal gov'ts.
Affordable housing.
An overlooked issue is international students gobbling up units. Is there a plan to reduce student visas as young immigrant familes flood our shores? Universities need to be upping their housing game. Does it make sense for a single student to occupy a 1bdrm suite capable of housing a fledgling family of 3 when all the student needs is a room?
According to stats there were 621,000 student visas issued in 2021.
Thats a lot of units.
An overlooked issue is international students gobbling up units. Is there a plan to reduce student visas as young immigrant familes flood our shores? Universities need to be upping their housing game. Does it make sense for a single student to occupy a 1bdrm suite capable of housing a fledgling family of 3 when all the student needs is a room?
According to stats there were 621,000 student visas issued in 2021.
Thats a lot of units.
The population would not be increasing dramatically if we stopped letting more people into the province. Therefore we would need to build far fewer houses to keep up with local demand and the cost of building would drop dramatically.
Well... i'm going to have to concede that point at least, the math is certainly on your side "_
And we would. The way our system is set up we will always build fewer homes than we need. It's not INTENTIONALLY set up to do that, but that is the outcome. For several reasons. So the problem woudln't change. We still wouldn't build enough homes and we still wouldn't keep up with demand. We just don't build enough homes. The only thing that would change that is if our population steadily decreased over a long period of years and that would leave us with a host of other serious problems.
Remember - the number of homes we build HAS increased - it's just always increasing slightly behind population growth so the problem always gets a little worse. But it's not like we couldn't build more - we did increase. And we could easily do a massive increase if we wished now. But - the way things are that is seriously discouraged from happening on many levels.
It would actually go up. But not by that much so it's not really a big deal.
The thing is, we do need population growth. Whether it comes from immigration or natural internal births, we need to grow. For several reasons. So simply stopping growth is not a workable solution. Reducing it might not be a bad idea for various reasons but at the end of the day we need to be able to build enough homes (and schools and hospitals etc) for our growth. As a nation that's something we HAVE to have.
And we don't. So we're going to have massive problems with rental prices and home prices and availability no matter what else we do, period. The only other answer as noted was a significant and prolonged year after year decrease in population and i don't see that happening shy of a war.
Once the boomers die off without massive immigration our population will naturally decline, reducing the need for mote housing.
The main reason the government is importing 400 000+ people is to keep the ponzi #cheme pension plan afloat until the boomers are gone. By the there will be more worker bees than raisins.
That is true, but as mentioned a declining population is generally a bad thing.
I can see why you might think that but no, that's not the main reason. The fact is they could get away with far far less immigration and achieve that. In fact they would achieve that if the population just remained stable,
The main reason is a different kind of ponzi scheme. Or more accurately a pyramid scheme. Increased immigration temporarily increases gdp and econonomic activity. New people means new wages and new purcahses and requires more gov't staff and such which creates more tax revenue and makes the gdp look higher which helps cover up the insanely massive deficits that the gov't has or the horrible economic catastrophe which is unfolding.
The problem is that like any pyramid scheme for it to work you have to keep increasing and increasing the number of new people coming in to keep that going. If they don't, then the cost of the new people on the social structure such as medicine and gov't services catches up and you don't get the benefit anymore and you have massive deficits So as long as there is constant growth in immigration everything LOOKS fine, but the moment that stops then the whole thing comes to a crashing halt.
Which is what trudeau wants to happen of course. He and the libs hope that when the cpc get in they'll do the right thing and slow immigration (Which they almost certainly will) and reduce inflation (which they almost certainly will), and those two things are the only reason we're not seeing hundred billion dollar deficits at the moment. Its kind of a poison pill, where the cpc will have to be very carefull or they'll look like the 'bad parent'.