When Canada's population surpasses 41 million, when will the next "demographic milestone" come? Statistics Canada recently made a long-term forecast.
In the next 50 years, Canada's population will still enter a period of rapid growth, and by 2073 it may reach a maximum of 87.2 million, more than twice as many as it is now!
If the population growth rate is similar to the current one, the most likely figure for Canada's population in 2073 is 62.8 million, that is, the Canadian population will explode by another 50% in the next 50 years.
Regardless of which party is in power, immigration will be the main driver of Canada's population growth, a trend that began in the 1990s and will not change for decades to come.
Canada's aging population is also set to get worse. By 2073, the number of people over the age of 85 will be twice as high, and the proportion of people aged 0 to 14 will fall to an all-time low. After all, immigrants to Canada are mostly adults.
In 2073, the average age of the Canadian population will reach 42.6 to 50.1 years, up from 41.6 years in 2023. In addition, Ontario and Quebec will remain the most populous and second-most populous provinces in Canada, although it appears that B.C. has more immigrants.
There is a large housing gap, and long-term high-speed construction is required
Since the epidemic, in order to alleviate the housing crisis, Canada has introduced a series of heavy measures from the federal government to provincial and municipal governments to encourage rapid housing construction, such as the "one change to many" in British Columbia.
However, building houses quickly is not just something that should be done in recent years, but something that Canada should do in the long term, otherwise housing will always be in short supply under the continuous rapid population growth.
According to the latest data from the Mortgage and Housing Corporation of Canada (CMHC), according to the 2021 census, the average Canadian household is 2.4 people, and at this rate, 183,000 new homes will need to be built each year to accommodate the new population.
Fortunately, the current pace of housing construction is still good, and in recent years, Canada has been able to start construction of 247,800 housing units per year. However, this extra start is used to make up for the housing shortage, after all, the national housing shortage is as high as 3.5 million units.
Even if an additional 60,000 units can be built each year, it will take more than half a century to fill the gap and bring housing affordability back to normal levels. Therefore, the annual start of 247,000 sets is still far from enough.
The CMHC concludes that at the current rate of construction, the youngest Canadian millennials will have to wait until they are 83 to enjoy the housing market as affordable as their parents did when they were younger.
It should also be noted that this is based on a population of 62.8 million in 2073, and if Statistics Canada's most daring forecast is that the population in 2073 is likely to exceed 80 million, then the annual housing starts will be astronomical.
Housing pressure will ease unless the increase in the number of new immigrants to Canada is significantly lower for a variety of reasons. But the decline in the level of new immigrants will bring new problems: an aging population will become more severe, and the labor force will be more insufficient, which will not be conducive to economic recovery.
Trudeau promises that there will be a significant increase in starts
Of course, the Canadian federal government is aware of this situation, so on the one hand, they have adjusted their immigration policy, saying that they will select high-quality immigrants as much as possible, rather than opening the door to all immigrants. On the other hand, it promises to greatly increase the speed of construction.
A total of 2 million additional homes will be built over the next seven years – 3.87 million from the 1.87 million new homes promised over the next seven years. This is equivalent to an increase in the number of houses built annually from the current 280,000 to about 550,000.
In this way, in 2030, Canada's housing affordability, although still severe, will at least be on par with the per capita homeownership rate of other G7 countries. The program is precisely known as the "Plan to Solve the Housing Crisis".
Trudeau believes that the plan is "very optimistic and not difficult to achieve", but in the view of the CMHC and other experts, building houses at more than twice the rate overnight is an extremely cumbersome task, especially considering that the current labor and material costs are still very high.
CMHC believes that it is not easy to maintain an annual production capacity of 247,000 units and maintain it for many years, and it is indeed unthinkable to double the number of units. In addition, Trudeau will most likely not be re-elected next year, and his so-called promise is almost "expiration date".
Vancouver and Toronto continue to decline in livability rankings
If the housing problem is not solved, it will directly affect the livability index of Canadian cities, such as Vancouver and Toronto, which have seen a decline in their livability rankings.
In the 2024 list of the Economist Intelligence Unit, Vancouver fell from the fifth most livable city in the world to the seventh, and Toronto fell out of the top 10, mainly due to "housing pressure". Sydney, Australia, also fell in the rankings, also because of housing problems.
The first place was again in Vienna, the capital of Austria, with the jury highlighting its "strong public housing policy on the basis of stability", followed by Copenhagen in Denmark and Zurich in Switzerland in second and third place, respectively.
The cost of living has obviously become a constraint for major cities in Canada, and Calgary, which ranks second highest in the world's most livable cities, has led the country in housing price growth in the past two years, but it is still only about half of that of Vancouver and Toronto.
Vancouver has never dropped out of the top 10 since the establishment of the Livable Cities Rankings, and this joint seventh place is the lowest in recent years. Without an improvement in housing, Vancouver will no longer be in the first tier of the world's most livable cities.