When Supply Becomes a Slogan

It’s the most repeated line in Canadian politics: “We just need to build more homes.”
And sure — it sounds simple. It even polls well. But Canada has been doing exactly that. Between 2021 and 2024, the country averaged over 300,000 housing starts per year, according to CMHC data — the highest rate since the 1970s. Yet, during that same period, average home prices rose by over 42%, rents hit record highs in every major city, and the share of income Canadians spend on housing reached the highest in modern history.

Building didn’t fix it. It made some people rich — but not housed.

In Toronto, average condo prices jumped from $558,000 in 2019 to $728,000 in 2024 — despite over 130,000 new condo units being built in the same time. In Vancouver, the number of homes under construction hit a record 47,000 in 2023, yet rents climbed 15% year-over-year and the median detached home hit $2.1 million, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

We didn’t build our way out. We built our way in deeper.

The 300,000-Homes Mirage

The number sounds impressive — 300,000 homes! — until you realize who they were built for, where they were built, and how they were financed.

Roughly 60% of those units were condos, according to CMHC’s 2023 report on completions. And condos are the least affordable, least family-friendly, and most investor-heavy segment of Canada’s housing market. In Toronto, half of new condos are owned by investors; in Vancouver, it’s closer to 56%, according to Statistics Canada’s Housing Statistics Program.

These aren’t homes for people — they’re balance sheets for portfolios.

A condo in Burnaby is not a “home built” when it’s sitting empty as a capital hedge for someone in Hong Kong, or rented to five international students at $1,200 each. A new detached house in Richmond is not “adding supply” when it replaces a teardown that housed three families and is now owned by a satellite family who visits twice a year.

Canada counts units, but never people.

And while we’re on that — let’s talk population.

Population Shock Therapy

Between 2021 and 2024, Canada added 3.2 million new residents — the fastest population growth in G7 history. That’s a 9% increase in three years. But housing completions grew by only 2.4% in that same time.

The math doesn’t just fail — it explodes.

Canada’s average of 2.5 people per household means that every million newcomers requires roughly 400,000 new homes. But immigration, temporary visas, and international student inflows have far outpaced construction. In 2023 alone, the federal government issued over 1 million temporary resident visas, on top of 470,000 permanent residents.

So when Ottawa brags about “record housing starts,” it’s bragging about losing slower.

According to Desjardins Economic Research, Canada would need an additional 5.8 million homes by 2030 to restore affordability to 2004 levels. That’s nearly double the current build rate.

In other words, if 300,000 homes a year didn’t work — 600,000 won’t either. Because we’re not solving a housing problem. We’re solving a speculation problem dressed up as a housing crisis.

“Supply, Supply, Supply” — and Zero Affordability

The “build more” argument assumes one thing: that prices fall when supply rises.
But that’s only true when supply meets demand that can actually buy or rent those homes.

Canada’s demand is not population-driven anymore — it’s financialized.

Between 2010 and 2024, residential investment as a share of GDP doubled, hitting 10% — one of the highest ratios in the developed world. In that time, average household debt-to-income hit 180%, and the Bank of Canada found that 30% of homebuyers in 2022 were investors — up from just 20% five years prior.

When you “add supply” into an investor market, the new homes get snapped up not by people needing shelter, but by people chasing returns. Every pre-sale tower becomes a speculative trade. Every “affordable” rental project turns into an REIT acquisition.

We’ve effectively built 300,000 financial assets per year, not 300,000 homes.

Where the Homes Were Built — and Why They Don’t Matter

Out of the 300,000 homes built yearly, over 75% were in just four provinces — Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia. But the bulk of Canada’s affordability disaster sits in two cities: Toronto and Vancouver.

Toronto’s population density is 4,400 people per square kilometre, Vancouver’s is 5,600, yet both are surrounded by miles of underused single-family zoning. The federal government begged cities to “upzone around transit,” and the provinces followed suit. But what happened? Cities caved to NIMBYs, diluted every plan, and passed “density-lite” policies designed not to upset their aging homeowner base.

Take Vancouver’s Transit-Oriented Development Policy. It sounds visionary — but city councils watered it down to allow mostly midrise, mixed-use projects, often capped at six stories, in areas that could easily handle twenty. Meanwhile, a six-bedroom teardown in Kerrisdale still sits on a 60-foot lot zoned for one house.

Canada didn’t build the wrong number of homes — it built them in the wrong places, for the wrong people, and under the wrong rules.

How Municipal Politics Protects the Problem

Municipal councils love “public consultation” — a process that, in reality, means letting 30 retirees veto a 300-unit project.

In Vancouver, a single rezoning application can take 3–5 years and cost $1–2 million in fees and studies before a shovel even hits dirt. Developers then pass those costs to buyers, inflating prices before the project even exists.

In Toronto, the average time to approve a mid-rise development is 27 months, according to the Building Industry and Land Development Association. Meanwhile, 40,000 people are on the city’s affordable housing waitlist.

City councils pretend to champion affordability — then approve projects that protect property values instead. It’s policy written by and for those who already own.

Boomers, meet zoning: your most profitable asset.

The Cost Disease: When Concrete Costs More Than Gold

Even if zoning disappeared tomorrow, the economics of building have collapsed.
Construction costs have risen over 53% since 2019, according to Statistics Canada’s Construction Price Index. Land costs have doubled in most major metro areas.

A “typical” purpose-built rental in Vancouver now costs $650–700 per square foot to build, meaning a 600-square-foot unit costs nearly $400,000 before financing or profit. To make that viable, monthly rents must exceed $2,800.

That’s not “luxury” — it’s just math.

And that’s why you see cranes everywhere but affordability nowhere. Every new unit adds to supply — but only at the top of the market, where it’s profitable to build. The middle is gone.

We deregulated mortgages, not land prices.

The Immigration Factor Nobody Wants to Quantify

This is where it gets politically radioactive — but it’s unavoidable.

Canada’s post-2021 immigration surge is not the problem itself, but it’s been handled with zero coordination. The federal government admits it has no housing plan tied to immigration targets. None.

In 2023, international students occupied roughly 12% of all rentals in Ontario, according to Urbanation, while temporary foreign workers tripled since 2015. In cities like Brampton and Surrey, investors converted detached homes into “student houses,” each renting individual rooms for $900–$1,400.

Ottawa wants population growth; provinces want labor; cities want affordability — and no one talks to each other.

You can’t invite 1.5 million new residents a year without an actual housing blueprint — unless your blueprint is to inflate GDP with rent and tuition revenue.

Developers, REITs, and the Speculation Machine

If there’s one group that understands how broken the system is, it’s developers.
They’re not villains — they’re rational actors in a bad game.

Public builders chase grants and density bonuses; private ones chase pre-sales.
In 2024, over 30% of new condo projects in Toronto were delayed or cancelled, according to Altus Group — because investors stopped buying pre-sales once interest rates rose.

In other words: we only build when speculation works.

REITs now own 20% of all purpose-built rentals in Canada and have driven average rents 22% higher than private landlord averages, according to ACORN Canada’s 2023 report.

We’ve financialized the right to exist indoors.

Why “Affordable Housing” Isn’t

Governments love to announce “affordable housing” projects — but the term has become Orwellian.

Under CMHC’s guidelines, “affordable” can mean rent equal to 80% of market value — which, in Vancouver, means paying $2,400 for a one-bedroom.

The National Housing Strategy, launched in 2017 with a $40-billion budget, produced fewer than 35,000 genuinely affordable units in six years. Meanwhile, Canada lost over 550,000 low-rent units (under $1,000/month) in that same time, according to Parliamentary Budget Office data.

We’re replacing affordability with marketing language.

The Boomers’ Inheritance Economy

Every broken housing system needs a villain. In Canada, it’s not individuals — it’s generations.

Boomers and early Gen Xers own over 70% of national housing wealth, and the median homeowner is 58 years old. They bought when the average home cost 3–4x annual income. Today, it’s 11–13x.

This wealth gap has turned Canada into a two-tier country: those who own homes, and those who pay for the ones who do.

Municipal policy protects this wealth like sacred scripture. A council meeting in 2024 is basically a homeowners’ association with microphones.

Every stalled upzoning, every delayed tower, every “character home preservation” bylaw is a political love letter to a voting bloc that believes their property values are the national interest.

The Great Gaslighting of “Market Balance”

CMHC still calls for “market balance” — but balance between what and what?
There’s no equilibrium between rent at $3,000 and wages that haven’t risen since 2016.

The average Canadian wage grew 3.4% per year between 2018 and 2024, while home prices rose 11% annually and rents 9.2%. The math is so broken that a dual-income couple earning $180,000 can’t qualify for a detached home in 85% of Canadian metros.

“Market balance” has become a euphemism for “slow-motion collapse.”

The Fake Fixes We Keep Repeating

Every level of government has announced a “housing plan” in the past five years.
None of them worked. Let’s count the hits:

• The First-Time Home Buyer Incentive (2019): Used by less than 10% of eligible buyers.

• The Foreign Buyer Ban (2023): Irrelevant — foreign ownership was already under 2%.

• The Flipping Tax: A rounding error.

• The GST Rebate on Rentals: Helps luxury developers, not tenants.

We keep pretending we can patch a speculative system without dismantling it.

What Would Actually Work

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Canada doesn’t need to build more.
It needs to build differently — and regulate who gets to own what’s built.

Here’s what would move the needle:

1. End blanket tax exemptions on capital gains for principal residences — at least for luxury tiers.

2. Tax vacant land and unoccupied units aggressively.

3. Give municipalities real fiscal power to build non-market housing directly.

4. End pre-sale flipping and speculative assignment trades.

5. Link immigration quotas to regional housing capacity.

Until then, we’ll keep “building 300,000 homes a year” and wondering why everyone’s still living with roommates at 35.

The Real Estate-Industrial Complex

Housing isn’t an economic sector in Canada — it is the economy.

Real estate now makes up over 15% of GDP, and the average household’s net worth is 70% real estate-based. Banks rely on mortgages for profit; provinces rely on property taxes; homeowners rely on price appreciation for retirement.

You can’t “fix” housing without rewriting the country’s entire economic model.

And that’s why nothing changes. Because affordability would crash the economy — and no government wants to take the blame for the most predictable correction in modern history.

The Supply Illusion

“Build more homes” was supposed to be the silver bullet.
But we built the most in history — and affordability got worse.

Because the real crisis isn’t supply. It’s intent.

We built investment vehicles, not communities.
We built for appreciation, not occupation.
We built density — and forgot affordability.

Until housing policy stops treating roofs as revenue and starts treating them as rights, Canada will keep breaking construction records — and breaking people in the process.