How a pipeline project, purchased by the Trudeau government, went from an initial estimate of $5.4 billion to $30.9 billion, potentially leaving Canadian taxpayers on the hook.
How a pipeline project, purchased by the Trudeau government, went from an initial estimate of $5.4 billion to $30.9 billion, potentially leaving Canadian taxpayers on the hook.
Depends on how well pipeline building skills translate to home building skills, I guess. There isn’t anyone accustomed to building houses that is free to build more. They are booked up for years to come. Money only helps if what you want to buy is available for purchase.
If a sealed tube will suffice as a home then you may be on to something!
The market isn’t static. If you throw money at an industry, it grows. Existing people in that industry start their own businesses, or expand, and new people get training in the field.
Of course. Money brings out the people.
But then you’ve compounded the cost of constructing homes, which will also drive up the cost of used homes. That’s how we got here in the first place.
Not really solving the problem.
You really need to stop making assumptions about economics, you’re pretty bad at it.
At no point did we mention raising the prices of houses. Rather, if you’re using the money to offer multiple contracts to build houses, there’s more opportunity for people to enter the industry since there’s more income available.
Exactly. More offers competing for vendors means price will rise to attract vendors, either to win over existing vendors who will otherwise build a house for the next guy instead, or to compel new vendors into the marketplace who find the current rate not sufficient enough to bother with the industry. The going rate today is not enough to see more housing construction than what is already happening. Again, anyone who works on building houses today is booked up for years to come. Price has to rise to see something change.
At every point we mentioned raising the price of housing as it is fundamentally baked into the discussion. I don’t know, maybe you just forgot to read the discussion taking place?
I think you’re incorrect here, especially when the amount of money in question is on the scale of $25 billion (5.8% of Canada’s total 2023 budgetary spending ($432.9 billion)). I’m not an economist, but I’m willing to bet that sum of money, if redirected towards the ‘housing crisis,’ could make an appreciable difference in addressing that crisis. As you point out, increasing the skilled labour force would be a priority. Subsidized training, retraining, relocation, and focused immigration initiatives are all low-hanging fruit options and ones that would have many collateral benefits for Canada/Canadians as well.
https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/planned-government-spending/government-expenditure-plan-main-estimates/2023-24-estimates.html
Yes, and why do you think the labour force is so comparatively small right now? That’s right, because it isn’t lucrative enough for most people to bother with. There are so many other jobs the people can do instead.
So, to attract more workers, you need to offer them more money, and to pay them more money you are going to increase the cost of building a house. And if the cost of building a house increases, the next best alternative (used housing) is going to go up in price too.
That’s how we got here in the first place. If we could pay homebuilders $1 per hour, housing would be quite affordable (to anyone not building houses, at least). But you can’t. They won’t show up if you try. It costs serious amounts of money to compel what homebuilding workers we have to show up, and will cost even more if you want to convince more to join them.
If the BoC manages to kill the job market like they say they will, that will change things. Building homes starts to look more attractive when you’re unemployed. Taking a huge pay cut starts to look more attractive when you have no other jobs options in front of you. But, until then…
You’re right in that those jobs/careers need to be lucrative to attract individuals to them. Again, that’s where the billions come in handy. I don’t see how increasing the compensation of a single job sector will lead to a net increase in the cost of housing when the same compensation is being used to increase the housing supply
Comme on man. You know that’s not how I meant it.
I understand there aren’t enough construction workers or resources to go around right now, but if we stopped building giant luxury condos for rich investors to leave empty and built community or social housing instead, we’d probably have the resources.
And with that amount of money, I’m sure plenty of companies would volunteer.