Vancouver, Canada – Leslie Macfarlane claimed last year that she and her husband were experiencing “absolute rage” before fear when she learned they were being removed from a mobile home park in a Vancouver suburb.
Her residence was scheduled to be destroyed as part of the massive redevelopment of a low-rise apartment building.
The 67-year-old retiree was aware of the difficulty of finding rental housing in the notoriously expensive Lower Mainland. Her housing search turned out to be futile, she correctly predicted.
According to Macfarlane, “We couldn’t afford anything.”
For an apartment with half the space, the couple’s housing costs would have nearly tripled, going from about $1,100 to $3,000. The pair made the decision to relocate to Gibsons, a small coastal British Columbian town, where Macfarlane was born and raised.
“If you had a job, you could afford a place to rent,” I recall when raising my kids. You might not be able to afford a lot of rent, but it is still possible. According to Macfarlane, that is no longer the case.
The small town’s costs, which are only accessible by ferry, are “higher on everything,” according to Macfarlane, especially for groceries.
She has been buying less as the price of groceries rises.
“We’re getting to the point where we’re replacing carts with hand baskets of food each week.”
The two biggest issues facing Macfarlane are affordability of housing and the rising cost of groceries, according to the federal election scheduled for April 28.
Post-pandemic inflation
When Justin Trudeau was first elected in 2015, he had promised “sunny ways,” but many Canadians have since been plunged into inflationary shock as a result.
The cost of consumer goods has dramatically increased since Trudeau’s re-election in 2021. The largest annual change since 1983, a yearly change, was 8.1 percent higher than the previous year during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Statistics Canada, in June 2022. Tiff Macklem, the governor of the Bank of Canada, attributed the high inflation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as shipping delays and pandemic-related delays.
Actual prices are still much higher than they were in 2020 despite a slower inflation rate and a 2.3% increase since then.
Canadians have had trouble adjusting to the rising living costs.
According to David Macdonald, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, consumers experience the effects more profoundly when they regularly purchase goods like food and gasoline.
He claimed that “people take that inflation more personally.”
Prior to the pandemic, affordability of housing in Canada had been a top concern, but Macdonald claimed that interest rates had increased as a result as interest rates were raised by the Bank of Canada.
Rates increased to 5% in 2023 before starting to increase in 2022. The Bank of Canada finally cut rates midway through 2024, which is now 2.75 percent.
You weren’t safe anywhere, according to Macdonald. “Even if you were renting or owning, both sides were suffering significantly higher interest rates,” said one witness.
According to Macdonald, rent increases have been “mind-boggling” in some important Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver.
Average asking rents in Canada have increased by almost 18% since March 2020.
Regardless of country or political ideology, inflation has bad news for politicians in power, according to Macdonald.
According to Macdonald, “inflation didn’t just happen here; it also happened everywhere.” “You got pummeled at the election box in the next election if you were in power during that time.”
pressures from immigration
Some Canadians began to criticize Trudeau’s high immigration goals as a cause of the nation’s out-of-touch housing costs.
According to Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, the population grew almost three times as quickly as the housing stock did last year. Under Trudeau, he has criticized the “massive uncontrolled population growth” that “strained our housing, healthcare, and job markets.”
According to Irene Bloemraad, a professor of political science and sociology at the University of British Columbia and co-director of the Centre for Migration Studies, Trudeau had been elected on a platform that included making the immigration debate more inclusive and multicultural.
Immigration numbers increased until 2020, when the pandemic resulted in a “dramatic drop” in immigration.
According to Bloemraad, Canadian businesses, universities, and provincial governments felt a great need for more workers, students, and others as the country’s economy began to expand in 2021, particularly after a brief period of slow migration.
The number of temporary visas for employees and students has quickly increased thanks to the federal government.
According to her, “there is an argument that the government overshot, that they were just too aggressive in doing this,” given how the rapid influx of new residents in particular metropolitan areas impacted those housing markets.
In a late-2024 Environics poll, 48% of Canadians thought the country accepted too many immigrants, up from 27% in 2022.
Because it is immediately identifiable, immigration is a common target for people’s worries, according to Bloemraad. “People forget that housing costs were also extremely high prior to COVID.” This has not just happened, according to the statement.
In October of last year, Trudeau’s administration announced a reduction in immigration projections, setting a target of 395, 000 permanent residents by 2025 from the anticipated 485, 000 permanent residents by 2024. The reduction was more of a reset than a significant shift in direction, according to Blemraad, who noted that the numbers for 2025 are currently a little higher than they were in 2019.
The affordability crisis worsens.
Shahad Ishak, a resident of Toronto, claimed that Trudeau may have gotten off track with his election promises.
She told Al Jazeera, “He sold a lot of promises to people.”
She had the opportunity to purchase a home when she immigrated to Canada from Kuwait in 2013.
“But it only got worse there.” Never will I purchase a home at this time in my life.
And settling in Canada wasn’t simple.
Because the landlord refused to rent to her without a credit history in 2016, she was forced to use her savings and make payments six months in advance. She also encountered obstacles before because she had no prior experience in Canada.
She was required to work in “very harsh conditions,” including one at a call center.
Despite having almost nine years of experience working in corporate banking in Kuwait, she was eventually hired as a bank teller.
She had to work weekends and her job only offered her the minimum wage. She eventually resigned because it made no sense to work as a weekend babysitter for her two children. Hashak returned to school and is pursuing a sociology PhD.
Four of her close friends, all engineers, immigrated because of the cost-cut crisis.
How do people survive here, Ishak said, “makes me wonder”? because the pay is insufficient.
She anticipates that the upcoming administration will give more of the cost of renting housing a priority.
Ishak points out that this election feels different because of the current economic crisis and because foreign policy will play a significant role.
Trudeau calls it quits
Trudeau resigned as party leader in January after the Liberal Party experienced political unrest and disappointing poll results.
According to a Nanos poll, Conservative Party leader Poilievre, who had waged an aggressive campaign to remove Trudeau, was on track to win a “comfortable” majority.
Much of Poilievre’s sails were taken away by Trudeau as he stepped down. The Conservatives’ “huge” advantage sank in the direction of freedom.
Canadians have downgraded affordability on their list of election priorities as a result of the growing concern over tariffs and annexation threats from US President Donald Trump.
Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney’s replacement, Justin Trudeau, is now in the lead in the polls, benefiting from the perception that the public would be the best choice to negotiate with Trump.
The economist Macdonald claimed that Trudeau leaving may have “washed this election” of inflationary rage in some ways.
According to Macdonald, “Regular people are still really upset that grocery store prices are 30% higher than they were five years ago.” He continued, “Canadians are probably angrier with the US at this time.”
