Alignment can help with housing

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/01/2024 (600 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canada is in a pickle. We need more young, working-age population to support our growing retirement age population, but at the same time, we have not kept pace with building sufficient housing to support that population growth.

We’ve seen these problems coming for a long time. Canadian author David Foot released “Boom, Bust and Echo” in 1996. It spent 100 weeks on the Globe and Mail Best Seller list. We’ve known that as the Boomers reached retirement age, they’d live longer, and we’d need more working-age population to support them.

The signs of a looming housing shortage have been there for the past 20 years, and have been actively debated over the past 10. Housing stock hasn’t kept pace with population growth, fewer people are living in each home than was the case 50 years ago, and housing prices in many markets have increased well above the inflation rate for many years.

As a consequence of those factors, housing has arguably emerged as the top political concern in the country.

In the past 15 years, there has also been significant growth in international students in Canada. I’d argue this has been for different reasons in different regions: sustainability of institutions in Atlantic Canada, as a replacement funding mechanism in Ontario, and to support population growth ambitions on the Prairies.

Some of this growth has been very high profile in areas where the housing situation has been most severe, notably Toronto and Vancouver.

Commentators in the past several months have made international students a focus of the discussion about surging Canadian population and sluggish housing growth. This prompted the Government of Canada earlier this week to implement a dramatic set of changes to how many international students will be permitted to study in the country, and how the process will work.

The new measures include provincial caps on the total number of international students, possibly allowing provinces to determine allocation levels for each institution, alterations to how students will be eligible for work permits after they graduate, and a host of other rules intended to reduce the numbers coming to study in Canada.

I suspect neither the Government of Canada nor the provinces are happy about these actions for a variety of reasons. In recent years, most governments have celebrated both the economic boon of international students for our country, and the important role international graduates play in our immigration system, in building our population. For example, the economic impact of international students in Canada is $22.3 billion per year.

In my view, these dramatic actions are being chosen as a result of federal-provincial relations in Ontario. The Government of Canada sees the Ontario government as being unwilling to regulate and restrain the educational institutions in its jurisdiction, and the Ontario government likely regards Ottawa as unwilling to sufficiently align and manage its system to reasonably control the problem on its end.

They may each have valid perspectives, but this standoff will now result in nationwide changes that will impact all provinces and institutions, let alone the ambitions of prospective students across the globe, who aspire to make Canada their home.

There is little question policy reform is required and program action is needed.

HOUSING

To its credit, the federal government has made housing a priority. Governments of different stripes have allowed the situation to progressively worsen over the past four decades, but if the best time to plant a tree was 50 years ago, the second-best time is still today. So, good on the Government of Canada for recognizing the problem and having the courage to take significant steps to address it.

But why not make a part of the solution to build more student housing? Our national organization, Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan), proposed to the Government of Canada to make a part of their housing strategy co-investing with colleges to create 40,000 new beds immediately. It’s unfortunate that this initiative wasn’t part-in-parcel of this week’s announcement.

The federal government, to its credit, has been moving coast to coast to coast on a variety of housing initiatives, but why not make one pillar to advance on-campus housing targeted at this very concern? Such units could arguably move even faster than the plans being rolled in partnership with municipalities across the country.

There is a popular expression that “every student housing bed creates two beds” — the one it provides directly for the student, and the one it frees up in the community.

Such steps would certainly help to demonstrate the government’s commitment to solving the underlying problem, and that these moves are not simply federal-provincial politics.

ALIGNMENT

One concern expressed by the Government of Canada is whether there is alignment between the programs being offered to students and legitimate labour market needs that allow the graduates to be successful in Canada upon graduation. Ontario private institutions in particular have been a focus of this commentary.

This is an area where the Government of Canada already has significant control over study visa approvals. Their approval processes and policies have often been misaligned, however. While provinces control designated learning institutions, the federal government ultimately approves the permits.

INTENT TO RETURN TO HOME COUNTRY

Our international student visa approval system is still predicated on the notion that most students will return to their home countries after they complete their studies.

To his credit, former immigration minister Sean Fraser saw that this policy is not aligned with what is actually happening.

The reality is most students study here because they want to make Canada their home — and most Canadian jurisdictions want that, too.

A decade ago, some officials in Manitoba signalled that they wanted at least half of their Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) allocation to come from international students studying in Manitoba. Readers may have noted the media story about 10 days ago that Manitoba hadn’t used its full allocation in recent years, and this was attributed to staff shortages for processing. Labour shortages are causing grief once again.

Our experience has been that when prospective students have family members in Westman, and a program with a good line of sight to a job, they are often refused a study permit because the people processing the visa application don’t believe they will leave the country after graduation. Yes, you read that right. You can’t make this stuff up.

As such, for prospective students there is almost an incentive to not be honest about your desire to stay in Canada on your student visa application. To his great credit, Fraser immediately recognized this, but it’s also clear that there are entrenched bureaucratic forces that are stalling positive change.

This is a key policy issue for places like western Manitoba. For many years, the complaint has always been that newcomers start in rural areas and smaller cities, but then quickly migrate to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Having relatives in Neepawa makes it more likely to settle in Neepawa, however. We need to get aligned.

TRADES

Study visa approvals are also more likely for longer program of study, and approval officers have often exhibited a university bias, a bias that is hard wired into some of these recent changes — but that would be another 1,200 words.

In fact, master’s and PhD programs have been exempt from the new measures. But you know what hasn’t been exempt? Construction trades-related programs — programs that could actually help address the housing shortage that is causing so much grief for so many Canadians.

The structure of pre-employment trades and apprenticeship programming unfortunately remains a mystery to far too many. Our experience has been that visa denials for trades programs are quite elevated. As a result, people advising prospective international students guide them away from trades and toward programs more likely to receive study permit approvals, regardless of their career interests and ambitions.

Apprenticeship trades arguably need their own stream, accounting for multiple study and work periods over a four-year period to achieve journeyperson status. The Government of Canada would be well served to develop such a stream, and begin by targeting construction trades that can assist to addressing the housing shortage.

Alignment can be elusive and takes work to get disparate pieces of a complex system paddling in harmony, but more than anything, that is what this situation calls for.

The Government of Canada needs to rethink some of the new changes, think of others as temporary and quickly pair those changes with a series of other initiatives that will be more effective in solving the problem. They need to move quickly on a housing program, policy reform and service execution that aligns with the goal of addressing the housing crisis and labour market needs.

If they can’t or won’t do that, they should not be surprised if the new measures fail to accomplish their important objectives.