Month: August 2023

The revamped Liberal cabinet retreats to Prince Edward Island this week while their party languishes in polling and the Conservatives surge. Underestimate Trudeau at your peril, perhaps, but something seems to have become particularly challenging.

While it is difficult to put your finger on just what that something is, it has become clear that much of that something is Canada’s housing crisis.

Apart from the PM himself, perhaps no one feels the heat on the way to Charlottetown more than Sean Fraser, the new housing minister. Fraser got this job because the Liberals have embarked on a strategy to tie immigration (Fraser previously led this portfolio) inexorably to housing, supposedly using newly arrived skilled labour to build the houses we desperately need.

All well and good, but it doesn’t seem Canadians are having any of it. The problem is, most Canadians aren’t convinced this works — and with house prices swelling, interest rates rising, and immigration continuing exponentially, I fear by combining these issues so closely the Liberals risk sparking a major backlash against their record-setting immigration plans.

Fraser has outlined his answer to the conundrum: add more supply through incentives to local governments and increase immigration rates to, in part, provide the labour required for this.

The new housing minister tackles this after the prime minister bluntly argued, “housing isn’t a primary federal responsibility.” On cleanup duty, Fraser later stated the federal government should be more active in developing and enacting housing policy, as it once was.

This, of course, is the right approach. Nevertheless, Fraser’s major challenge will be convincing Canadians that high immigration levels are good when many can’t afford homes.

This week, videos of Canadians tearily lamenting the cost of living went viral. The narrative that, after eight years in office, this government has left many — the very ones they promised to fight for — behind is beginning to set like cement.

Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has taken the government to task on housing with brutal effectiveness. He has managed to own this rhetorical stance while still supporting immigration — making the disconnect between the Liberal’s immigration policy and inaction on housing even harder to ignore.

Under Fraser’s oversight, immigration increased exponentially but integration remained plagued with accreditation issues and failed to correspond with housing supply: the national housing strategy has only resulted in just over 100,000 homes. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation determined 5.8 million more are needed over the next decade. In 2022, our population grew by over a million.

The Bank of Canada also acknowledged recently that immigration drives up housing demand. As the problem becomes more acute, this is where people will focus — not on the “mirage of economic prosperity” immigration otherwise contributes to.

The Liberals, if they are to have any hope of winning the next election, must convince Canadians immigration is in their near-term interests and that it will result in more houses being built. That’s a tall order when voters are being priced out of even the remotest dream of owning a home. It’s a disconnect that also dissuades immigrants from wanting to come here in the first place.

By failing to acknowledge this and rectify the integration issues in our immigration system so newcomers can positively contribute to the housing supply, the Liberals risk allowing the social cohesion they so value to fray. And when that starts, the uniquely Canadian support for significant levels of immigration will fray with it.

That would be a terrible shame. No one needs a lecture on the fundamental role immigration has played in our past and the crucial role it will play in our future — much less that it is simply right.

What isn’t right is an approach to this issue driven by complacency and inaction rather than by a fundamental commitment — not just to policy statements but to actually building new homes.

The problem is so large, the smoke trails so horrifying, the devastation so vast, you can only truly grasp its enormity from space.

Our nation’s forest fires have released 290 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, according to the European Union’s Earth observation program. Not only does that represent more than double our previous annual record, it represents more than 25 per cent of the global total for 2023.

That’s what you call an emergency.

And it’s an emergency that’s only growing worse. To date, more than 5,000 wildfires have scorched the earth in all thirteen provinces and territories, consuming more than 3.5 million hectares along the way. More than 1,000 fires remain active with 660 burning “out of control.”

So as is blindingly obvious from the “code red” air quality alerts, flights groundedand the serious health repercussions for all of us, this problem can no longer be dismissed as one only affecting small towns in the northern reaches of our country. No. This is a problem for all of us. And it’s high time we all did something about it.

Canada’s wildfires are here to stay. And that means our political leaders need to finally grow a backbone and implement a fully-funded national wildfire strategy.

While thousands of people are forced to evacuate their homes and lives are senselessly lost, our leaders have seemed content to sit back and watch our world burn, all while they play politics and shirk their responsibilities.

Justin Trudeau and the federal government need to step up and lead. They cannot continue to dawdle and dilly-dally while these wildfires rage. Canada’s wildfire season poses a genuine physical threat right now. The tragic losses and hardships that are impacting those Canadian communities affected by these infernos serve as a stark, daily reminder of the dire consequences of government inaction.

The solution? An urgent and immediate collaboration between provincial and federal governments which effectively addresses prevention, early detection, and firefighting strategies in an integrated fashion. By investing in robust firefighting resources, community preparedness, and sustainable forest management practices, we can start making a tangible difference.

The answer to this problem is to stop the fires before they start. There are not enough water bombers in the world to extinguish all the fires that are burning.

There are a number of mechanisms at our disposal to do so. Prescribed burns for example, deprive future wildfires of fuel by reducing the amount of underbrush and dead trees. It is this lack of proactive measures that should be utterly unacceptable to all Canadians. With less than 10 per cent of Canadian forests treated for wildfire risk, we are leaving our environment and communities vulnerable to inevitable disaster.

We need to look no further than to the significant role Indigenous communities can play in wildfire management and prevention. Indigenous peoples have lived in harmony with the land for millennia. They possess invaluable traditional knowledge and sustainable practices that can contribute to the development of the comprehensive national wildfire strategy we so desperately need.

The record-breaking global heat — last month was the hottest recorded — should serve as a wake-up call that this issue will not magically disappear. Inaction is no longer an option. The moment for bold and decisive action has arrived.

A comprehensive national wildfire strategy needs to put at its forefront the preservation of our environment and the safety of our citizens. We cannot allow our politicians to continue “fighting fires” with photo ops and generic tweets while our forests burn and lives are upended.

We simply must act decisively to protect our natural heritage, mitigate the impacts of climate change-related disasters, and safeguard our communities. Only through concerted effort and comprehensive planning can we hope to overcome this growing threat and build a resilient and sustainable future for all Canadians.

There can no longer be any excuses.