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by scohesc 1101 days ago
Congratulations Canada - welcome to the big leagues! I hope they continue to grow and become a meaningful player on the global stage!

Canada is a wonderful country with a lot of places to visit, culture to experience, people to interact with - I visited there 5 years ago and was able to visit only a small part of such a beautiful country.

Now, they can (hopefully) deal with the issues that come along with increasing your population by millions per year, along with a lack of economic planning, though from what I hear and read, it seems like not a lot of headway is being made:

- Unaffordable housing to a large portion of Canadians (Condos sell in the more heavily populated parts of Canada for high 6-figures/millions of dollars)

- Unaffordable rent to a large portion of Canadians (A friend in Canada is paying around $1300 CAD a month for a 700sqft bachelor suite not including all utilities)

- Rampant inflation and opportunistic price-gouging from corporations

- The increased load on the already strained healthcare system, making Canadians wait up to 3-4 weeks to see their family doctor, and months/years for specialists.

- Monopolization and lack of competition in critical industries (Telecoms and Grocery come to mind as of late)

- Multiple allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian politics and foreign influence of active MPs that go seemingly ignored by the current party in power.

3 comments

I concur as a Canadian with all of your points but the last one feels like it is in a different territory, nowhere near as relevant systemically as the others. More flavour of the day, gotta fill the news cycle. We Canadians unfortunately focus on this nonsense rather than protest in the streets about the important stuff, namely your other points.
Agreed. This is mostly just geopolitical propaganda because China allied with Russia. And maybe COVID fallout. It's all prep to get the population onboard for more military bullying of China.
Where's your friend? $1300 cad for a 700sqft pad in Toronto is a steal!

I'm unfortunately very serious.

Just learned yesterday that a bachelor in my building is now $1850 (CAD), hydro and water extra. This is not a luxury building.
> luxury building

Fun fact, there are no luxury buildings. There's newer building and older buildings. The term luxury is just slapped onto marketing for new units being sold in new buildings. Why am I being so pedantic? Because people complain that "they only make luxury housing these days, we need affordable housing too!". Guess what, your parents' bungalow in the suburbs was likely marketed as luxury housing 50 years too.

https://marker.medium.com/the-dangerous-myth-of-luxury-housi...

I second this, from Vancouver! My partner pays $1500 for less.
$1300/mo is cheap! Try $2300 in Vancouver. Canada's two biggest English speaking cities have rents amongst the highest in the world.