Canada won't do the work needed to retain them. Talking to lots of people it's mostly the combination of unaffordable housing (Canada has a far larger housing crisis than the US does with our two largest metro areas containing 25% of the country's population not having non-condo homes under $1 million) and high tax rates. People have some tolerance for paying tax rates in the 42-44% range plus sales tax plus property tax if their life is overall affordable, but when home prices are staggering high and that life becomes out of reach people move somewhere better. You can't fix housing when you want to import people faster than you can build homes for them (and Canada wants to grow to 100M people over 50 years) and you can't lower taxes when you want to pay for things without crushing debt and Canada seems to want more government programs not less.

Thanks for the context.

> Canada has a far larger housing crisis than the US does

I did not know this. Makes me wonder -- what is the point at which housing is so unaffordable that people start to riot?

It is unlikely there is such a point.

The Canadian government still holds crown land that they will give away for free to anyone willing to settle it. That provides an option of last resort. Any location in the country that compels one away from free has got to be worth it. While one may complain, as people love to do, they are still pulling out their purses because they know it is worth every penny.

Should the balance change, people will leave for greener pastures before worrying about rioting. Canada's whole legacy is built on people moving around when certain locations become too expensive. Its ancestral people have done it over, and over, and over again. There is no reason to think this time is different.

Really? Where do I sign up for this crown land?

there are, no jokes, apps for that.

hope you're comfortable with -40C or lower

I know you can buy crown land but I don't see it anywhere for free. I can do -40 but I've never seen it that cold for very long.

It's called homelessness and the american republicans want you to feel like it's because of lax law enforcement instead of, you know, the median salary in my city not being enough to actually live in the city.

You probably haven't even heard about my city, because it has only 60k ish people and still runs into that problem.

"But but but but zoning and developers can't build cheap housing because they aren't allowed to!". Funny, that didn't stop them from building hundreds of units of assisted living facilities right in some of the most expensive land they could find. Maybe it's because, in a capitalistic system, it's more incentivized to build a structure that can charge the state $12k a month per resident that they neglect than one that can charge each resident $2k a month because they actually have to be able to afford it.

Meanwhile grandma doesn't even know where they are.

Canada's population is already 23% immigrant, highest of any G7 country. There may be less of that 'quasi-xenophobic sentiment towards foreigners' than where you are.

Well I am not necessarily saying that they need more immigrants, that’s up to them.

Just because someone is an immigrant himself doesn't mean that he doesn't hate other immigrants.

Of course. But it might mean that the 77% of the population that is born in Canada is more accustomed/acclimatized to immigrants. They are not a weird/rare thing, and so they are accepted/liked by a bulk of the population.

Yes, that's my personal experience. Immigrants are more xenophobic than those born in Canada.

I’ve heard before immigrants take quite negative stances on “illegal”/“undocumented”/“irregular” immigration, saying “I had to jump through all these hoops to come here, I have no sympathy for people who break the rules instead”. Is that xenophobia?

Years ago, I went on a business trip to the US, and while there an Indian-American colleague said some very Islamophobic things to me. I guess he probably brought some of that with him from India, although certainly there would have been things in the US to reinforce it. He was a 9/11 survivor and this was only a few years later, so that was likely a factor too. There is some obvious overlap between Islamophobia and xenophobia - although not all Muslims have an immigrant background (converts), and there are billions of non-Muslim foreigners

> Canada's population is already 23% immigrant, highest of any G7 country. There may be less of that 'quasi-xenophobic sentiment towards foreigners' than where you are.

Australia is even more immigrant than Canada – around 30% overseas born.

But I think part of why Australia (and maybe Canada too) have less of a problem with xenophobia than some countries with less immigrants – greater selectiveness in the immigration intake, and skewing it more towards highly skilled/educated people.

If you take in 100,000 university graduates from China and India, versus 100,000 random refugees and economic migrants from anywhere at all – it is unsurprising the former cause significantly less social problems than the latter, and those social problems tend to fuel xenophobia.