Close Reading

Right now is probably the worst time to come here. With global recession and post-pandemic hardship, everyone is feeling the pinch. Small businesses are closing down as they could not repay back the relief loans given by the government during the pandemic. Trudeau’s policy of immigration through the educational stream and admitting so many refugees from Syria and Ukraine have caused massive rent increase - too many people chasing after lower real estate supply. Because people are feeling the pinch, crimes are up and homelessness has become a serious issue. But, here are the (long-term) advantages of living here, vs. The Philippines:\n- free healthcare - no matter how rich you are back home, wealth can be depleted if a major illness strikes;\n- free education for your kids up to highschool and opportunity for your kids to enter worldclass universities after highschool;\n- government programs that actually work - Worker rights are upheld, doleouts when you lose your job, 12-month mat/paternity leave, doleout/govt match when you save for yr kid’s university educ, tax rebates for whatever you save for retirement, retirement income even if you never held a job, infrastructures are maintained, transparency and stability of political system; \n- safer environment - yes, greater crimes lately, but still one of the safest places to live. I live in greater Toronto, and sometimes we forget to lock our door at night or leave a bicycle outside and nothing happens;\n- commitment to the environment - the country adheres to protecting the envt. You can drink water from the faucet. Strict laws on recycling and waste disposal. Greenbelt protection on forest and conservation park areas, even in the cities. Canada also has the world’s biggest water supply...in today’s global climate change, were decades away from water wars;\n- a beautiful country with friendly, humble and relaxed people who observe work-life balance

We had to move out from Brampton bc it become terrible place to live. 3000 sq ft beautiful homes in nice subdivision. House next to us, 4 families in one house crowded like rats. Indian music playing laud in garage on Sundays. About 15 kids seating on top of 6 ft fence staring in our backyard. Couldn’t enjoy life anymore. Crime start to spike. Today people blame on Liberals, however that was during Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. Those immigrants destroy city. I hope they all leave Canada.

Let's see: Canadian landlords are out of control, completely unleashed by governmental regulation, renovicting and jacking rents to insane levels, people can't afford what little existing housing there is, and our government insists on adding a million people a year to the population, with no good-paying jobs available for Canadians, never mind the imports.\n\nStart voting left, people, because in case it hasn't become blatantly obvious yet, the Liberals nor the Conservatives are not looking out for you. This is clearly an attempt to break the middle class and create a new serf class.

Immigration (especially the student visa back door) has become a lucrative business for a few people (colleges, ESL schools, universities, construction companies, realtors, etc) without thinking about the impact on all the most basic needs for Canadians. There have been record numbers of immigrants, but where are the record numbers in new housing, new hospitals, new nurses, new doctors, etc? Obviously, this is a good business for construction companies and realtors because they can maintain high prices forever and keep making money on the Canadian dream. It is time for the Canadian government, whether liberal or conservative, to stop this nonsense until the coverage of the basic needs of Canadians are covered.

I live in Ontario Canada. Generally; I vote Liberal. I voted Trudeau in twice.... now regretting it a little bit. He has done some good for me; but also bad.\nCanada started plummeting after COVID hit; and it has gotten worse. The main errors made by this government are with both the Liberals and Conservatives agreeing to 'grown' big corporates into HUGE monopoly corporates. TO compete with the USA. Due to this; we are now paying food prices through our ears!! Crazy. Also; there seems to be a level of corruption regarding the housing issue. No affordable housing. Not enough homes built. Only the rich can afford homes now. Government gets to tax that; and they love it! The rich class have more clout in voting for a government that aids them in making more and more money that they rob from the POOR house renters. The lower and middle class. As the Middle class in Canada is now becoming poor. The rich get much richer. This government is trying to bring in thousands of immigrants to stimulate the economy. But mostly; the immigrants have taken over all the lower Canadian jobs. We can't get them anymore. Because immigrants work cheap here; and sign onto contract deals with mega-corps that ensure they keep working for 2 years. Job entry level Canadians (are left without). There are also not nearly enough houses for immigrants to live in anyway! This government did not anticipate that we simply do not have enough homes for immigrants, nor Canadians alike!! What a fail. Healthcare is also failing huge... mostly thanks to the Conservatives who love to block almost every good healthcare BIll possible.

I don’t blame them at all. Democrat voters that make at least $50,000.00 annually should have to house at least 2 migrants at their own cost. I could house, support and employ 3. Our government will only let you do that if there’s 6 adults in your household who agree to house them. Then charge you $2300.00 per migrant. Who has 6 grown people living in their house ? No one ! But corporations do ? where have the 80,000 unaccompanied children gone? Our current administration can’t or won’t answer that question. Our southern border has become the biggest slave trade market in the world. Most of these “immigrants” are from the Americas. They are Americans! Just imagine if we’d put all that money we’ve given to the Ukraine into our southern border issues?as conservatives, it’s our job to protect those who can’t protect themselves. Our brown brothers and sisters are being sold like meat. The Biden administration denies that it’s happening and refuses to do anything about it.

This is mostly the marginal explanation. What is actually causing the problems in Canada is PRECISELY the expectations of a high standard of living absolutely everyone has, including brand new immigrants. Who as if they were owed a palace immediately begin complaining about the work they have to do and the fact they're not immediately appointed the king of Canada. To put simply, we have an incredibly spoiled population, a population that expects low prices for everything and has a terrible productivity overall and does not wish to work in the kinds of jobs that every economy needs in order to fuel everything else. Food production is the so-called inceptive value. The more food you produce, the more people can consume it, and this in turn flows through the economy to enable all the other kinds of economic activity. We have to bring in hundreds of thousands of temporary foreign workers from Mexico just to be able to harvest. In the past, Canada allowed immigration from all over the world of people who were mostly poor, refugees, and those desperate for a new life. They worked all the time doing every kind of imaginable job in every kind of condition. They built this country with their perseverance and hard work. The immigrants today, are selected on a points-based system, and the idea behind this is that someone with two university degrees, or trained in a profession, even if they don't work in their field in Canada because they're all sorts of barriers to transferring your education, are not very likely to be criminals or antisocial types. Criminals or antisocial types. In other words, Canada has chosen to attract high quality candidates on the assumption that they would be less likely to become criminals, while they in turn, having been picked from the best in their society, arrive in Canada with very high expectations, and discover that actually they're going to have to work in all sorts of other kinds of jobs and will probably not work in their field, even though that's what got them the points to come to the country. The country. This is the brilliant system brought in by Stephen Harper's conservatives, which brings in people with high education, and allegedly high skills, especially high language skills, so the government doesn't have to pay for their language training, but it doesn't consider the fact that these are very often people with other choices, who are not willing to work in construction or farming or service or retail or all those kinds of things that we desperately need workers in. The reason why we can't build enough housing has nothing to do with local governments and property values. It has to do with lack of labor. This education system, for some unbeknowned reason, is absolutely terrible, and provides basically no skills, training or education for the vast majority of high school students such that when they graduate high school, their forced to go to university or college. Since they have absolutely no training. In most parts of the world you finish high school and you have a trade, or you have some skill to begin working, the kids here know nothing. Nothing. Other than emotional safety, intersectional language, and wokeism. On top of that, the government has brought in every kind of environmental restriction and regulation on account of incredibly loud, but actually small minority of enviro lunatics, who most of the time use these environmentalism as a cover precisely for protecting their high property values in very luxurious and special places around the country, and they oppose logging and all sorts of resource extraction under the guise of environmentalism. But it's actually to preserve their special privileged position often in some wilderness or island, where they might be the only one or a handful of families who got lucky to somehow own a property. Property and so they oppose everything on account of environmental reasons. But it's just to keep people out and preserve their own privileged place. This country also as most others suffers from the illness of dishonesty and lack of integrity brought about by a culture of marketers where nothing is the way it is said to be. Everything is a fine print. And we have gotten used to this as normal. We've gotten used to having credit cards, charges, 25% interest, we've gotten used to being ripped off constantly by all the corporations for everything, and nobody complains and they just borrow more and they just bottle it in and now it's finally coming out. Out. People are fed up of the enviral lunatics. They're fed up of people who complain and bitch one moment about the pipeline and then complain and bitch the next moment about the high cost of gasoline when the pipeline is temporarily shut down for servicing. The problem with Canada is Canadians.

If you consider yourself a liberal, and have voted for Trudeau and his party in the past, take a good hard look in the mirror, you are one of the voters who were responsible for Canada becoming this way, when he said, “the budget will balance itself.” That should have been all the hints needed for an educated person to see the liberals had no idea about anything in regards to economics, there’s a reason so many people are moving to Alberta, because truthfully, the more conservative policies are just superior when you consider how many times the liberals have exceeded their budgets

The Liberal government is the answer, a decade of mismanagement, corruption, lack of values, and cultural denigration have ruined Canada. Polling shows it, the Liberals are on pace to become the third party, behind the NDP and the Conservatives.

The other 1 out of 4 are making huge profits on real estate and rent. When did the conservatives become the voice of the working class?

The housing pricing in Canada are pretty insane. The value of my 900 SF condo in Victoria has doubled in the past 10 years. I don't know how anyone gets into the market today when you add in inflation for regular goods over the past couple years. I know it's become a hot button in parliament of late, and the government seems to be trying to spearhead more housing, but they are pretty late.\n\nI'm also a little surprised that a majority of conservatives don't think the immigration levels are too high. But I suspect that has gone down of late with the said housing issues. More skilled workers is better for Canada overall, and will generally drag wages up, but housing has to keep pace so costs don't escalate more than wages.

It's not just the cops that are armed, everyone you see is probably armed, legal or not! The atmosphere is dispicable. I will never go back! But Canadian education is not a lot better than in the States. Most people can't go to University here, but you can't get a decent job without a degree. \n\nWhy does Canada lag so far behing Europe? Because of the American influence. The right wing has destroyed the country and turned us into America Part 2. And the Conservatives have become EVEN MORE EXTREME ever since Trump darkened all of our doorsteps. \n\nIf I had my way, we would cut the continent off at the US border and paddle away toward Europe. Anywhere farther from the US would be a huge improvement. I could write a whole book on why, but for the sake of my mental health, I won't say any more.

Yes actually I do have a comment or two. I think that Toronto has become the victim of either its own success as a multicultural, diverse and growing metropolis or the perceived idea that Toronto is the place to be. And what that brings with it? Yes, people who are interested in living the life and those who can afford it pay it. You said it very well, the city has become unaffordable to most people but the wealthy or at least those who are getting paid the best salaries and those who bank on real estate take advantage of this, be it the hype or reality since also, most job opportunities are still there. So to me the problem is with the lack of contro of the real estate market. And people who cant pay but for whatever reason live there just have to pay the price. The refugee situation is not surprising to me at all. We are struggling with affordable housing for crying out loud but we are also advertising to the world that we are that welcoming and peaceful society that those people can be part of. But at what cost. Toronto cannot continue like this if it will still be considered as a city for the people and not the wealthy and chronically increasing poor. No wonder they chose a progressive for a mayor and not a conservative or hard line liberal because people want change but not radically. People want to live in the best city they can having all necessary services and in peace and safety. So, there are so maby layers to pill here but again, the main reason why things have gotten the way they are is because they let real estate run unleashed. All the best, Alina.

The problem with Canada’s economy is housing. Doug Ford scrapped rent controls for anything build after Nov 2018. His developer buddies can raise rents to whatever they want. In Niagara… a modest 2 bedroom unit just got hit with a rent $9500 as an f/u to the tenants. These crazy rents become the “fair market price”… and realtors use these crazy numbers to justify outrageous home prices…. For the commission.\n\nIt’s a Conservative issue… not a Trudeau issue. Housing is provincial. \n\nBtw… higher house costs means higher commercial costs. Store fronts. Manufacturing. Warehousing. Transport. All have land costs. All gets passed along to the consumer. \n\nBlame the right people.

It really seems like the US should make it so much easier for people who want to legally move here to work and be cool to become citizens while cracking down on people who want to come here to do terrible things like push drugs and human trafficking. I feel like both liberals and conservatives would agree with that?

This is an INACCURATE and SHALLOW video. Just because America is doing it wrong, doesn’t mean we’re doing it right. \n\n1) Canada (we) are accepting immigrants because of a wider tax base (increasing older population) and projections for where we need people. The key word is projections and it clearly is not showing well; just read today’s Globe and Mail. \n\n2) There are 500-600 applicants per job in tech, and we are going through massive layoffs. We will never have the tech sector of London or SF because we are more conservative and smaller in population. \n\n3) Housing has become INSANE as you mention. It’s in the papers every day for the past few years, without any solution. \n\n4) We have no coherent view of immigration, and no surprise, we’ve had four ministers in the past 6-7 years with none of them doing a great job. \n\nOur beautiful country Canada is basically prostituting itself for international students fees and low wage jobs without any plan. In the maritimes you have tons of Indians who are just there to get the expedited PR in low wage jobs then move somewhere else where they’ll bring their elderly family over. \n\nGood layout of the system. https://thewalrus.ca/how-immigration-really-works/

Also, total no. I love spending weekends in Boston, it's a great city with a good mix of sport and culture. I know some urban centers are more liberal, but as many mentioned I cannot live in a place that gives so much importance to guns, religion, moral conservatism and Marjorie Taylor Green. We do have nut jobs in Canadian politic, but nothing remotely close. Also, I did find an article from May 26, 2023 that said there were 200 mass shootings across the US so far this year. I also hate the culture war in the US where everything become political (like LGBT rights, climate change or even biking). Worst part is that I'm considered conservative in Canada. I understand that there are nice people everywhere, even in the bible belt, and I would enjoy sharing a BBQ with them, but do I really want to raise children around people that believe that the Bible is more important than human rights and women freedom of choice with their body?

It’s funny how liberal everyone is until the issues they advocate for affects themselves. Then they become conservative…

This crap pisses me off. I’m all for legal immigration from other countries that have corrupt governments. BUT NOT THIS! Just who in the hell do these people think they are? Every single person who tried to shove their way into our country should be PERMANENTLY BANNED from ever being allowed to enter our country. No other country on Earth would tolerate such poor behavior. They just proved that they’re NOT worthy enough to be here as well. I expect the people who desire to become part of the American dream to behave in such a manner. If they want to act like wild animals and thugs, they need to end this garbage and go right back from where they came. They’re NOT our problem. And the conditions they left behind weren’t of our making. They created that mess, so they can go back and live in it. But don’t go bringing that crap here into our country. If you want to live here in the United States, then you need to respect our ways while leaving yours behind, just like every other country on Earth expects of the people that immigrate into their countries. I’m very liberal on immigration policies. But not on this mess. That’s when I put my Conservative hat on and send the animals and thugs back from whist they came…PERMANENTLY. \n\nREMEMBER…When you go and enter another country, you’re entering as a Guest to that country. You need to act civilized. If you can’t, they’re well within their rights to throw your ass back out…by any means that they desire to employ. Because when you enter another’s country, YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS OTHER THAN THOSE THAT THAT COUNTRY WISHES TO EXTEND TO YOU.

They’ll take them from everywhere, but they don’t want the Venezuelans or the Cubans because these people are well aware of the horrors of communism. These will be conservative voters if they can become citizens, so they will definitely stop THESE people from crossing into the United States.

Canada has to become more conservative\nAmerica has to become more liberal

Hey Dont let Islam spread over UK .There conservative nature will destroy you if they become 20 % of your total population

Harper was right. Muslims that cover their faces, are obviously leaning to the radical right. Muslims previously came here to get away from the conservative, fundamental, radical doctrine of their Islamic countries they came from. They wanted to return to the western lifestyle they had in the 60s, 70, educated and enjoying freedom. Now since Trudeau, more and more coming in, don't want to become a Canadian and live as a Westerner. This separates people from other faiths, in engaging in conversation with someone, that clearly wants nothing to do with her Western neighbor, bus driver, teacher, etc. These people that wear this attire are radicals, or just one of the sheep of the radicals.

Canada tilts back and forth between Liberal and Conservative governments. Like it does in the United States. Refugees from war zones are processed very quickly and efficiently. But, community sponsorship is a big factor in becoming approved. Generally these community organization sponsors are churches or NGOs.

Canadians, especially the younger generation, are becoming wayyy more conservative then ive ever witnessed before. You can see it in the comments. I love it. Trudeau the dicklick needs to go. His PC brand of politics have seriously put Canadians in danger.