Immigration policies to keep wages low and prop up the housing market. Canada's population grew by a record 1 million in 2022 alone [0]. To give people an idea how much that is, Montreal's total population is 1.7 million.
[0] - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-record-population-grow...
Immigration went up by a lot in 2022 it's true, but Vancouver's housing situation was already at crisis levels before 2015, before increased immigration, and before this federal government even.
What we've seen in the last few years is that the existing crisis that started in Vancouver has spread to the entire of the country, and it's no surprise because housing policy in the rest of the country is not really any different than Vancouver.
An example of the future is already here, just not evenly distributed I guess.
The problems of systemically not creating enough housing hit Vancouver first, but it was inevitable that they'd hit everywhere else eventually.
Not building enough housing and red tape around building housing is also a problem, but perhaps by design to achieve the same goals.
Oh, it is definitely by design whatever the factors are.
It's a circular problem too. People buy an expensive house somewhere and it becomes a substantial part of their net worth. Home values decreasing would impoverish them. Home values increasing would enrich them. Homeowners vote a lot more than renters, especially in local elections. So you quickly end up with local governments full of people (most of whom are also local homeowners) incentivized to keep property values high.
The problem must be taken out of the hands of local governments, but even at the national level, there's never going to be political will to slash home values.
Sadly we are at a point where it doesn't matter who we vote for. They are all the same.
Provincial instead of federal (in this case), but it absolutely matters whom you vote for:
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/david-eby-housing-supply-mun...
https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/bc-government-docum...
https://globalnews.ca/news/9979895/bc-municipal-housing-fund...
https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022PREM0092-001755