Housing crisis voted Canadian Press News Story of the Year

OTTAWA — Canada’s housing shortage, widely recognized as a national crisis and the catalyst of significant immigration cuts, is The Canadian Press News Story of the Year.

More than a quarter of 96 editors and news directors surveyed from media organizations across the country voted for the housing shortage as the most consequential story of 2024.

The Jasper wildfires came in second place, while tensions between Canada and India received the third greatest number of votes for news story of the year.

Record population growth has pushed rents and home prices up in communities across the country, prompting even the Bank of Canada to sound the alarm over the country’s lagging housing supply.

Municipalities are grappling with an increase in homeless encampments and too few social housing options for their most vulnerable residents.

“The housing shortage, often referred to as a ‘crisis,’ has commanded the focus from every level of government for the entire year, and continues. Funding promises and attached conditions have fuelled debates. And the clamour has pushed a change in immigration policies,” wrote Patty Handysides, a radio news talk host for AM800 CKLW.

Housing affordability bubbled into a major political liability for the Liberals as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre pounded the government over the cost of living and critics scrutinized federal immigration policy.

Housing Minister Sean Fraser announced Monday that he will not be seeking re-election, which could mean a new minister installed in the portfolio if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shuffles his cabinet. Fraser has consistently defended the Liberal government’s position on the file, saying they’ve given young people the tools to save for a down payment, made investments in affordable housing and urged municipalities to change their zoning regulations to allow for more density.

Canada’s population has grown at a whopping three per cent annual pace, largely due to a massive influx in non-permanent residents, which includes temporary foreign workers and international students.

For comparison, annual population growth was less than 1.5 per cent between 1998 and 2018.

The Canadian Press reported in January that internal documents obtained through an access-to-information request showed federal public servants warned the government two years ago that large increases to immigration could affect housing affordability and services.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was at first indignant in the face of critiques, made a slow but certain pivot on immigration as its impact on affordability became more challenging to deny.

The Liberals have made a series of immigration reforms this year to stem the flow of people coming into the country, including rolling back pandemic-era changes to the temporary foreign worker program and capping international student permits.

Ottawa also slashed its immigration target for 2025 from 500,000 to 395,000 and is aiming to scale back the number of temporary residents in the country to five per cent of the overall population.

The federal government expects the suite of changes to halt population growth completely over the next two years and shrink the housing shortage by 670,000 homes.

In addition to the immigration changes, the Liberals rolled out a housing plan in the spring that included billions of dollars to incentivize developers to build more homes and municipalities to remove red tape.

Other levels of government also sprang into action to incentivize and facilitate more housing construction.

Municipalities across the country agreed to allow denser housing, including fourplexes, in exchange for federal dollars through the housing accelerator fund.

The Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts are also expected to encourage developers to jump back on projects that were previously sidelined.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 17, 2024.

Nojoud Al Mallees, The Canadian Press