It feels like Canadian governments have forgotten how to plan. As the op-ed states, we don’t have the sewer/water/road/fire for the 5,800,000 houses we’re building by 2030. And politicians aren’t budgeting for it’s construction.
In the bigger picture, we aren’t training enough nurses and doctors to service our current population, let alone what our population is forecast to become. Similarly, we aren’t funding post-secondary education beyond overcharging students from abroad.
But I digress. On the housing file:
The politicians who are promising action to build the 5.8 million new homes Canada needs by 2030 seem to be forgetting that, unlike that log cabin, the millions of homes that are needed can’t even begin to be built without connection to the world around them, to roads, bridges, clean water, electricity and waste management. They don’t seem to be factoring in that those houses will have people in them, millions of people, who need access to hospitals and schools, to civic and recreational facilities, to public transit, to emergency services. In other words, it is not possible to build so many new homes across Canada without considering essential housing-enabling infrastructure. Yet no one is even talking about that part of the equation, let alone announcing funding for it.
It is a significant oversight. A report by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities estimates that each new housing unit will require $107,000 in public infrastructure investment. This amounts to a total of $620-billion in new public funding needed to produce workable housing, which far outstrips currently projected investments of $245-billion.
In a sense, they have. The civil service has been gutted to the point at which we’re hiring consulting firms who delegate the actual work to the least expensive employees and subcontractors they can find.
I heard an interesting take on one of the Canadaland podcasts: as governments centralize more power in the PMO and premier’s offices, decisions are made more with elections in mind, rather than long-term strategy. Which makes sense.
That has been an ongoing issue for decades. 60 years ago Winnipeg civic staff were allowed to build bridges and overpasses to help move traffic. A couple of years ago former premier Pallister ok’d an overpass north of the city (just before he resigned ofc) when the issues needing an overpass were on the south end. Oh, and his buddy got the contract.
And this is setting aside the fact that Canada has allowed third-party political financing in elections (similar to the US super pacs). Source
The whole gd system is controlled and run by rich assholes and their friends. And the rich NEVER want to relinquish power.
It’s usually easier to do nothing and say we tried, then to try and fail. Seems this has been the moto of Canada for some time now.
When you do nothing everyone loses but people remain “happy”. When you do something to improve the quality of life some people may lose, but a greater number may win. Governments don’t want to lose the votes of the losing groups.