Perspectives: A Canadian Journal of Political Economy and Social Democracy

The housing crisis is apparent for most ordinary Canadians, especially for those paying rents and mortgages that feel increasingly out of reach. Recent data shows that among wealthy countries, Canada's housing cost increases have seen the fastest decoupling from income growth, and with that accelerated price inflation, according to Jeremy Withers, a new class of housing investors has grown.

According to the data, more and more new housing is being purchased without the intention of being the home that they buyer lives in. This trend has increased over time, all across Canada, and investors have become a very big proportion of home owners. It isn't just new condos that investors are buying—single-family homes are increasingly owned by families that don't live in them.

To understand more about what's behind these trends, Clement Nocos spoke with Jeremy Withers, a housing policy researcher and PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto’s Department of Geography & Planning

Withers' article Addressing the Rise of Investor Ownership of Housing, Part 1: Assessing the Scale and Impacts across Canada was published in the inaugural issue Perspectives Journal, where he analyzes these stark realities and trends for home ownership in Canada.

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The 2024 Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize is awarded to economist Dr. Isabella Weber for critical research on economic shocks and inflation that equip Canadian progressives with alternatives that push back against anti-democratic policy choices and help to empower workers.

Each year’s prize recipient also delivers the Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture. We invite you to join us on Thursday, May 30 for the 2024 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture at Toronto Metropolitan University, at the Sears Atrium (3rd Floor, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre), starting at 7pm EDT, followed by a reception with light refreshments.

Professor Isabella Weber is an economist and a leading voice against corporate profiteering, identifying economic shocks as the cover that the rich and powerful use to raise prices and put the working-class through an affordability crisis.
Her analysis has come to accurately illustrate the forces behind today’s price inflation, and why governments have not effectively addressed the affordability crisis.

Weber has advised policy makers in the United States and Germany on questions of price stabilization, and is now a regular feature in the business papers. For her work on “Sellers’ Inflation,” she has been profiled in the New Yorker, Jacobin Magazine, and recognized as one of TIME100 Next by US Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Tickets to the 2024 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture are now available: 2024-ellen-meiksins-wood-lecture.eventbrite.ca

Perspectives spoke to Ed Broadbent, founder of the Broadbent Institute, former leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, and co-author of Seeking Social Democracy: Seven Decades in the Fight for Equality.

Part memoir, part history, part political manifesto, Seeking Social Democracy offers the first full-length treatment of Ed Broadbent’s ideas and remarkable seven decade engagement in public life.
In dialogue with three collaborators from different generations, Ed Broadbent leads readers through a life spent fighting for equality in Parliament and beyond: exploring the formation of his social democratic ideals, his engagement on the international stage, and his relationships with historical figures from Pierre Trudeau and Fidel Castro to Tommy Douglas, René Lévesque, and Willy Brandt.
From the formative minority Parliament of 1972-1974, to the contentious national debate over Canada’s constitution, to the free trade election of 1988, the book chronicles the life and thought of one of Canada’s most respected political leaders and public intellectuals from his childhood in 1930s Oshawa to the present day.
Ed Broadbent’s analysis also points toward the future, offering lessons to a new generation on how principles can inform action, and how social democracy can look beyond neoliberalism.
The result is an engaging, timely, and sweeping analysis of Canadian politics, philosophy, and the nature of democratic leadership.
You can order your copy today at seekingsocialdemocracy.ca

In a joint statement by Environmental Defence Canada released on October 28th at the Transit for Tomorrow Summit in Ottawa, a number of mayors and municipal representatives from cities across Canada, public transit activist groups and transit agencies like the STM in Montreal, declared:
“Transit is the most powerful method of tackling traffic congestion. It is the lifeblood of economic growth in our biggest cities. It is a solution to the rising cost of living. It helps us reduce carbon emissions. But public transit systems across the country are in a financial crisis.”

Have you ever tried riding a train or bus lately?

In Canada, If you are so lucky to have a train or bus near where you are, to get you where you’re going, service has not been great, and many have noticed that it’s getting worse.

While the news media focuses on traffic jams involving cars and trucks on highways, less attention is paid to the fact that transit ridership across the country has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels in most cities.

This can’t all be attributed to more people working from home when we’re all still stuck in traffic.

Investment in public transit has weakened, ridership has stalled as commuters are forced to drive, and the economy loses billions in lost productivity because of how much we all lose in time.

So we ask an expert, “where’s my bus?”

Nate Wallace, Program Manager for Clean Transportation at Environmental Defence Canada, and organizer of the Transit for Tomorrow Summit joins us for this conversation on the Perspectives Journal Podcast.
Notes:

• Putting Wheels on the Bus: Unlocking the Potential of Public Transit to Cut Carbon Emissions in Canada, by Environmental Defence Canada & Équiterre, February 2024.
• Joint Statement: Public transit in Canada’s largest cities requires sustainable, long term funding, starting with acceleration of the “Canada Public Transit Fund,” October 28, 2024.
• "Cities issue united call for 'new deal' on public transit funding," By Elyse Skura, CBC News, October 29, 2024.

Chiara Padovani details her political journey in organizing renters and defending tenant rights against the encroachment of for-profit interests in housing.

Toronto, like other cities across Canada, has been coping with the rising housing affordability crisis as inflated rents, increased evictions, and massive real estate investment firms have become more commonplace. For Chiara Padovani, a social worker, organizer for the York South-Weston Tenant Union, and former Toronto City Council Candidate, when governments do nothing and take the side of corporations, tenants have to step in and resist together.

At the heart of Padovani’s political advocacy is ordinary citizens. On our second episode of Activists Make History, a new podcast series from Perspectives Journal, Padovani talks about the journey and success of mobilizing renters to collectively fight against corporations looking to turn housing from a social good into a commodity.

Tune into Activists Make History to learn more about the story of resilient tenants fighting for affordable housing and reasonable rents. This series could not have been made possible without the generous support of Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union.

Notes:

• Ford's PCs rolled back rent control to spur new rental construction. Here's what happened next. By Lucas Powers, CBC, Sept. 25, 2023.
• Frances Nunziata campaign ‘cheated,’ says election rival in the wake of ethics report. By Ben Cohen, The Toronto Star, July 23, 2024.
• How a group of Toronto tenants turned to a risky last resort and got a ‘huge victory’. By Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press, Sept. 20, 2024.
• Canadian mega landlord using AI ‘pricing scheme’ as it massively hikes rents. By The Breach, Sept. 4, 2024
• York South Weston Tenant Union

Corporate tax breaks and loopholes in Canada have contributed heavily to the affordability crisis argues Silas Xuereb, researcher at Canadian for Tax Fairness, PhD candidate at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of a new report entitled, How tax breaks are worsening Canada's housing affordability crisis. Outside of calls to build housing supply, Xuereb draws attention to a lesser discussed issue within the broader debates in Canadian housing: financialization. Without tackling financialization, housing may very well remain unaffordable despite changing supply and/or demand.

Financialization refers to the process by which a commodity, like housing, becomes a financial tool for investment rather than remaining as social or human good. Xuereb points to Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) as the main driver of this transformative shift in the real estate market. What makes REITs so popular and effective is the tax system in Canada, which gives real estate investors tax breaks on housing investments as an apparent incentive to increase supply. However, despite a 700 percent increase in real corporate capital gains since 2002, these entities have pocketed most of the profits while prices go up and supply remains insufficient.

Closing the tax loophole is an important step in fighting rising costs, as a part of a comprehensive policy set that includes investment in non-market housing and caps on single-entity ownership of multiple dwellings.

Listen to our interview with Silas Xuereb on how the current Canadian tax system favours corporate landlords and what we need to do to fix financialization driving the housing crisis.
Notes:

• REPORT - How tax breaks are worsening Canada’s housing affordability crisis, by Silas Xuereb, Canadians for Tax Fairness, September 2024.
• REPORT - The Financialization of Housing in Canada, by Martine Auguste, Canadian Human Rights Commission, June 2022.
• "Addressing the Rise of Investor Ownership of Housing, Part 1: Assessing the Scale and Impacts across Canada" by Jeremy Withers, Perspectives Journal no. 1, April 2024.
• REPORT - Dreams and Realities on the Home Front: Canadians’ Call for Government Action on Housing Affordability, Broadbent Institute & Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, March 2024.
• Alternative Federal Budget 2025, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, September 17, 2024.