The Bank of Canada says record levels of immigration are driving up the cost of housing and recent government efforts to cut the number of non-permanent residents and encourage home building will help lower housing costs, but “only gradually.”
“In the short term any increase in population, particularly in an environment of constrained supply, is going to put upward pressure on prices,” said Carolyn Rogers, senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada.
“What’s happened in the Canadian economy over the last year is we had a particularly big surge in population growth through immigration. It came at a time when there was