THE HOUSING CRISIS AS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW THINGS REALLY WORK IN CANADA

A worker inspects the framing of a modular home at the Fading West factory in Buena Vista, Colo., on Feb. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)

Etkin, J. (2025, May 19). THE HOUSING CRISIS AS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW THINGS REALLY WORK IN CANADA. Victoria, BC.

The "Official Housing Crisis Story" is that... things are a mess, but everyone is trying to fix it up. Our governments are "on it." The media are "very concerned," and everyone is "really trying to solve the problems." But they just can't seem to figure out how to do it. I think that's pretty much the official story—but I don't think it's anywhere near the truth.

I think the housing crisis we have in Canada was quite deliberately created. And it was created by "the people who really run Canada"... namely Corporate Canada and the 0.01%. It seems that those people are doing very well out of the so-called housing disaster. Maybe it's time to ask the question:

"When so many Canadians are paying back-breaking rents and mortgages, where is all that money going?"

And if you ask that question, I think you will see what the housing crisis is really all about.

When I talk about the housing crisis, I mean the high mortgage payments and high rents so many people have to pay—to the point where many young people can't afford to have children, and hundreds of thousands of Canadians, from children to seniors, can barely afford to eat.

And add to that all those who have been "reno-victed." And add all those living in substandard housing. And add to that all the homeless people who roam our streets and die on the streets as they freeze to death and get soaked by the rains.

And also add in all the problems caused in so many neighborhoods that have to deal with the homeless people living around them.

So all of that, and much, much more, is what The Housing Crisis is. And I think the people who run Canada—and who created this mess—don't care about any of these problems for one second. All they want is the money, and they are getting lots of that.

Easy to do: I think the housing crisis was created in order to move large amounts of money from the people who have to pay the high rents and mortgages—and to move their money to the people at the top.

The money of millions of Canadians is being moved to the banks, and the big land-owning companies, and the investor class, and the speculators. And so on.

And it was fairly easy to do. All they had to do was create a shortage of housing.

First, the people who run Canada got our governments out of the job of building homes—which our governments used to do back in the good old days when we didn’t have these housing nightmares.

And then the private sector deliberately underbuilt homes to create a shortage.

And they reduced interest rates to push prices up even more.

And they opened up our homes as a casino for the whole world to invest in and speculate on and make money from.

Billions of dollars have been made from our housing crisis, and all paid for by us Canadians who just need a place to live.

That’s why the housing disaster was created.

It’s a money-grab. It’s the theft of billions of dollars from Canadians—especially from poorer Canadians and young people trying to get started.

It’s Economics 101 that when you have a shortage of a necessity like housing, then prices will be forced up. And that’s exactly what they have done to us. Deliberately.

And fortunes have been made by the people who know how to play these games. And we Canadians are paying for it all.

Democracy? And that, my friends, is how I think Canada is really run.

Now of course I could be wrong, but I think I’m pretty close to right.

And if this is correct, then it suggests that Canada is NOT the great democracy they always tell us we are.

Canada is really something very different.

In my opinion, Canada is a Corporate Dictatorship. We have governments of, by, and for... Big Business.

And that is a big problem for the rest of us. Because just look at how our rulers treat us.

The housing disaster is just one example of how they are wrecking our society.

Health care is another.

Millions are unable to get a family doctor, and people in pain and misery have to wait 15 hours in our Emergency Rooms. But you can be very sure that lots of money—and lots of corporate profit—are being made from the system.

You can be very sure of that.

The role of the corporate media: This housing mess could not have been done to us without the full support of the owners of the corporate media.

The media’s job is to make sure people never find out what’s really going on.

So for example, the media have, for the past twenty years, blamed our city governments for the housing mess.

And our city governments are pathetic enough.

But the real housing culprits are the provinces and the feds.

They are the ones who have the money and power to control the industry and build the homes and solve the problems.

That’s why the media blame the cities.

They deliberately focus our attention on the level of government least able to deal with the housing nightmare—and let the real villains off the hook.

The media fully support the housing disaster—because their owners and investors are making lots of money from it.

And the CBC is certainly a part of this as well.

The cities are not the ones who allowed investors from around the world to buy up our homes and make billions from them.

The cities did not tell the banks and the developers to underbuild in order to create a shortage.

The cities did not tell the feds and the provinces to stop building homes for us.

It’s criminal.

Murder, really.

What can we do?

Well, there are some possible ideas.

One important thing is for us Canadians to see the reality of the mess we are in.

We do not have a democracy in Canada—and that is important.

Our lack of democracy means we have no voice in how our country is governed.

I don’t think we Canadians ever wanted this housing disaster, nor did we ever vote for it—but it was done to us because the people who really run Canada could make money from it.

That is an example of the price we pay for having lost our democracy.

We have become irrelevant in our own nation, and we have to fix that problem.

There is an old saying that “if you want to be a sheep, you will very soon find a wolf.”

And that’s pretty much where we are in Canada now.

And if we don’t fix things up, they are only going to get worse.

So maybe democracy is something we should start talking about.

And democracy just means governments that work for us... governments that give us good housing and good communities (if we want those things), instead of focusing only on the maximization of corporate profit.

We can build a better Canada.

One first step is for people to join their favorite political parties—and then work together to start to democratize the parties.

We have to take power away from the gangs that run our political parties now, and put that power in the hands of the party members, which is where it should be.

This can definitely be a way forward—and it can be done.

I think that if our political parties were more democratic, and less corrupt, then we never would have had this housing disaster in Canada.

And so many of us would be so much better off.