Close Reading

1) Toronto is poor value. Getting housing of any kind (buying or renting) is stupidly expensive. And the quality you get for the price is lousy. Especially the newer builds, which are just thrown up as quickly as possible and sold to investors. Policy measures generally all seem to serve to just inflate the price of housing further. The occasional lip service given to affordability is amusing, but ultimately sad. There are lots of people who really do not want the housing bubble to pop. They will fight against it with all they have.\n\n2) It has become kind of boring. There is lots to do if you have money, but it’s harder to find entertainment on a budget. Even the free stuff like parks are filling up. Stuff like sporting events, eating out, going out is very costly across the board. Even the “cheaper” stuff is expensive. It seems like a lot of local culture is disappearing. Even the cool neighbourhoods are filling up with the same chains. I think the high commercial rent and bureaucracy is deflating a lot of would-be entrepreneurs. Most landowners seem to just be banking on cashing out their land for condos.\n\n3) Canada overall has a high cost of living compared to salaries. In the US you can find lower cost of living areas that still give you a real city experience. And in Europe you can be poor but still live a decent, if no frills, life. In Canada the basic necessities are all expensive. Phone bills, grocery bills, rent, insurance are through the roof. Domestic travel is expensive. And the dollar sucks if you want to travel abroad. Health care is free but good luck finding a family doctor or waiting 8 hours in the ER these days. It’s expensive to be poor, or even middle class.\n\n4) Most of the Greater Toronto Area, outside the core, is soulless suburbs with awful transit - very “American” except with worse traffic congestion. You will need a car, which is another huge cost. Row upon row of old cookie cutter suburbs with the same crappy houses. Good luck walking anywhere, and if you do you will need to walk down boring, treeless arterial roads with cars zooming past right beside you, and cross giant eight lane intersections that were never built for humans on foot. In a rainstorm or on a fall evening you have to be really careful not to be run over by aggressive drivers.\n\n5) It is hard to raise a family in an apartment here. You can do it but it’s not very easy, and also you are still kind of judged for it. Lots of young people are feeling stuck and are deferring or avoiding starting a family. Buying any type of house, even a basic townhouse, requires pledging your soul to a bank by taking a massive mortgage with eye watering debt in a volatile market. But few apartment buildings have the kind of sensible gentle density, the family unit sizes and the common amenities, like little courtyards with jungle gyms, that you might find in Europe. No one ever contemplated that anyone would ever desire to raise kids in an apartment. It’s just a cultural thing that has worked its way into how things are planned and designed.\n\n6) The transit system is ok by North American standards but awful by international standards. There are only two real subway lines, one stub line, one line that is permanently out of service after a derailment, and another line that was supposed to open a couple years ago but still has no date for opening. The subways go out of service frequently, sometimes for the dumbest reasons, and then it is a zoo of shuttle buses. The streetcars are nice but so slow. The buses are fine if you find yourself dreaming about riding a daily herky jerky rolling tin of sardines. They are building a lot of transit but it will take decades to get done.\n\n7) There is still a lot of cool multiculturalism and opportunities to experience different foods and cultures - one of the best things about Toronto. Increasingly though it seems to be losing the fun vibe of the 90s, when everyone celebrated each other’s backgrounds and was chill. It seems the immigration is not as broad based anymore and also people are importing a lot of their “old country” grievances here. The immigration system also kind of preys on people abroad by selling them a false fairy tale, so they end up dejected when they arrive and see how things really are.\n\n8) This one might be controversial but it’s kind of an ugly city. There’s nothing particularly of historical meaning or value. Some of the older neighbourhoods are kind of nice, but the last 25 years they have only built giant glass skyboxes, one after another. There aren’t the cool “missing middle” walkups like in NY, Chicago or Montreal (or even LA). There are very few buildings with much architectural character. Some of the buildings they deem “heritage” here are an embarrassment.\n\n9) For safety, honestly on this score I think Toronto is not bad. There are not too many real “ghettos” and it’s night and day compared to much of the US. With that said, there is more vagrancy and social issues these days, with tents and such. It’s very sad but the shelters are full, lots of homeless go into the libraries, parks and transit system. It does make it harder to enjoy these public amenities safely. It is nowhere close to Europe where you might let your kids run free around town. Canadian parents still helicopter their kids and the place again is not designed to really be safe for kids, in the same way as Europe.\n\n10) Finally, a bit of a double edged sword. Toronto had a lot of youthful energy - people coming here from all over. It is definitely not as sleepy as many parts of the world. With that said, it is becoming a bit of a transient place (minus the world class experiences like London or NY). If you are from elsewhere you might find it hard making and keeping friends. I’ve seen lots of people struggle because it’s is hard to build a strong social network. We have a very “shallow” culture here - people are extremely polite but not overly warm and hospitable. We treat one another kind of like neighbours - meaning we’d like to have a cordial, drama-free coexistence and otherwise kind of stick to ourselves.

We all know that the core of the problem is an immigration policy (not the immigrants) which is completely disconnected from the rest of the picture. Immigration targets have not been built in conjunction with housing and transportation programs, and it would seem that we are not bringing in the sort of labour we actually need - skilled trades ready to build homes. It rather seems that immigration policy has been crafted in lock-step with fiscal and monetary policy in order to push back on wages and expedite the financialization of everything, especially housing. In short, it seems to be part of the plan to move towards a digital feudalism, where capitalists are vassals of the owners, who make their money through rent-seeking.

Sir, Australian life far better than others developed countries. But Yes, country-side concept is true to help PR in Australia. Bro...their has an invisible policy( any body cannot prove it)which works through immigration policy, treating as country to country...As an Indian I had a good experience in Sydney...We Indian have a good chance to come back in India. Now Good going in India than Australia...but truth is our neighborhood's country people are not lucky like us nowadays. Indian should not be worried because now India, Australia and Canada are same, those are good country , no difference for life and money. 5 to 6 yrs Jabardast Paisa kamao and India bapas aayoo, now is the best policy.

I'm a cosmetic surgeon living in Sydney Australia. I'll be totally honest. You can delete my post or you can except the truth.\nI've been too & have friend & colleagues who have migrated to Toronto from Sydney. Toronto is very similar to Sydney. It has some of the most exspensive housing in the world. Canada & Australia's economy is based on economic growth through mass immigration. The cost of this policy, means you also need to restrict development & zoning regulations to artificially keep properties high. Governments need make your population continually, working as slaves, to pay for basic costs, of a largely welfare dependent society. While your a debt slave, you don't spend your money on foreign products, as you have very little in the way of exsports, to pay for imports. The upside to this, you have many slaves to pay for the never ending welfare, as you have a policy of supporting refugees, single parents & the disabled, over self reliance & responsibility. Mental health issues are largly created by society, they are very rarely genetic. The high cost of living, means, you cant afford families. No strong family ties means, poor mental health issues. When you outsource, what familes once did, like help the the elderly, support your unemployed brother & have children. Replace all what families did with government welfare, instead of families helping each other, replace reproduction with mass immigration. You end up creating enormous problems in society. Problems with mental health & crime.\nNow for your modelling career. In Japan, your a novelty, as you have a different look to the Japanese. However in Canada, for your age what are your best features. You only have one. You have very good skin. However your face shape, is slightly disproportionate, basically, meaning your just an average shape face. You could also work on going to the gym, as your not toned. So basically as a whole, for your age group, your slightly above average, say a 6 out of 10, which is not all that good as 60% of Canada's population are overweight. Now as a model, you need to compete with people who are younger & better proportioned 7,8 & 9's. No such thing as a 10.

I know correlation does not equal causation but you do not even examine the possibility that the far higher salaries in America in certain sectors like tech compared to those in Canada might at least partly be the result of having a more restrictive immigration policy for workers in those sectors in America compared to in Canada. The same possibility does also occur when it comes to the relatively much higher cost of housing in Canada. This possibility is to a relatively neutral (British) observer such an obvious logical possibility that I'm afraid I'm going to have to ding pretty hard this otherwise pretty good video for not addressing it. You start with a supposition - the American immigration system is broken and the Canadian system is great - but the facts that you produce in the video, assuming that the point of immigration is to raise living standards, seem to exactly contradict your supposition?!?

When Canada's immigration policy has led to suppressed salaries and an insanely high cost of living, is it really fair to call America's immigration system the broken one?

I would add that because of the lack of investment in businesses and an open immigration policy while over-prioritizing Canadian only experience there is a huge underemployment problem especially amongst highly skilled and experienced immigrants who would mainly wait to get the Canadian passport and move down south to the US where evaluations of international experience is more objective. Lots of low to medium skilled jobs. Dear Canada, I say this as an immigrant, if you don’t have enough high skilled jobs don’t open your borders or make it clear you want low skilled immigrants. That said, Canada is great country with minimal crime and is fairly equal. Problem is, it’s hard to get out of the rat race here.

Yes Canada needs to have a very generous immigration policy because they have a higher attrition rate as the immigrants as you point out go back to their home country after a relatively short time for this reason they need to have a high flow because they will have a high attrition rate\n\nIn my own families experience on my mother side her mother‘s family moved from Montreal to New York City and it’s one of the few things I found out as to the motivation for the move but this was in the early 1920s was they were encouraged to leave and go to the United States because there wasn’t that much opportunity\n\nSpecifically starting about 1915 and going to the 1920s even the 1930s there was an economic depression For which the Canadian Connor we could not support the population and this seems to be in a reoccurring theme in Canada\n\nIf the Canadian government Is encouraging highly paid and experience professionals like doctors nurses engineers IT professionals and financial Professionals to come in yet they can’t find even Lola work in their field and have to work in menial jobs their skills my dad for fee as well as their patients give out after about maybe four or five years\n\nThen they look to other countries maybe to the country just south of the 49th parallel where are their jobs waiting where they can actually employer skills and keep their skills current

Canada's immigration policy has two purposes it seems. 1) Keep the housing market white hot. 2) Provide slave labour to pour coffee at Timmy's. at 12$ an hour while apartment rent is 1600$.\n\nPs = you won't know any of this tell you live at least 10 years in Canada

To me, the problem is threefold. a) Toronto and Ontario in general - and perhaps the whole of Canada - are accepting way more immigrants than they have quality jobs for. If you need taxi drivers and plumbers, maybe this experience should be valued way higher than education as part of the existing immigration programs (which is not the case). At least then potential immigrants know this before they come and get stuck in low-paying or relatively OK-paying but repetitive and demoralizing jobs with debts and mortgages that become a trap preventing them from leaving. It's also partially on immigrants themselves who come to Toronto to only find out there's 100 people competing for one spot and that you need to be exceptional - or connected through your ethnic network - to work regular white-collar jobs. b) The official bipartisan policy of non-integration. The naive expectation that having people live in ethnic enclaves will somehow make the overall culture richer is not what happens: instead, people tend to stick to their own communities and the common culture thus gets eroded and limited to economic and financial matters. This makes some cities feel like one large business with everyone networking 24/7 instead of socializing normally. And arguably, having the right culture / social life is what motivates already successful people move in the first place. So when they come and they find out there's nothing but money talk and hustling, they leave (if they're smart). Quebec is doing better in that regard, but then Quebec is not really Canada and it's been pressured to cave in to the same money-centred, uncultured and disconnected society by the feds for decades now. The States is smarter in that it actually makes sure to integrate its immigrants (and let's be honest, many immigrants like being part of a new culture if it fits them) c) Treating real estate as an investment and not as a basic necessity (as Japan or some Nordic countries do, for example). That coupled with a lot of Asian money being laundered in Canada through immigration channels and private equity firms buying whole apartment blocks for rental purposes has led to the highest housing price increase in all of the developed world in the past 20 years or so. The median price of a condo in Toronto is higher than in New York despite the massive gap in salaries and the fact that New York is one of the most expensive cities in the world to begin with. Some draconian measures are needed here to prevent foreign - or even out-of-province ownership -, second property ownership and corporate ownership for renting purposes.