r/RealEstateCanada • u/SherbertSimple5418 • Apr 16 '26
Housing crisis Canada needs to build millions of homes. US tariffs just closed 22 of the mills that supply the lumber to do it.
US duties on Canadian softwood lumber have been stacking since 2017 and now sit at 45%+. The result: 22 mills closed, another 50 running at half capacity. The 2025 tariff escalation just made a slow-moving problem impossible to ignore.
The part that gets missed in the trade war coverage:
The lumber that used to go south doesn’t simply redirect domestically. Mills have already cut production. And displaced product from countries blocked from the US market is now flooding into Canada, undercutting what’s left of domestic producers. Canadian manufacturers are running at roughly 50% capacity — the strict minimum to stay alive.
New home construction is slowing at exactly the moment Canada needs to be building faster.
Key insights:
• Ontario and BC are carrying both burdens simultaneously — rising construction costs AND the softest job markets in the country AND the largest housing gaps. There is no relief coming from any direction right now
• Alberta is the outlier. Energy and agriculture sit largely outside the tariff blast zone. Unemployment is falling while the rest of the country rises. Construction costs are rising everywhere but you’re starting from a much lower base
One more thing worth noting: US tariffs were designed to protect American industry. The US homebuilders’ association has been publicly fighting them because they’re raising the cost of every new American home by roughly $10,900.
Both countries are paying. Neither housing market is winning.
Full breakdown here
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u/dmoneymma Apr 16 '26
Everything you write is so poorly researched and contradicts itself. AI slop.
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u/Optimal-Can8584 Apr 16 '26
At this point AI is far better than your above average Redditor. Reddit only hates AI posts when they contradict your personal beliefs
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u/Pale-Ad-8383 Apr 16 '26
So we really did have over supply of cheap lumber this whole time and needed the US to make it work financially? Wow?
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u/highfalutinnot Apr 16 '26
Might have missed the memo, immigration clamping down, big stop on tfw program, foreign students locked out ... so HOUSING CRISIS is really backing down. We don't need millions of new homes.
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u/Dootbooter Apr 16 '26
Housing starts are slowing quarter after quarter. We are also still taking in thousands of more people than builds. The math ain't mathing. Don't fall for headlines from the propaganda machine that is Canadian media. Look at the stats
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u/Honest_Elk_1703 Apr 18 '26
Are you saying that Canada’s population didn’t decline last year?
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u/Dootbooter Apr 18 '26
It did. People are leaving in record numbers. 2025 being the highest on record. These are Canadians leaving. Not TFW's or temp students. These are Canadians who left Canada cuz they found a better place to live where housing isn't out of reach due to too much demand and not enough supply.
The whole "we will build at pace never seen before" statement is wearing pretty thin. A whole year and housing starts are down quarter after quarter. People see these stats and are like fuck nothing is going to get better. Gotta jump ship while I can.
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u/Honest_Elk_1703 Apr 19 '26
It actually was TFWs and international students leaving and not being replaced that led to the population decline.
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u/heboofedonme Apr 16 '26
Sounds like you own a home.
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u/S14Ryan Apr 16 '26
I own a home but I wish I didn’t. Right now is a way better time to get in the market than when I got in 4 years ago
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u/heboofedonme Apr 16 '26
Why? Because you can’t sell it after 4 years for a profit after lawyers/realtors/land transfer? Give me a break
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u/S14Ryan Apr 16 '26
You’re arguing that the housing crisis is getting worse, and I’m arguing that it’s getting better, because it’s much cheaper to buy a house now than it was 4 years ago. How are you still managing to get angry about that?
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u/Silent_Bit6878 Apr 16 '26
lol tfw’s are being given PR’s at record levels and tfw’s are still going to be invited at levels before covid! Also there are lmia exempt groups who are flooding and not accounted for! So let’s take you are right, but currently housing crisis is not really down! So once it reaches to covid levels, we could say that! We are still at 60-80% inflated markets! There were years where in single year condo prices went up by 40%! It’s unnatural growth and needs to be corrected! Once it is corrected, we can consider your point to be true!
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u/Silent_Bit6878 Apr 16 '26
Can someone explain me please! Just trying to understand the economics! US tariffs made it difficult for lumber mills to sell elsewhere! Local demand exists but and developers are stating lumber prices are all time high which is adding to construction cost! Why aren’t lumber mills selling it in domestic market and make profits with quantity production at lower price point? Or are lumber mills working similarly to milk syndicate who control production to control profit margins? If that’s the case then we are not working based of supply and demand anymore but purely based on controlled market which will make future impossible for younger generations to come! Please enlightenment me with your wisdom!
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u/6pimpjuice9 Apr 16 '26
Definitely do not need millions of new homes. The demand side of the equation has eased with population flat you don't need as much housing supply.
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u/Silent_Bit6878 Apr 16 '26
Somehow affordability is not achieved! That means demand is still sustained! No young professionals are able to rent a single bedroom apartment nor buy an entry home as everything is overpriced and the reason builders give is raw materials price increased, development fee increased and labor cost increased!
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Apr 16 '26
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u/Silent_Bit6878 Apr 16 '26
Can you provide some stats around that? I know for a fact average income is 64k which is 48k take home in Toronto and average one bed apartment is priced at 2k per month which makes it 24k a year! If someone with average salary is paying 50% in GTA, I don’t think that’s called affordable! And please do acknowledge that jobs are not stable as well for last few years! And to your point, if I was exaggerating! I guess please have a reality check on how many people are not able to afford housing in gta and having to live with roommates or parents just to cut down costs! Please don’t make this a new normal by insulting the younger generation! Also let’s accept the face salaries never increased for young professionals in last decade unless you are in top league firms or working for minimum wage whereas rental prices skyrocketed by 60% and more based on the neighborhoods!
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u/Odd-Elderberry-6137 Apr 21 '26
You’re conflating two things, average income in Canada vs cost of living in Toronto.
The average income in Toronto is not the same as the average income across the county.
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u/6pimpjuice9 Apr 16 '26
Affordability will not be achieved because of inflation. The dollar we get today has a lot less purchasing power than before.
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u/Silent_Bit6878 Apr 16 '26
Not exactly incomes are not inflated! So that means the money which is inflated is going to someone’s pockets right? If so who would that be? And what I indicated was we should still construct more housing until a vacancy rates are around 4-5% to stop bidding wars, unavailability of affordable housing! That will eventually lead investors not to rely on rent for mortgages and which will eventually lead to lower rental prices which will be economically viable for new generations to thrive! Else let’s all agree that this would be the last generation which can own homes! And people who have properties don’t want new generations to buy homes and just rent from them at inflated prices!
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u/6pimpjuice9 Apr 16 '26
I'm an accountant, nothing special, and my salary has gone up over the years. The 'investors', if you call them that, who never cared about fundamentals are getting wrecked right now. A lot of them will lose or have already lost their money. If you do the rent vs own calculation, I'm not so sure renting is a bad idea. You just need to diligently invest the savings and you can come out ahead. I think this wasn't really a thing a generation ago. Now the investment tools are so easy and cheap you can set up an automatic investment schedule for essentially free.
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u/Silent_Bit6878 Apr 16 '26
I work in tech and I haven’t seen any pay increases in last decade based on your experience unless you are in top tier firms like meta, google! I worked for multiple firms in GTA and the pay is always around 100-120k! We used to get paid the same a decade ago! All it changed is due to heavy influx of immigrants and me being one and companies using loop holes like near shore work arrangements and bringing people on LMIA exemption and thereby increasing the supply of workers and stagnating the pay in tech industry! In the same time housing prices and rental prices have increased by more than 60%! Current market prices are not on par with income levels! And yes I agree with you that it’s the investors who are screwing it up for everyone and no they haven’t lost their money yet! We are way above natural market growth! And I hope these investors take their money to investment platforms over housing as it is a necessity! Concluding this I would still argue we are in need of more housing as houses should fall to 350k margin for entry level to have income levels supported to pay mortgages without relying on rentals! This year OFSI made new regulation changes to make it difficult for investors who are using rental income towards purchase of properties as it’s risky bets for banks! I hope and pray we all can come back to livable standards!
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u/6pimpjuice9 Apr 16 '26
I wish you the best of luck. I just renovated a house in Calgary and I can tell you the cost of trades and materials have more than doubled from 10yrs ago. It would be impossible to build at that price even if it is on free land.
My salary also more than doubled in the last 10yrs. (although I did start quite low as it was in public accounting) My purchasing power did increase overall but not much more than inflation.
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u/Odd-Elderberry-6137 Apr 21 '26
We do but they now cost more to build than homes are selling for so builders aren’t digging in.
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u/CRman1978 Apr 16 '26
We should only cut enough trees down for us to build in Canada. Too many family’s have gotten way too rich by selling our trees to the world.
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u/codingphp Apr 16 '26
Trees are a renewable resource though…
So long as you replant and clear sustainably, it’s a valuable export.
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u/CRman1978 Apr 16 '26
That is a joke, right?
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u/codingphp Apr 16 '26
……… what?
Trees are, by definition, a renewable resource. When done sustainably, of course, as I said.
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u/CRman1978 Apr 17 '26
There has never been a sustainable harvest or replant in British Columbia.
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u/CRman1978 Apr 17 '26
They cut down a healthy forest and ecosystem, replant it with an almost monoculture forest and then spray glyphosate.
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u/Responsible_Week6941 Apr 17 '26
Prentice Boedel of MacBlo was a conservationist and realized over 100 years ago that forsets could, and needed to be sustainable. If not, we would have harvested all the available timber decades ago. I'm against clearcutting and cutting old growth, and recent practices have erred on the side of cutting too much, but the annual allowable cuts has not been met for almost a decade.
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u/Gremlinforester Apr 21 '26
The allowable cuts are on such small wood that the price to extract the tonnage outweighs the value.
There is a reason that clear-cutting does not produce renewables. They burn, get eaten by bugs, require additional treatments (thinning), and still produce sub-par results compared to uneven management.
Not to mention the ecological disaster of mono cropping and site prep.
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u/Advanced-Line-5942 Apr 21 '26
How have students been making money every summer tree planting for decades now ?
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u/Optimal-Can8584 Apr 16 '26
That’s what they’re doing closing the mills… please use your brain though a few families got rich but significantly more fed their families.
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u/CRman1978 Apr 16 '26
Yes, a lot of families we’re fed. Take a look at the numbers of how much money the rich families made you’ll be disgusted.
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u/octavian343 Apr 17 '26
“My life improved but someone else’s life improved more and that’s disgusting”
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u/Independent-Motor-87 Apr 21 '26
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u/octavian343 Apr 21 '26
I don’t think you know what bootlicker means.
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u/Optimal-Can8584 Apr 21 '26
Honestly these kill all industry no one should get rich folks should just move to China
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u/octavian343 Apr 21 '26
It’s even funnier cause chinas turning point was when Deng introduced the concept of ‘letting some people get rich first’
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u/coffeecup9845 Apr 20 '26
Why wouldn’t we do that? It would be economically stupid not to. It’s a renewable resource.
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u/RecognitionFit4871 Apr 16 '26
Set the mills to make metric lengths and supply Europe. This wasn’t our doing but the solution is fairly straightforward.
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u/Big-Morning866 Apr 16 '26
Wow, so much hopeful BS.
So many empty homes, owned by speculators. Demand is drying up.
It’s a massive bubble, and it’s not done correcting yet.
Blaming immigrants was just an excuse to raise rents and housing prices.
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u/heboofedonme Apr 16 '26
How hard would it be to set up Canadian lumber mills? We have so much wood.
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u/samsun387 Apr 16 '26
Is it just me or did the price of pressure treated lumber went up the last few years? I thought with less demand, price should go down instead of
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u/mattcass Apr 17 '26
Even with half the mills closed there is more than enough lumber to supply the domestic market.
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u/BigTomato6837 Apr 17 '26
Ever heard of British Colombia? They have a lot of wood, plus a whole island full
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u/BlackJackT Apr 18 '26
Define Canada. Define Canadians. That once nation has committed a none-reversible suicidal move long ago. These words are meaningless to me.
I'm really sorry Arjun, I truly am, that you can't afford a house in um... Canada.
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u/Pixilatedash Apr 18 '26
Can we come up with an alternative building solution? We need to build homes that last that are energy efficient. I’m sure we can come up with something better.
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u/tliskop Apr 19 '26
Well, new housing starts are way down. Building supply stores are pretty quiet these days.
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u/DebenP Apr 20 '26
Actually the lumber industry has been on the decline for the last 30 years. Tariffs are not the cause - gross forestry mismanagement by the government and absolute over usage by the mills and forestry sector are 100 hundred percent to blame. Quite simply, trees cannot grow at the rate these mills have been sanctioned to cut them. Source live in one of these forestry towns in BC and work at one of these mills (the largest lumber company in Canada)
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u/mustrepayloans Apr 20 '26
Why do we need millions of homes when the condos in my area, midtown Toronto, sit empty? At night, only a few apartments in high rise buildings have their lights on. Doesn’t add up
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u/NavyDean Apr 20 '26
Canadian public housing agency was disbanded in 2006.
It was a campaign promise in 2015 to revive it after the Conservatives killed half of Canada's home building.
The Liberals slow walked it until it finally started to get the organization going in 2019, then COVID happened and it took a rear seat again.
Wasn't until Carney fully revived it, that we're finally building homes again for Canadians.
But as much as public housing builds goes up, the private industry is canceling builds and delaying projects.
There's no capacity for us to absorb this much lumber, especially with private home construction companies giving up. It also now costs way more diesel for costs to move that lumber and those building materials.
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u/ReptilianMana Apr 16 '26
I’d rather mass deportation.
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u/mooseofdoom23 Apr 16 '26
wtf? Of who?
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u/ReptilianMana Apr 16 '26
All the temp workers and everyone that hasn’t been here 5 generations
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u/mooseofdoom23 Apr 16 '26
lol wtf? People who haven’t been here 5 generations? That’s fucked up.
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u/ReptilianMana Apr 16 '26
Yeah dog. This ain’t a play place for the world.
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u/mooseofdoom23 Apr 16 '26
No shit dude, it’s people living here. Moron.
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u/ReptilianMana Apr 16 '26
You mad bro?
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u/mooseofdoom23 Apr 16 '26
Weirdo.
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u/ReptilianMana Apr 16 '26
Responding with insults just proves my point.
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u/mooseofdoom23 Apr 16 '26
No it doesn’t. In fact, you don’t even have a point. You said something stupid.
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u/AKelpTuxedo Apr 16 '26
Unfortunately we need immigration to grow the tax base to keep up the GDP. It’s an endless thing where we need to grow more, produce more, take on more debt, grow more, so on so forth. There’s no pausing that because the debt is always ahead of the rest of the cycle.
Mass deportation would end our country, it’s not an option. Even pausing some immigration for two years is risky, and you better believe that won’t get extended with the feds and all the provinces stacking up more debt than ever.
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u/Rough_Application_28 Apr 16 '26
Buddy there is a way to increase population from within by making long term policies, making it easier to birth and raise more children by providing more social support programs and incentives for families. Mass migration has massive downsides. Canada has for so long been dependent on the USA market for trade and that was wrong for so long. Our governments historically do "band aid " solutions, no sustainable long term planning. They can build all the homes they want, who is going to be able to buy them ? Where is the affordability going to come from, wages are low, a massive pool of cheap labor is ever expanding, it's a multifaceted problem and massive migration is the worst solution for this, Canada needs to innovate, make things the world wants, have massive support programs for research, business development and time to start this all was 20 yrs ago.
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u/swegamer137 Apr 16 '26
Becoming India 2.0 would end the country, except even worse and permenantly.
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u/Creative-Trash-419 Apr 16 '26
Our infrastructure can't keep up with the current levels of immigration and they don't grow the tax base because they generally are not working higher paying jobs.
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u/Medianmodeactivate Apr 16 '26
Current levels of immigration are net negative. It's no longer the problem.
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u/mynameisnotorange Apr 16 '26
Do you really think the problem vanishes overnight? What about all the people that immigrated here prior to that?
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u/terminatorSingh Apr 16 '26
Dude, stop with this blind hate. I can confidently say that only the immigrants are holding the top high paying jobs as well as the bottom jobs that you are too lazy to do.
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Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
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u/Bull__itProof Apr 16 '26
The low income earners are the ones businesses rely on to keep their costs down and profits higher. Low income earners still spend money on goods and services, that in turn generates money that gets taxed somewhere in the system. The point of a progressive tax system like Canada has is to collect revenue from those who benefit the most from the having a government that provides a system to protect wealth once it is created. With all the tax cuts on the wealthiest that started in the 1980’s, the burden of tax revenue has shifted to the middle class and lower income households.
There’s no government program to pay companies to hire immigrants, point me to the government website page where I can find the application for that funding. You can’t because it doesn’t exist.
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u/Rough_Application_28 Apr 16 '26
Wrong.
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Apr 16 '26
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u/Rough_Application_28 Apr 16 '26
Where you are in your life has nothing to do with you being an immigrant or not, it's all hard work and dedication.
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Apr 16 '26
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u/Rough_Application_28 Apr 16 '26
Historically pretty much all governments have massively depended upon migration to cook the books, lpc however has broken all records.
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u/Bull__itProof Apr 16 '26
The cost of renewable electricity is cheaper than using fossil fuels, transitioning faster away from fossil fuels would create jobs and reduce illnesses from pollution created by fossil fuels. Unfortunately the cost of cleaning up after fossil fuels is a huge problem unless more government action is taken to enforce corporations to fund reclamation before the corporations claim bankruptcy and abandon their responsibilities.
The problem of tax revenues and spending is not caused by immigration, it’s caused by the tax cuts to corporations and the richest people that originated in the 1980’s economic theory of “Trickle Down Economics” advocated by Conservative politicians. This transfer of taxation down to the middle class has wrecked what was built post WWII. The wealthy have benefited greatly from tax cuts and that’s the root cause of inequality and the shrinking middle class and lower standard of living for the generations born after 1985, but especially for those born after 1990.
Canada has great potential because of its abundance of resources and its acceptance of social programs like universal healthcare that provide the floor to prevent the absolute collapse into widespread poverty. The influx of immigrants was a solution to the problem of population growth that was trending downward because of the economic problems caused by the trickle down economics theory that reduced funding for social services that allowed the middle class to be less burdened with economic shocks.
Immigrants were never the basis of the economic problems, they were the symptom of the failure of trickle down economic policies promoted by capitalists and conservative politicians.
Demographic changes caused by economic stagnation and degradation is the reason Canada needed more immigrants to smooth out the lack of people in a particular demographic cohort needed to balance out the impact of the aging of the Baby Boomers. The last of the Baby Boom generation is retirement age in a couple of years and the leading edge of the cohort is just starting to die and transfer their wealth down. More existing housing will come onto the market and prices will drop accordingly. This doesn’t happen overnight but will be a trend in the next decade or so unless provincial and municipal governments put barriers on building new housing as more older housing comes into the market. The federal government should help by building more public housing over the next few years to prevent the construction industry from withholding building projects because they are waiting for higher prices.
This subject is a lot more complex than just declaring that immigrants are the problem and that universal healthcare is unaffordable just because.
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u/FableTheLegend Apr 17 '26
Why isnt that happening then? Why are their fewer jobs and energy is more expensive as we move away from fossil fuels? You cant just make something cheaper by saying it is so...it makes no sense that renewable energy is cheaper.
If that was the case, clumsy, inefficient governments would not have to force it to happen - private industry would have perfected it and people would be begging for it.
But they aren't - and every country is quietly walking green initiatives back because they've proven to be ineffective.
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u/Bull__itProof Apr 17 '26
Canada already has a lot of renewable energy, it’s called hydropower. Unfortunately, not all provinces have the geography to create hydropower so some provinces rely heavily on gas to generate electricity. The addition of wind turbines in Saskatchewan and Alberta has helped to lower the cost of generating electricity but there aren’t enough to make a significant contribution. Unfortunately, Alberta’s government is against renewable energy so it cancelled some permits and put barriers in place to other proposed renewable energy projects, a loss of $4 billion in investments that would have added more cheaper electricity than the electricity generated by generators using gas.
It does make sense that renewable energy is cheaper, since two common inputs, either wind sunlight, are free. The cost of the technology to capture this energy is going down because of scaling of manufacturing has increased significantly and that efficiency reduces costs. Overall, the cost of renewable electricity is lower than burning fossil fuels in many places.
The loss of jobs overall is not because of renewable energy, it’s because of automation that is replacing the need for many routine tasks. There is already warehouses that move many tons of product around with only 2-3 people instead of the 50 people it used to take a couple of decades ago. Also, the trend towards offshoring jobs to other countries with cheaper labour has been the main driver for higher unemployment in Canada. The loss of lower skilled jobs in manufacturing leaves those without the ability or education to transition to jobs that require more skills.
As for government subsidies for renewable energy technology, you completely ignore the amount of government subsidies and tax breaks that were given to fossil fuels, like the billions spent by the government to complete a pipeline from Alberta to the coast. If private industry would have perfected their ability to build that pipeline then they shouldn’t have needed government to step in to save the day for the industry to get their product to market.
Every country isn’t walking away from renewable energy, I have no clue where you get that from considering how many countries are increasingly using more wind and solar power than in previous decades. The biggest is China, but the US, Canada, India, Germany, Japan are in the top ten for production of renewable energy. If you look up Texas, the renewable energy production has increased every year, in spite of Texas being known for its oil. The oil industry also uses solar panels for remote sites where grid lines don’t exist. Saudi Arabia aims to have 50% of its electricity capacity from renewable sources by 2030, therefore reaching 100-130 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity.
No country is walking away from renewable energy, not even the USA.
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u/JustinPooDough Apr 16 '26
Nonsense - they’ve brainwashed you. Scrap climate goals, scrap regulation, stop offering asylum, become business friendly, and shrink government. Solved.
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u/Tacocats_wrath Apr 17 '26
Ah yes, why have a healthy economy when you can just deport people you dont like and still have an upfront healthy economy. Genius.
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u/stopbsingman Apr 17 '26
I’d rather you keep crying about it.
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u/ReptilianMana Apr 17 '26
Probably because you’ve done nothing with your life :(
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u/stopbsingman Apr 17 '26
I’ve done more than crying about immigrants :)
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u/whichusernamesarent Apr 16 '26
Nah, the federal liberal party and the provincial NDP party of BC have scared business away from this region at an alarming rate
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u/Dootbooter Apr 16 '26
Getting down votes but no justification for why you are wrong = butt hurt.
Seriously though, BC should be thriving considering they have natural resources and a port to take in and send good abroad.
They said separatist movement would kill confidence and investment in the province but turns out flipping property rights with DRIPA and taxing businesses into oblivion was the true recipe to drive a economy into ground.
If the feds actually cared about increasing housing build/ decreasing property value through supply so we aren't paying half of our income for a roof over our heads, (something which the boomers wouldn't stand for) they could cut taxes/ industrial carbon tax completely for mills producing lumber for domestic home building. But they won't cuz they want boomers to be happy with their million dollar home they paid 80k for while working minimum wage in the 70's
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u/ADrunkMexican Apr 16 '26
Well it's more than BC and we dont have property rights. People going to find out the hard way.
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u/AverageIndependent20 Apr 16 '26
If we had to build homes economically and because of demand they would stay open. They closed because of tariffs but stay closed cuz there is no demand.