Debate is at https://www.ndp.ca/debate
More info on debate and candidates:
- https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-leadership-candidates-debate-preview-9.7096023
- https://www.cp24.com/news/canada/2026/02/19/ndp-leadership-candidates-face-off-aim-for-breakaway-in-key-debate/
Candidate sites:
- Heather McPherson - https://www.heathermcpherson.ca/
- Avi Lewis https://lewisforleader.ca/
- Tanille Johnston - https://www.tanille.ca/
- Rob Ashton - https://robashton.ca/
- Tony McQuail - https://tonymcquailgreenprogressive.ca/
If you’re worried about giving workers real power, the NDP is not for you.
I don’t want more citizens when we have no housing and we have double digit youth unemployment. The NDP aren’t progressive if they do.
These problems aren’t caused by immigrants no matter what the frothing-in-the-mouth Right wants you to believe.
Little Quebec data point: the vast majority of immigrants move to Montreal. Guess where the housing crisis is more acute: the regions. Immigrants are not causing the housing shortage. Stupid car-centric city planning, NIMBY zoning, and the financialization of housing is what causes it. Read the CCPA report.
Youth unemployment? At the same time when our healthcare system is buckling from chronic under-staffing? And at the same time when we are missing teachers, early childhood educators? At the same time when we are faced with a climate resilience crisis, a housing crisis, sectors that require actual trained labour? Gee I wonder if there are some solutions to that. Maybe some kind of, oh I don’t know Green New Deal, funded by the ridiculous wealth hoarded by parasites like Galen Weston over the past few decades of neoliberal orthodoxy?
Immigrants are a rhetorical scapegoat, sold to you by demagogues who dream of bringing Trump style authoritarianism to Canada. We know exactly where that leads. No thanks.
https://economics.bmo.com/en/publications/detail/fb3ff12e-3054-4c6b-befb-fe9d2fac77af/
Is BMO far right?
“or housing, this move will dampen price pressures and rents, all else equal (e.g., rate cuts and mortgage rules). That said, the sudden shift in TR inflows should clearly soften the rental market just as a torrent of supply is coming online in some regions (e.g., Toronto condos). Growth in average asking rent across Canada has slowed to just 2% y/y according to Rentals.ca, with outright declines seen in some markets. We’ve long argued that Canada has a housing demand problem. This policy change will be felt quickly, and will make other supply-side measures look almost like rounding error.”
I feel like you people must be trying to gaslight, its an absurd premise to argue that additional demand doesnt raise prices on an inelastic good like housing, I cant even believe you are arguing in good faith.
BMO is a seller of mortgages, and therefore heavily invested in the financialization of housing. About 15-20% of their assets are in residential mortgages and HELOCs alone. Of course they want to talk about anything EXCEPT the root of the problem that is literally driving their profitability. This is like bringing up a study from the oil and gas industry to argue that greenhouse emissions are not a problem. And just like Oil&Gas keep pushing an inefficient and outdated energy technology stack and standing in the way of common sense electrification, the real estate financialization industry is keeping Canadian capital in an unproductive and parasitic sector. Imagine if we instead used all that capital not to invest in inert land, but to build up the Canadian economy.
Why is housing inelastic in the current system? Because it is not treated as a universal right, but as an asset. It is being hoarded by Real Eastate Investment Trusts who quite literally profit from maintaining scarcity. The solution is breaking the back of REITs and building non-market infill development across the country. Build the missing middle and keep it the fuck out of the profit-driven market, make it coops and public housing. Oh and guess what we need to do that. That’s right, workers, of which we have a shortage, so therefore …immigrants.
Here’s what Avi Lewis’ platform has to say about housing: https://lewisforleader.ca/ideas/housing-full-plan
If you call this “gaslighting” and “bad faith” argumentation, I honestly have no idea what you would consider “good faith” argumentation.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GIKDuBWcjyo
I see you as Bernie says, a far right anti-worker non-empathetic sociopath, who doesn’t care about housing prices or wages. I don’t think we can convince each other.
You’re not making any sense. Sanders is slamming precarious low wage temporary guest worker programs. Nobody is defending those. Look at the thing you objected to earlier. It was talking about empowering immigrant workers, precisely the opposite of a precarious work program:
Edit: it also seems that Bernie Sanders has evolved in his positions over time: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21143931/bernie-sanders-immigration-record-explained
And yes, I can see that you don’t want to be convinced by anything I wrote. You are not responding in substance to anything I’ve written. But you haven’t actually made any substantive argument to try to convince me or anyone. You haven’t tried to convince me in any real way. But you’ve accused me of gaslighting and bad faith arguing, when it’s clear I’m not doing either. You’re using inflammatory language (“sociopath”) to describe my views, when I haven’t. I think you’re just trying to make it look like you’re not losing the debate by desperately trying to making it look like the leftists are mean to you.
Its unskilled labor being given PR into a housing crisis, while youth unemployment is extremely high. Which is being pushed by groups like the century initiative, which is funded by large corporations for their own ends.
There is no way that our economy can absorb people that fast, so it ends up being more bodies which cheapens labor, and leads to shortages of basic goods like housing. I feel it too axiomatic to really argue, like trying to convince you that water is wet, and I feel a gesture to the state of Canada is enough to see the damage where per-capita GDP has fallen off a cliff.
Look, we can talk and argue about the rate of increase and it won’t be controversial, with two caveats: a) that people already here should be grandfathered in (none of the PEQ fiasco). b) the rights of immigrant workers should always be equal to those of established ones.
I have explained above why I don’t think the housing and unemployment crises are caused by immigration.
But I agree that if all else stays the same, a big increase in precarious immigrants exacerbates things. The point is that I don’t think that we should accept everything else remaining the same and then play the game of blaming the immigrants. Front and centre should be a program to address the structural problems of our economic system, and immigration only secondary. Think about it: the Liberals just aggressively cut immigration rates, while keeping other things the same. The results are only small dips in the housing market, nothing that actually makes housing genuinely affordable: we’re still in crisis but now we’ve run out of immigrants to blame.
Any politics that puts immigration at the forefront is just ceding the initiative to the (far) Right.