Image: CFJC Today / File
HOUSING REPORT

C.D. Howe report shows investment in communities like Kamloops can help solve Canada’s housing crisis

Jan 22, 2025 | 7:00 PM

KAMLOOPS — A new report from the C.D. Howe Institute challenges the focus on solving Canada’s housing crisis by building more homes in major cities like Vancouver, calling for investment in mid-sized markets.

Credit – C.D. Howe

The city of Kamloops fits perfectly into the framework, thanks to its population hovering around 100,000 people, its central location in the midst of multiple trucking routes and being home to a university campus. The report states investing only in major centres won’t fix anything long term.

“The problem is if you do only that, or the vast majority of it is surrounding that idea, well then people who are elsewhere will be attracted to coming to Toronto, Vancouver and those kind of cities will just boost the demand and boost the price back up, so you haven’t really solved the affordability crisis,” said Dr. Jeremy Kronick, VP of Economic Analysis and Strategy for C.D. Howe and one of the report’s authors.

“What you need to do, or at least what we find in the paper, is you need to build up those cities where those people are coming from, who say, ‘Well, maybe we don’t want to leave this city because it’s attractive for a number of different reasons.’ It’s about doing both simultaneously.”

Over the past several years, governments have been working to tackle the housing crisis and, in particular, housing affordability. Those steps and initiatives will also need to continue along with new policy for the desired outcome to become reality.

“When you think about the affordability crisis in the Torontos and the Vancouvers of the world, it’s a little bit paradoxical, right? To fix it, it’s not just about what you do there, it’s also what you do elsewhere,” Kronick told CFJC News. “It’s not a [180-degree turn]. All the stuff that people have been advocating for along those lines, I think, continues. It’s are there a handful of really good candidates to create competition, if you will, of where people want to live?”