My friend convinced me Canada intends to kill off its homeless and poverty-stricken citizens to make room for its current and impending foreign residents and working-class native citizens. — Bug Biro

Uhhh... :roll: Peraps you shouldn't go all in with the conspiracy theory.

Has anyone spotted the same circumstances in the city they live in? Is this strictly Canadian policy? — Bug Biro

Authorities intervening in the housing market usually backfires. This happens when they give subsidies and assistance which is intended to be beneficial, but have no regard (or understanding) how markets work. The welfare programs can at worst, if not run well, become rackets for some investors and officials to make money. Smart programs can work well.

The classic way is to subsidies housing for the poor people let's say giving a monthly assistance of X amount. This has the consequence that no flat will be lower rented than price X. Why rent anything lower than X, because it's free money?

Another is to fix limits to what rents can be. This can simply kill the rental business and investors opt to sell their flats rather than rent them out. My country (Finland) pretty much killed the rental market in the 1970's and caused a decades lasting huge structural inbalance between demand and supply. In the 1980's and 1990's if you decided to rent a flat, you had dozens of people lining up for the apartment. Only after they freed the market did supply and demand meet with even institutional investors and companies emerging to the market. Now in this Millennium there has been a steady supply of rental apartments on the market.

But coming back to Canada: do notice that the economic growth of your country depends very much on the increasing population. And that continuing in the future. Now refugees might be singled out, but the huge portion of people coming to Canada emigrant workers. Now if that influx stops, your economy really hits the rocks or sees anemic growth.

My friend convinced me Canada intends to kill off its homeless and poverty-stricken citizens through neglect to make room for its current and impending foreign residents and working-class native citizens. — Bug Biro

If you need a conspiracy theory, a better one is that the wealthy are few and maintain their dominance by means of divide and rule. by keeping poor citizens in conflict with poor immigrants, they prevent the poor from making common cause and - say - voting for decent affordable housing for all, something that is not beyond the wit of an Amazonian tribe, and should be uncontroversial to the point of not worth talking about somewhere like Canada.

Divide et impera!

Has anyone spotted the same circumstances in the city they live in? Is this strictly Canadian policy? — Bug Biro

It is common to blame immigrants for taking the jobs of the current citizens, of committing crime, of refusing assimilation, of depleting common resources, of displacing the current residents, and of generally many societal ills.

They're not after you, but to the extent you feel disenfranchised, and you fear removal, you sit as potential prey for a leader who needs his supporters.

That's how these things predictably work. You can decide whether to jump on that train or not. My guess is that the political fliers have already been littered throughout your neighborhood.

You all sound in denial to me. I imagine this is a Canada-only issue. You must all have jobs and associate with only the working class.

They're not after you, but to the extent you feel disenfranchised, and you fear removal, you sit as potential prey for a leader who needs his supporters. — Hanover

I know they aren't after me. They are. By they, I mean a UK billionaire and the politicians of my city and perhaps even the Prime Minister of my country.

I know they aren't after me. They are. By they, I mean a UK billionaire and the politicians of my city and perhaps even the Prime Minister of my country. — Bug Biro

Which UK billionaire? Aren't they all busy messing up their own country's housing situation?

As to homelessness: I don't know how successful this strategy is, but it doesn't sound like a policy of killing off through neglect.
As to affordable housing https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2022/04/making-housing-more-affordable.html
Several issues intervene between policy and implementation: the enormous cost of Covid; the co-operation of provinces - You know who you are, Duggie-Bob! - the opportunistic investors and increased demand for real estate, rising rental prices

According to this same rentals.ca’s national rent report, the three cities that have seen the highest annual increase in one-bedroom rental prices are: London, Ont. (36.9% increase)
Calgary, Alta. (29.8% increase) Vancouver, B.C. (18.8% increase)

However, real estate developers prefer to build this kind of thing in London, Calgary and Vancouver rather than low-cost homes for working people, marginalized people and refugees.

Aren't they all busy messing up their own country's housing situation? — Vera Mont

We have quality billionaires who can multi-task, ripping folks off in more than one place at a time.

Canada chose the more compassionate route. Unfortunately, it is at the expense of low-income earning native Canadians, indigenous or not. — Bug Biro

Being poor -- anywhere -- is an all-around bad deal. The poorer you are, the worse it gets. No, this is NOT a Canada-only problem.

You must all have jobs and associate with only the working class. — Bug Biro

Many of us have jobs, or are retired, mercifully, from the job market. You said you are a communist, which means your POV won't be shared by a lot of people here, but keep your left hand high, just the same.

The welfare programs can at worst, if not run well, become rackets for some investors and officials to make money. — ssu

Minnesota shoveled a lot of federal pandemic money out the door to programs without (apparently) sufficiently vetting or auditing the recipients. One agency, Feeding Our Future, was a central player in defrauding the state/federal government of $250,000,000!!!!!. A perfect NEGATIVE example of not letting a crisis go to waste.

Back to @Bug Biro. As a communist, none of this should come as a surprise. The State, even the Canadian State, has a limited interest in its poor people. Really, what can the poor people of Canada do for Justin Trudeau and the ruling class? Not too much.

Per @ssu's comment on prosperity and a growing population: A number of countries -- China, among them, will have difficulty maintaining prosperity in the years ahead as the prime producing age-group shrinks. 45 year olds will be 65 in 20 years, and won't be very productive. If breeding pairs have only 1 child (which is still the case because of living costs in China), the very large working class China has now will shrink -- age out of existence.

North America isn't, at this point, heading for a demographic crisis like China largely because of immigration and higher birth rates among immigrant groups. That may not help your personal situation of course. U.S. prosperity doesn't help our poor people all that much either, but it does produce the tax revenue needed to do anything for anybody.

Maintaining a large working-age cohort doesn't automatically mean taking care of poor people. It's in the interests of the state to have as many working people as possible. That a good share of the working people are also poor is just frosting on the cake -- poor people are cheaper pairs of hands.

Now, the poor don't consume as much as better off people do, but everyone seems to be consuming enough to keep the wheels of business turning. Hey -- we all live in a bourgeois states -- the state runs on the turning wheels of business! I don't like that, but that seems to be the way it is.

We have quality billionaires who can multi-task, ripping folks off in more than one place at a time. — unenlightened

So have Russia and China and notably the Middle East.
Fly Emirates, mate!

China, among them, will have difficulty maintaining prosperity in the years ahead as the prime producing age-group shrinks. - North America isn't, at this point, heading for a demographic crisis like China largely because of immigration and higher birth rates among immigrant groups — BC

One of the catastrophic decisions that China made was the one-child policy.

It has been well shown that if the prosperity of the people rises, then people will have less children. It's not that they are anymore on a farm where they grow food to eat themselves, where it's wise to have children around to take care of you when you are old.

Unfortunately especially in the 1970's the vocal popular "scientists" warned about a future disaster because of the rampant population growth, and totalitarian systems like China and suprisingly Singapore went to limit births.

Canada is, or should we say should be, one of the countries that will have good economic prospects going further. Not only does it attract also talented people to emigrate there, it also has a lot of natural resources. It's a country that Europeans genuinely can think and will think of emigrating to. People can of course fuck up even the best future prospects. But doing something like a Brexit won't be enough. You have to start killing each other, have car bombs explode weekly on your streets weekly and lynch emigrants and presto: nobody will want to emigrate to Canada. But we will all ask what the hell happened to you?

You have to start killing each other, have car bombs explode weekly on your streets weekly and lynch emigrants and presto: nobody will want to emigrate to Canada. But we will all ask what the hell happened to you? — ssu

I would not be surprised if in about half a decade, those horrific actions you described do occur in Canada against foreigners who moved there. I surmise that impoverished people will revolt or they will accept the cards they were dealt by their so-called leaders and die quietly. I wonder how the government intends poor people to react, that is probably how their response will be.

Never underestimate how tolerant of difficulties people are.

Let's take for example unemployment: now you would think that high unemployment would make people revolt. Actually it isn't so, in this society unemployment is a stigma for the individual, that something wrong with him or her. And so with financial difficulties. As long as there is a majority that holding on somehow, there won't be a problem. Above all, Canadians (as other people in OECD countries) think that instability, political upheaval and so on happen in other countries, not in Canada. Hence people will be in denial. It happens also here in the Nordic countries too.