And not just Toronto, but Canada, and the whole of Western civilization, but let’s start small . . .
Toronto is becoming more and more crowded. “Affordable housing” is becoming the oxymoron of the 21st century, not only here but in other major urban centres in Canada. I have a house, but I couldn’t buy one now – I would be priced out of the market. And traffic . . .? It takes longer to get everywhere, and it will only get worse.
And why is all this happening?
Immigration.
And yes, it’s THAT simple. It’s all supply and demand. Too many people are coming to Canada, and they all want to come to Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. From those cities, people move to the suburbs in search of housing, and the problem spreads like metastases. People have to either a) make or inherit a LOT of money, b) move out (i.e. be driven out of their own birthplace), or c) become perpetual renters, forever forgoing the dream of home ownership. Meanwhile, the roads become increasingly clogged.
We’re told that we NEED immigrants to “grow the economy”, but what use is that when you can’t afford to own your own home? Isn’t that a gigantic DECREASE in our standard of living? And why, exactly, do we need the economy to grow at all, especially with these devastating side effects? Edward Abby said, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
And how is Toronto handling it? Very, very badly.
First of all, we have become a “sanctuary city” for refugees, where even phoney refugees are receiving full social services with no questions asked and no reporting to federal authorities. That’s aiding and abetting criminals, if you think about it. And it’s attracting them in record numbers, growing our population even more.
The city is also badly mishandling the transportation file, dithering about building subways and waging a disastrous “war on the car”. The resulting increasing gridlock is costing billions.
But there are things we can do about it. These problems can still be fixed – IF there is the will to embrace the obvious solutions:
1 – Decrease immigration. Ask the Feds to slash the number of people allowed to enter the country. And the Feds will do it, seeing as Toronto votes almost solidly Liberal. Supply and demand will take care of the rest. Housing prices will fall, streets will unclog, and the city will become liveable again.
2 – Incentivize remaining immigrants to spread out through grants and services.
3 – Make the TTC work. Lengthen subway platforms to accommodate longer trains. Put more busses on the road, including British-style double deckers – enough so that people could sit down rather than stand like cattle going to slaughter. Build more subways, including the Downtown Relief Line. Slash TTC fares. Taken together, these measures would make public transit irresistible for many people and get a lot of cars off the road. Yes, it would cost a fortune, but not as much as the lost money to the economy due to increasing gridlock.
Are these solutions rather obvious?
But politicians are stupid, including Mayor John Tory.
At least Rob Ford wanted to build subways . . .
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