FIRST READING: Just as predicted, immigration cuts keep yielding lower rents

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

Sign In or Create an Account

Canadian rental prices have almost entirely snapped back from the meteoric highs they hit in the immediate wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of the main reasons is that Ottawa is no longer importing record numbers of migrants each year.

Newly released figures from Rentals.ca show that the average Canadian asking rent dropped to $2,034 in September, representing a 4.2 per cent decline over the last year. This makes September the “24th consecutive month of annual decline,” according to the report.

Columnist Jesse Kline keeps you up to date with what’s happening in Israel and the effects of antisemitism on life here in Canada. Friday mornings.

By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.

The next issue of Channel Israel will soon be in your inbox.

We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again

This puts rental prices right around where they were in the fall of 2022, just before they entered a sustained surge that ultimately peaked in the spring of 2024 at $2,202 per month.

Prior analysis by Rentals.ca has claimed that some of this is due to an increase in supply, with completions of purpose-built rentals recently hitting record highs. But the fact that population growth has slowed to a crawl should “should not be discounted,” it added.

Across Canada, rents have been in decline almost from the moment that the federal government announced in October 2024 that it would be “turning off the taps” on what had previously been the largest migration surge in Canadian history.

In just three years between 2022 and 2025, the Canadian population grew by 2.8 million, an increase driven almost exclusively by increases to both permanent and non-permanent immigration streams.

According to an October 2024 federal backgrounder, “reducing the volume of immigrants will help to alleviate some pressure in the housing markets.”

Economic reports at the time similarly forecast that the most immediate effect of the reductions would be falling rental prices.

“We expect any net outflow of non-permanent residents will shrink rental demand in the near term — especially in areas close to post-secondary education institutions where ballooning international student enrolment crushed vacancy rates,” read a November 2024 report by RBC analyst Robert Hogue.

This time last year, a TD Bank report similarly determined that the cities where migrants were leaving in the highest numbers were also those seeing rents plummet the fastest.

“Reduced immigration has moderated demand for purpose-built rentals and, consequently, rent growth,” it read.

Last month, Statistics Canada announced that it had overestimated the rate of foreign residents leaving the country in its preliminary population estimates for 2025. Although StatCan had initially declared that 2025 had seen the population go down by about 100,000, it had actually gone up by 280,000.

In other words, statisticians had missed a population of temporary residents equivalent to the population of London, Ont.

This still means that population growth for 2025 was at a record low of 0.5 per cent, but in a Sept. 28 reaction to the new numbers, Rentals.ca analysts concluded that migration cuts weren’t affecting rental prices as much as it had previously suspected.

“The elimination of population decline in the revisions indicates that new supply has been a more important factor than previously believed,” it read.

And while the most dramatic rental price surges of the COVID-19 era may have been reversed, overall Canadian rents still remain far higher than they were just five years ago.

In April 2021, Rentals.ca data show that average rents hit a low of $1,662 per month, nearly $400 lower than the current rate, even after 24 months of falling rental prices.

The post-2021 surge in rental prices was noted in a Bank of Canada essay published last month, with author Benjamin Straus citing “strong population growth” as the main factor.

“If the number of renter households increases faster than the supply of rental units, asking rents tend to rise,” he wrote.

The first order of business of the new Parti Québécois government is to sideline the monarchy as much as possible. In a press conference, premier-designate Paul St-Pierre Plamondon (PSPP) called the institution “totally abnormal” and was examining options to purge it from Quebec life.

The only problem is that any Quebec government has to have some monarchy in order to function properly.

According to the 1867 British North America Act – which Quebec considers to be its official constitution – all power in the province is vested in the Lieutenant Governor, who is then supposed to act with “the Advice and Consent” of the provincial parliament.

So if the Quebec government started sending out orders and legislation without having it signed by the Lieutenant Governor, the province’s own constitution states that none of it would be binding.

However, none of this means that St-Pierre Plamondon can’t simply treat the Lieutenant Governor shabbily, even while maintaining the position for legal reasons.

Although the Quebec Lieutenant Governor’s salary is paid by the federal government, the Government of Quebec typically budgets about $1 million per year for office and travel expenses.

So, PSPP could slash that to zero, effectively forcing the Lieutenant Governor to never go anywhere, at least without paying the costs herself.

The Parti Québécois could also be really petty by disinviting the LG from official events, such as the opening of the National Assembly, which PSPP has indeed proposed.  

And there is some precedent for a provincial government deciding to make its Lieutenant Governor feel as unwelcome as possible.

In the 1930s, the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, John C. Bowen, took the unprecedented step of refusing to give royal assent to three radical pieces of legislation passed by the province’s Social Credit government, including one imposing draconian controls on the free press.   

In response, an outraged Alberta Premier Bill Aberhart evicted Bowen from the official Lieutenant Governor’s residence, fired all his staff and eliminated his travel budget.

PSPP may also be banking on a precedent that was well-established under his CAQ predecessors: That Quebec just violates federal law whenever it wants, and Ottawa doesn’t do anything about it.

In 2022, the government of François Legault told Ottawa that they’d decided to unilaterally amend the British North America Act so that MNAs didn’t have to swear an oath to the king anymore.

Under the 155-year-old clause requiring an “Oath of Allegiance,” Quebec told Ottawa to reprint the document with a new line declaring that the requirement “does not apply to Quebec.”

Ottawa didn’t push back, and the oath has been considered optional ever since.  

So there is a possible scenario in which PSPP’s government does indeed start cranking out policy that has no official legal standing because it never received royal assent – but gets away with it because Ottawa decides to look the other way.

Which might be why University of Ottawa professor Lawrence David just filed an injunction application in Quebec Superior Court demanding that MNAs be required to swear the oath and not “flout the laws that apply to all democratic institutions in Canada.”

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.