On August 1st, Immigration Minister Marc Miller told reporters that his government would not be following through on their promise of a regularization program to give status to all undocumented residents. “Despite the economic imperative, despite the very humanitarian imperative that a broad regularization program presents, it is clear to me that Canadians are not there and that’s just reality”, Miller said.
While it is laughable to think that a minister whose leader currently sits at a 28% approval rating could have any idea where Canadians “are” on an issue like regularization, Miller made this announcement in the context of a recent and much-publicized poll in which 60% of respondents said there are too many immigrants coming to Canada. Nonstop anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Conservatives and major news outlets has made migrants bear the brunt of the blame for the current housing “crisis”. The Liberals’ concession to this rhetoric only pushes it further into the mainstream, and makes of it a just-so story to explain away the harm caused by their investor-centric policies.
To be clear, regularization does not mean bringing more people into Canada. It means extending basic rights and protections to the 500,000 people already living and working in Canada without the proper paperwork. The Liberals are all too content to concede to the hodgepodge of racist nonsense that conflates any policy that benefits migrants with increases in immigration.
This abandonment of regularization is the latest in a series of moves by the Liberals to scapegoat migrants for the problems caused by their spineless subservience to capital. In January, the government announced a 35% reduction in undergraduate study permits for international students and cut many graduates out of post-grad work permits in the name of addressing the housing crisis. Backtracking on regularization is just their latest attempt to punch down and punish migrants for problems that are not caused by immigration.
An unjust system, not a crisis
Migrants are not to blame for the supposed crises afflicting Canadian society. The “housing crisis” is not even a crisis. As Ricardo Tranjan writes in The Tenant Class:
The word crisis suggests something that is infrequent, surprising, and widely undesirable; something that leads to dire consequences unless it is brought under control. […] In contrast, Canada’s “housing crisis” is a permanent state of affairs that harms people in, or in need of, rental housing; roughly one third of the country’s households. […] Landlords, real estate investment firms, and developers operate in a stable and lucrative business environment.
The current state of affairs is not aberrant, but an example of a system in perfect working order. Tranjan explains that “A housing system that serves all but one group is not in a state of crisis; it is one based on structural inequality and economic exploitation”. Solutions to the “crisis” must address the problem, which is that one class, consisting of landlords, real estate investors, and developers, is oppressing another: tenants.
Fewer migrants does not equal lower rents
The politicians and pundits who wring their hands at recent years’ increase in immigration rates have little to back up their claims that immigration is driving sky-high rents. The classic refrain is that the housing supply can’t keep up with the number of people arriving to Canada. But housing supply has not ever been an adequate explanation for rising rents. Tranjan points to the period between 2006 and 2016, during which the construction of new homes outpaced the number of new households by 30,000. Even with this surplus of housing supply, “housing prices and rents went up at a neck-breaking speed during those years”.
Of course, under the right conditions, an increase in housing supply could have a positive effect. But as long as the balance of class power remains unchanged, an increase in supply will not benefit tenants. Not all new construction is created equal, and with developers constantly lobbying the government to dispense with “red tape” (such as environmental and safety regulations) and affordable housing, we risk exacerbating the problem with a housing supply that doesn’t suit the needs of the working class.
The current situation is the result of decades of rollbacks in public housing, an investor-fueled deficit in purpose-built rental housing, and rampant investor speculation. Toronto, for example, is full of condos purpose-built as investor properties. These buildings are full of “shoebox” units that their owners were never meant to inhabit, since they were built with investors, not tenants, in mind. The result is an oversupply of cheaply-made, cramped condos that no one wants to buy. In 2019, Toronto had over 66,000 empty dwellings; when rents continued to rise, was this because of migrants? Obviously not.
A parliament of landlords and lackeys
The recent iteration of migrant-bashing is a bundle of lies propagated by right-wing politicians, amplified by corporate-owned media, and happily adopted by centrists. It serves one clear purpose: to deflect blame from the exploiting class. The Liberals are too eager to make concessions to this campaign of misinformation; after all, 40% of Liberal MPs are either landlords or are otherwise involved in real estate.
Nevertheless, Miller should be commended for the above quote; it is rare to see a Canadian politician express himself with as much honesty as Miller when he states that the Liberals will not pursue an economically and ethically sound policy simply because they would rather chase votes. True, pandering to misinformed voters is probably their best bet for retaining power in the next election. Because they are bound to protect their class interests, the Liberal party is fundamentally incapable of winning votes the honest way, i.e. by meaningfully addressing the problems faced by people in Canada.
To fight these problems means fighting against the exploiting class. This fight is not being waged in parliament, over which has congealed the sickly consensus that it is easier to blame migrants than landlords. The fight is being waged by tenants, by migrants, and by allies standing in solidarity.
Tenants fighting back
Rent strikes, like the one led by the York South-Weston Tenant Union, provide an avenue for tenants to exercise political power against the class interests of their landlords. Hundreds of tenants have collectively withheld their rent since June 1st, 2023 in protest of Above Guideline Rent Increases from their negligent landlords. This rent strike, the largest in Toronto’s history, has become a focal point for tenant organizations across the country looking for practical models of resistance to the depredations of landlords.
Rent strikes echo beyond the immediate concerns that provoke them. They build the confidence of tenants, who see the power that they can wield when organized around a common cause. And they build the class-consciousness of tenants, who learn firsthand that their enemy is not their neighbour, but the person gouging them for rent.
As the tenant movement builds, it will become possible to demand greater and greater concessions from our government, like policies that crack down on profiteering developers, increased taxes on landowners, and serious investment in social housing. But it is imperative to recognize that these concessions will only ever come as the reflection of a powerful tenant movement; a parliament of landlords will never arrive at these policies on their own.
A fighting tenant movement requires Status for All
To meaningfully confront Canada’s unjust housing system, tenants must organize a broad, fighting movement to take back power from landlords. This requires solidarity: standing together in recognition that your fight is my fight and that we can only win our own liberation through the collective liberation of all. Tenants must leave behind any idea that immigrants are to blame for the housing crisis, and fight so that our undocumented comrades can organize without the constant possibility of deportation hanging over their heads.
Full regularization for all undocumented people is vital for the success of tenant organizing in Canada. Leaving hundreds of thousands of people without the legal protections of regularization makes them vulnerable to landlords, who use the threat of deportation as a cudgel to force tenants to accept substandard living conditions for exorbitant prices. Without Status for All, it becomes incredibly difficult for these hundreds of thousands of tenants to mount any kind of resistance to landlords. This in turn weakens the collective power that organized tenants can wield.
Trudeau’s party found great success by putting a friendly, diverse face on ruthless capitalist exploitation. It is this utter superficiality that allows Marc Miller to cancel a regularization program while admitting in the same sentence that it is an economic and humanitarian imperative. The Liberal government’s shameful abandonment of regularization must be met with resistance from tenants everywhere, since it is impossible to organize a fighting tenant class while leaving undocumented people behind. Tenants in Canada must reject Conservative hate-mongering, reject the unprincipled pandering of the Liberals, and militate in our buildings, in our neighbourhoods, and in our communities for Status for All. Blame Landlords, Not Migrants!
Get involved
Spring Magazine has an assortment of posters available for download that point to the real perpetrators of some of the issues facing people in Canada. Download and print the Blame Landlords, Not Immigrants poster, gather some friends and neighbours, and put them up around your neighbourhood to help build solidarity between tenants and migrants.
The Migrant Rights Network has scheduled a nationwide mobilization for migrant justice on September 14-15. In Toronto, there will be a rally and march on Sunday, September 15, 2024. This is an opportunity for us to show solidarity with our migrant comrades. If you are part of a labour union, tenant union, neighbourhood organizing group, or other working-class organization, encourage your organization to endorse and support the movement and arrange for your organization to participate in the rally. Additionally, you should sign the petition, put up posters and send emails to the Prime Minister, and remind him to fulfill his promise for regularization.
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