When the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) announced that Canada would need an extra 3.5 million homes by 2030 to keep up with demand, the figure was already staggering.
But a new report from CIBC deputy chief economist Benjamin Tal suggests the housing supply gap is even worse than first thought.
In his research note entitled, ‘The housing crisis is a planning crisis,’ Tal argues that the total number of homes needed by 2030—above and beyond the current pace of construction—is actually closer to five million homes.
He said the discrepancy is due to a lack of proper planning around population, with growth targets consistently falling short of reality. The biggest reason for this, he explains, is an under-estimate of non-permanent residents, which he says make up more than 90% of the forecasting gap.
“You cannot…
