Ontario in last place when it comes to Canada’s already low housing stock

Housing supply in Ontario is the worst in Canada on a per capita basis, a persistent problem that will likely continue to push up prices, according to a Scotiabank report.

Ontario is the worst offender among Canadian provinces when it comes to the lack of sufficient housing stock, according to a new analysis from Scotiabank Economics.

A report published Wednesday shows that Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba are the only provinces below the national average when it comes to per capita housing stock available. Scotiabank’s analysis relies on data from 2020, the last year with complete information on hand.

To make up the difference, Ontario would need to add 650,000 new dwellings, Alberta would need to build 138,000 units and Manitoba would have to construct 23,000 homes.

But as wide as some of these gaps are, striving towards the mean in Canada is not a high bar.

Canada already ranks lowest among all G7 nations for per capita housing stock, Scotiabank reported last year, needing more than 1.8 million homes to reach the average of its peers on the international stage.

Jean-Francois Perrault, senior vice-president and chief economist at Scotiabank as well as the report’s author, wrote that the delta between Canada and other G7 nations when it comes to housing points to the “collective failure in right-sizing the number of homes relative to our population.”

It’s the growth of Canada’s population that’s become so difficult to manage, Perrault told Global News in an interview on Wednesday, with the pain points coming largely at the municipal level.

While the federal government has stated that it wants more immigration to bolster Canada’s economy, that sweeping directive comes up against obstacles at the city level, such as NIMBYism, zoning challenges and a lack of available labour or materials in the construction industry.