You clearly don’t understand how demand works. If demand drops, it looks like there’s more supply.

If you look at the change in population (it increased) and total units in the province(it increased, but not as much) total units per capita has gone down (a decrease in supply)

I see a lot of comments are proposing for the nationalization of whole industries, which is somewhat concerning. There needs to be some balance, not to fatten the checks of those billionaires, and not to make the government too powerful.

For example, instead of (re-)nationalizing CN, nationalize the tracks themselves. The government can lay down tracks for places that need to be reached, and companies can then run their trains on them. It’s no different from how roads are public really. Companies can then focus on serving section of the tracks for areas that they understand best. Of course, there will be cases where there’s a need to consider if the investment from the government is worth it, cause what if they laid the tracks but no one’s willing to take advantage of that? Well, they can let companies bid, and there’s no bidder, they can choose to not take on the project. Of course, there’s always the option for the government to have its own train company to serve certain areas.

For telcos, instead of nationalizing the entire vertical, nationalize cell towers and cable paths. Allow companies to build their own towers if they so desire, but the main draw is that different providers can rely on shared infrastructure, and none of this Robelus bullshit that we have right now. Cable paths is probably odd, but these sorts of technology get changed quite often. The government can still own some cables, allowing smaller players to take advantage of those, but it would level out the playing field by a lot.

For the Internet and whole businesses within it, having our own cloud infrastructure, or AWS alternative, would be best. People can then run whatever on those. There is, of course, a concern of the government not respecting people’s privacies, and so it needs to be run somewhat independent of the government, allowing the government to set directions but not what exactly to do; sort of Crown-corp-y if you will.

In all my examples, the idea is simply this: nationalize the stuff that serve as the basis for a particular service. Think roads instead of cars.

Oh you won’t be bleed dry by a malicious government. You’d just have literally nowhere legal for you to go. It’d make what ICE is doing down south look tame; there’d be a lot more people who believe or is made to believe that you should gtfo.

And capitalists aren’t just bleeding us dry through land and land alone. Just look at, and I’m waving my hand violently, everything else.

Your proposition is to trade one extreme for another, and all I’m telling you is that it doesn’t work. Why are we trying to jump from one pit into another?

I thin as soon as you let private companies into critical infrastructures, you run te risk of having abuses. Freight trains are critical for economic sovereingty. Even by having public rails but private train companies, you still run the risk of having a foreign company overcharging or simply stopping service during a trade, economic, or actual war. Same with transportation. It’s such an essential service to have in a geographically large country like Canada, it shouldn’t be left solely to private companies or risk geeting gouged.

And that’s just for rail, trains, transport, etc.

For internet, make the infrastructure public and let companies use it to sell services. That’s fine. But still offer a public alternative just in case.

As for cloud services, the government should definitely have its own cloud system, but it shouldn’t be for public use. I would never store my personal files and information on a government cloud. That would definitely be a huge privacy risk.

If you’re running an infrastructure that many need, you could just say no to abusers, just like a healthy business would do.

And I know the times we’re in, but it’s just so odd to assume that businesses that serve the country are all owned and controlled by foreign companies. Why can’t a local player be in that place?

Public alternatives are fine, but they’ve generally stagnated in terms of improving their services and offerings, because, and I absolutely hate that I agree with the capitalists here even though I’m looking at it differently, at some point in their lifetime, the stability that a government-funded company offers will attract people who seek that stability without understanding how to achieve long term stability (which is to constantly improvement, instead of preserving the status quo). Income for these companies eventually drop, and we end up having to keep them afloat with tax money. That’s not necessarily a bad thing cause not all public services need to be profitable, but it’s still desirable to have them fund most of their activities on their own.

For cloud, it’s why mentioned that the government should be as removed as possible from its operations. These sorts of services can easily contain a lot of sensitive information, and the government should be kept at a healthy gap away from that data. Government-funded, yes, but let there also be a more direct mechanism from more grassroots and local organizations as well.

Look at the grocery business. They’re mostly local players. Loblaws, Metro, Sobeys, etc. They’re all gouging the fuck out of Canadians.

And as for public companies, good example is Air Canada. When it was a public crown company it was one of the best airlines there was until it was privatized. Now they’re cutting everywhere and overcharging on every detail, leading to pricy services and bad quality of service.

Another example is the hydro electric companies in Québec. Before the private companies were nationalized, they would avoid investing in their infrastructure, avoid expanding their network and avoid maintenance as much as possible leading to frequent black outs. As soon as it was nationalized it became the pride of Québec because they not only expanded all over the province, they upgraded their infrastructure and ensured everyone would have world class services at a low cost.

Bixi, the Rent-a-bike service was going bankrupt until the city of Montreal acquired it and now they’re expanding all over the globe.

So I don’t know where you got this idea that public companies or services at stagnant.

I get it. The grocery businesses and telco business that we know of exist and are local players. That has more to say about our policies for businesses, that it allows for oligopolies to fester, but it’s a weak reason to go to the extent of full nationalization imo. IMO government should not allow a singular group of people to fully control almost every facet of an industry. But governments should not have the power to stamp out its own competitors, lest it becomes the very thing we don’t like seeing now in these private companies.

And while those are examples, there are also some that’s for the other side. While not a national company, the TTC is one such example at the city + provincial level: service degradation has continued on, disruptions have become increasingly frequent, the Eglinton Crosstown is still under construction after more than 10 years (though the private sector is also to blame on this end), Line 6 is only finally here after 10+ years as well, and even with these two lines, Toronto is nowhere near the level of accessibility you’d expect of a city it’s size outside of downtown core, and it literally hasn’t changed much for the last 100 years. While the TTC isn’t to be fully blamed for these woes (because of car-centric developments that have taken over the national psyche), if you listen to transit advocates talk about the TTC, you’ll hear a lot of frustrating episodes, e.g. having outdated, error-prone rail infrastructure and repeatedly refusing to upgrade them.

And then there’s Canada Post with all its episodes, sagas even, in recent years. They’ve repeatedly refused to both improve services and pay better wages, even as the CUPW continually suggested to the management to better use their abilities.

I think this should tell us that you can’t rely on either nationalization or privatization alone. Either way has a possibility of slipping into stagnation once they’ve reached some kind of steady state.

I don’t see how you think the current system is better. Plenty of people already have “nowhere legal” to go.

When someone who can’t afford a mortgage or rental right now, they really only have two options. Homeless shelters, if there is space that will take them, and then specific public parks at night (as allowed by the Supreme court of Canada when enough shelter space is not available). They can and are regularly locked up temporarily for trespassing on private property.

You act like the government would just start instantly kicking out everyone if they owned the land. Why would they do that? What’s the motive? How do the politicians benefit from such an action? I know and can explain exactly how capitalists benefit from owning the land.

The worst situation you’re going to see is specific people being displaced more easily for development, but that’s literally the point of this. Oh no, grandma and grandpa can’t keep living in a half acre lot 3 minutes from the downtown core anymore, they have to move into a condo or move further out to have a giant house. That’s not a problem, that’s a solution.

You bring up a boogeyman like ICE in the US, but how would that even apply to government ownership of land in Canada? We don’t have a large illegal immigrant population, and even the racial tensions we do have are mild as toast compared to what has existed in the US for a long time. Even if we took the current far-right conservatives, I don’t see any indication that this policy would be used to do… anything.

Explain to me against who, and how, a nazi government would use the government ownership of land in Canada against Canadians, that they couldn’t already do today if they were voted in.

A lot of the problems you are mentioning is because of government cuts. In Montréal, the STM is also facing budget problems leading to strikes and projects taking longer and becoming more costly over time. But that’s because the provincial gouvernent are a bunch of corrupt idiots with no ethics who are giving away are tax dollars to their business friends.

And as for Canada Post, the main ceo guy at Canada Post is also on the board of Purolator, a private courier company. He’s been accused of conflict of interest and probably trying to sabotage Canada Post for his own corporate profits.

So… yeah.

This is going absolutely nowhere. I don’t know why you’re thinking that I think the current system is better. I’ve said that I don’t believe so. What I’m also saying is that I don’t believe that governments can make sure that we won’t be on the streets either.

And you’re throwing away my arguments and conveniently forgetting about them and essentially putting me up as some kind of convenient strawman for whatever you’re trying to say. Why wouldn’t a government kick a bunch of people out so that they can build that resort for people that they know would vote for them? A “large illegal immigrant population” is simply a convenient target down south for the fascists Republicunts to channel national anger at so that the people would vote for them. While Canada isn’t as polarized as the States is, and racial tensions aren’t as high, it does exist and isn’t something to dismiss, and given the right events, it could fan the flames. And it doesn’t have to be racial. It can be on nationalistic lines, and I can guarantee you that that sentiment is definitely on the rise.

But isn’t that the point? If governments would cut public services to feed their own beast now, why wouldn’t they do that if we nationalize these services, so that they can then sell to people something better?

That said, I actually did not know that the CEO at CP is also on the Purolator board. Why the hell was that even allowed in the first place?

No those supply numbers are hard numbers. There were 402 MORE two bedroom apartments this year than last year, a 38% increase over last year. Calgary’s population has gone up but only about 5%.

Thats an EXCESS SUPPLY of apartments because the number keeps rising. If people were snapping them up as fast as they were coming available that number would be steady or dropping and rents would be rising. They’re NOT rising because there is excess supply and renters can shop around and negotiate on rent prices. which is why rents are 8 to 10% LESS than last year at this time even though there were still 100,000 people moving to Calgary.

Many out of province investors have flooded into Calgary in the last couple of years, which means many more rentals on the market as they snap up any housing they can find and turn them into rentals.

So your last statement is incorrect. Population has increased but rental supply has increased even more than the demand.

I have been a landlord in Calgary for over 40 years now and we’ve been through several excess demand and excess supply cycles because of our variable economy. We are obviously in an excess supply cycle.

Yes there arent thousands of them. I had to hunt around and keep my eye open for a good deal for several months to find the ones I bought. But they do exist in centers much bigger than Elnora.

So how exactly can they solve the housing crisis?

Do you not understand percentages? Do you think there are only 1400 total two bedroom apartments in Calgary? The percentage change in available listings for sale does not in any way show you how many new units were created. Those are just how many people are currently trying to sell and don’t reflect net construction at all.

Calgary grew it’s population by 100,179 people in 2024 but it’s total housing completions were only 21,084 total units. Given that the average housing unit doesn’t even come close to having 5 people in it (the average is usually somewhere in the high 2s) that means the total supply per capita went down.

Those stats are from the city itself: https://www.calgary.ca/content/dam/www/cfod/finance/documents/corporate-economics/housing-review/Housing-Review-Q4-2024.pdf

I really don’t know how you’ve managed to get so far in life given how bad you are at understanding math. I suspect you’re just lying to be honest.

Because many (not all) of these things provide a revenue to the government. Especially with natural resource extraction and transformation which is something that can be traded. And having nationalized services may come at a cost, but the way this helps society provides a return on the investment in other ways like increased business, reduced downtime, better produtivity, etc. Just like free education provides training for jobs, or free medical services can provide preventative care to avoid people getting sick or hurt and preventing them from working, or a nationalized rail and train service that ensures the transportation of important resources either internally or internationally to the US, Mexico, etc, at a reasonable price that won’t hinder local businesses and ensure that foodstuff is also transported across the country to feed everyone and keep the cost of foods low.

The whole objective is not to generate profits for shareholders, but to have a functional society that can generate revenue that can be taxed and use that to pay for services that support society and ensure efficiency, uptime and growth.

Your lack of understanding is frustrating, especially since I know exactly what Im talking about.

Calgary rentals are most often NOT from new builds so the number newly built in Calgary is the least significant factor. They are mostly used homes or apartments that are BOUGHT and converted to rentals. That’s where the surplus comes from - when you live in BC and can sell one house there for 1.8 million and come to Calgary and buy THREE 600,000 homes or a small apartment block and rent them out, its a smart financial move.

Im done with the gaslighting my friend. I manage a landlords group, I have 120 landlords in my group we discuss this stuff weekly.

Alleviate, not necessarily SOLVE the housing crisis. Thats a long term thing thats going to take time and a whole lot of changes.

If you have a problem that affects 10 million people, and you build 100,000 units. Have you alleviated anything?

The simple answer is no.

You’re right that solving the housing crisis is going to take time and a whole lot of changes. The problem is that none of the changes we’re making right now will do a damn thing but prolong the suffering. The whole lot of changes that will actually fix it will happen once the ownership rate has dropped so much that enough people are willing to actually harm (economically hopefully) the remaining landlords. That process is going to take decades.

The simple way to understand this is by doing some math. There are already more bedrooms in this country than there are citizens, by a reasonable margin. (You can confirm this with numbers from statscan if you want). Given that lots of people share bedrooms (couples, children, etc.) that means we don’t actually have a supply issue with housing. We have a demand and distribution issue.

You have fun with your little groupies. Calgary is going to keep getting more expensive, and you too will feel the pain that BC currently has. Just give it about 10 years.

We’re all just following in the footsteps of Japan, which peaked it’s real estate problems in the 90s, and is now solving it by collapsing its population because most people couldn’t afford to have kids.

Same train, just different amounts of the way towards the cliff.