This is the best summary I could come up with:

Why are housing prices in Canada so high – fifth highest, relative to income, in the OECD?

Canada’s GDP per capita is no higher than it was in 2017; labour productivity, having fallen for five consecutive quarters, is back to where it was in 2014.

It would be one thing if the supply of either were running flat out – if investment or output or housing starts were at record or even unusually high levels, but still could not keep up with the torrid growth in population.

I suppose it’s possible to connect the relative stagnation of per capita GDP over the past several years to the surge in population over the last two.

Housing starts, at roughly 260,000 annually, are lower now, in absolute terms, than they were in the early 1970s, when our population was barely half what it is today.

If it means we are now beginning, at long last, to have a serious conversation about the barriers to investment and housing construction that have bedevilled this country for decades, then hallelujah for all those extra people, and let’s have lots more.

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