How a political earthquake in Canadian immigration policy could dramatically ... trends now
A political earthquake in Canada later this year could see Australia abandon its addiction to the high immigration policy which is fuelling the housing crisis.
Like Australia, Canada is also one of the world's highest population-growth nations, importing a record number of skilled migrants to fill labour shortages.
Now it's almost as expensive to buy a home in Canada's Vancouver as it is in Sydney.
Sydney is the world's second most unaffordable market when the median house price is compared with mid-range household incomes.
But Vancouver is in third place, on American think tank Demographia's 2022 list of the world's most unaffordable cities, with Hong Kong regarded as the worst.
In Australia, the centre-right Liberal Party led by Peter Dutton is struggling to attract the support of younger voters but in Canada, the opposite is happening.
Conservative Party Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre is beating photogenic centre-left Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to win over voters under 30.
A political earthquake in Canada later this year could potentially see Australia revisit its reliance on high immigration during a housing affordability crisis (pictured is Sydney's Wynyard train station)
The 44-year-old alternative prime minister has done this by calling for immigration to be slashed so population growth can match the supply of new housing.
'We need to make a link between the number of homes built and the number of people we invite as new Canadians,' Mr Poilievre told a media conference in Winnipeg earlier this year.
Mr Poilievre also vowed that a Conservative government led by him would 'get back to an approach of immigration that invites a number of people that we can house, employ and care for in our health-care system'.
His approach appears to be working, with a Financial Times analysis of polling data from YouGov and Abacus Data showing the Conservative Party of Canada winning 40 per cent of the under 30s.
That's a major turnaround from a 50-point deficit in 2021 for the party that has been out of power since 2015.
In Australia, younger voters are deserting the Liberal Party with the conservative Centre for Independent Studies finding just 26 per cent of Gen Z voters, born from 1997 to 2004, cast first preference votes for the Coalition in 2022.
This was significantly lower than the Millennials - born between 1981 to 1996 - who gave 35 per cent support to the Coalition in the early 2000s.
That number had slid to just 25 per cent support by 2022.
The Centre for Independent Studies suggested the Liberal Party in Australia would struggle to attract Millennials and Gen Z votes if they were unable to buy a house.
'In the absence of a concerted effort on the part of the Coalition parties, it would be unwise to assume younger generations of voters will move to the centre-right as they grow older, as Boomers and Gen X did,' it said.
'Millennials and Gen Z will only move to the right if political parties of the centre-right give them a reason to do so.
