An exodus from Canada’s priciest provinces is driving many to plant ‘New Roots’
, a series from Global News that will look at how evolving migration patterns and affordability challenges have changed life in communities across Canada since the COVID-19 pandemic.“Find things you’d never expect,” they coax, “like an affordable house.”
The decision was familiar territory for Hansen, who originally came to Canada from Los Angeles because of unaffordable housing prices in California. She first tried to break into the housing market in Vancouver and moved to Ontario in 2013 before finally achieving her goal — just a decade later and a couple of provinces west.
During that period, Alberta saw an enormous spike of migrants from British Columbia and Ontario, according to the agency. The Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick also received a steady stream of interprovincial migrants, particularly from Ontario. Desormeaux tells Global News that the outflow of people from Ontario is “unprecedented at this stage.”
“But in Alberta, he was being offered $10, $12, $15 an hour more with every job offer, with great relocation packages and really great benefits and bonuses,” she recalls. “So it was really hard to not take that opportunity given the cost of housing being so dramatically lower.”“Housing affordability is much better in some of these other jurisdictions – in Atlantic Canada, in Alberta – than it is in Ontario.
RBC economist Rachel Battaglia says that the “mass migration” of younger Ontarians to the East Coast over the past decade has even reversed the growing median age trends in the Maritimes. She says she was previously worried their unit could be sold out from under them, casting them out into an equally unaffordable rental market in Ontario.
Hansen says that her family went for a home in northern Alberta rather than the hubs of Edmonton or Calgary upon hearing that some buyers were being boxed out of the market in bidding wars. The problem on the horizon is a familiar one across the country: a lack of housing supply to accommodate growing demand.
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