Business
Canada’s housing density dilemma
From the Fraser Institute
By Steven Globerman and Austin Thompson
Homebuilding in Canada has not kept pace with population growth and the resulting housing shortage is driving up housing costs, fuelling concerns about affordability. One widely proposed solution to Canada’s housing supply challenge—championed by the national housing agency, provincial and municipal policymakers, and the construction industry—is to increase housing density, typically by building more multi-unit homes in existing urban areas.
Data on new housing construction (“housing starts”) demonstrate that a shift towards multi-unit housing is already well underway. The first chart below shows the changing composition of national housing starts since 1955 (the earliest year of data), distinguishing between single-detached homes and “multiples”—a category that includes semi-detached homes, row homes, and apartments.
Single-detached homes comprised the majority of housing starts in the 1950s and again in the 1980s and 1990s. Since the early 2000s, however, new housing construction in Canada has shifted decisively towards multiples. By the 2008/09 Global Financial Crisis, more multiples were being built than single-detached homes. And by 2024, multiples accounted for 77.8 per cent of housing starts in Canada. In other words, nearly four out of every five new homes started last year were part of a multi-unit housing development—a record-high share.
This national trend has been broadly mirrored across all 10 provinces. The second chart contrasts multiples’ share of overall housing starts in 1955 and 2024 for each province. In 2024, multiples accounted for a majority of housing starts in every province other than Newfoundland and Labrador.
Housing densification is being driven by several factors. Demand for urban housing is high—economic opportunities are concentrated in Canada’s major cities, and the share of Canadians living in these urban centres continues to grow. At the same time, developable land in Canada’s major urban centres is increasingly scarce and expensive. In response, multi-unit housing offers a relatively affordable way to expand housing supply in cities.
Denser housing also reflects shifting demographics: as household sizes shrink and more people live alone or in pairs, multi-unit housing options may better suit Canadians’ evolving needs. Moreover, government policies—including zoning reform, financial incentives, and efforts to preserve farmland and environmental reserves—actively encourage denser building. This trend is not unique to Canada—housing densification is also taking place in comparable countries. Looking ahead, multiples are forecast to outpace single-detached homes in new construction for the foreseeable future.
The record-high share of multiples in Canada’s housing starts signals a major shift, but it will take time before this trend meaningfully affects overall housing stock. That’s because new construction, while significant, is small relative to the total number of existing homes. For example, in 2023 construction began on 240,267 new homes nationwide—equivalent to roughly 1.4 per cent of the estimated 17.1 million existing housing units. Single-detached homes still accounted for more than half of Canada’s overall housing stock as of the 2021 census.
These data should inform debates about housing density.
Canadians generally support new housing construction, but they are notably less enthusiastic when it comes to denser housing developments in established neighbourhoods—citing concerns about issues such as privacy, parking, and noise. These worries deserve attention, especially since housing densification is often concentrated in specific neighbourhoods. Thoughtful policy choices in building design, bylaw enforcement, and the provision of local infrastructure can help to mitigate legitimate concerns. However, some fears about greater density may be overstated. Canadian cities remain less dense than many comparable cities abroad and the evidence suggests that greater population density is compatible with a relatively high quality of life.
Getting the politics of density right is crucial to addressing Canada’s housing challenges. The country is not building enough homes and increasing housing density is an effective way to boost supply. Greater housing density is especially important in the context of shrinking household sizes. With fewer people living in each home, neighbourhoods that resist building more and denser housing risk slowly losing population, which can threaten the viability of local businesses, schools and services—undermining the very community character that opponents of redevelopment often seek to preserve.
As Canada continues to grapple with housing affordability challenges, a clear understanding of densification—its pace, drivers and trade-offs—will be essential to crafting balanced and effective housing solutions.
From the Fraser Institute
By Annika Segelhorst and Elmira Aliakbari
Short-term climate pledges simply chase deadlines, not results
The annual meeting of the United Nations Conference of the Parties, or COP, which is dedicated to implementing international action on climate change, is now underway in Brazil. Like other signatories to the Paris Agreement, Canada is required to provide a progress update on our pledge to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. After decades of massive government spending and heavy-handed regulations aimed at decarbonizing our economy, we’re far from achieving that goal. It’s time for Canada to move past arbitrary short-term goals and deadlines, and instead focus on more effective ways to support climate objectives.
Since signing the Paris Agreement in 2015, the federal government has introduced dozens of measures intended to reduce Canada’s carbon emissions, including more than $150 billion in “green economy” spending, the national carbon tax, the arbitrary cap on emissions imposed exclusively on the oil and gas sector, stronger energy efficiency requirements for buildings and automobiles, electric vehicle mandates, and stricter methane regulations for the oil and gas industry.
Recent estimates show that achieving the federal government’s target will impose significant costs on Canadians, including 164,000 job losses and a reduction in economic output of 6.2 per cent by 2030 (compared to a scenario where we don’t have these measures in place). For Canadian workers, this means losing $6,700 (each, on average) annually by 2030.
Yet even with all these costly measures, Canada will only achieve 57 per cent of its goal for emissions reductions. Several studies have already confirmed that Canada, despite massive green spending and heavy-handed regulations to decarbonize the economy over the past decade, remains off track to meet its 2030 emission reduction target.
And even if Canada somehow met its costly and stringent emission reduction target, the impact on the Earth’s climate would be minimal. Canada accounts for less than 2 per cent of global emissions, and that share is projected to fall as developing countries consume increasing quantities of energy to support rising living standards. In 2025, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), emerging and developing economies are driving 80 per cent of the growth in global energy demand. Further, IEA projects that fossil fuels will remain foundational to the global energy mix for decades, especially in developing economies. This means that even if Canada were to aggressively pursue short-term emission reductions and all the economic costs it would imposes on Canadians, the overall climate results would be negligible.
Rather than focusing on arbitrary deadline-contingent pledges to reduce Canadian emissions, we should shift our focus to think about how we can lower global GHG emissions. A recent study showed that doubling Canada’s production of liquefied natural gas and exporting to Asia to displace an equivalent amount of coal could lower global GHG emissions by about 1.7 per cent or about 630 million tonnes of GHG emissions. For reference, that’s the equivalent to nearly 90 per cent of Canada’s annual GHG emissions. This type of approach reflects Canada’s existing strength as an energy producer and would address the fastest-growing sources of emissions, namely developing countries.
As the 2030 deadline grows closer, even top climate advocates are starting to emphasize a more pragmatic approach to climate action. In a recent memo, Bill Gates warned that unfounded climate pessimism “is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.” Even within the federal ministry of Environment and Climate Change, the tone is shifting. Despite the 2030 emissions goal having been a hallmark of Canadian climate policy in recent years, in a recent interview, Minister Julie Dabrusin declined to affirm that the 2030 targets remain feasible.
Instead of scrambling to satisfy short-term national emissions limits, governments in Canada should prioritize strategies that will reduce global emissions where they’re growing the fastest.
Annika Segelhorst
Junior Economist
Elmira Aliakbari
Artificial Intelligence
Lawsuit Claims Google Secretly Used Gemini AI to Scan Private Gmail and Chat Data
By Ken Macon
Whether the claims are true or not, privacy in Google’s universe has long been less a right than a nostalgic illusion.
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When Google flipped a digital switch in October 2025, few users noticed anything unusual.
Gmail loaded as usual, Chat messages zipped across screens, and Meet calls continued without interruption.
Yet, according to a new class action lawsuit, something significant had changed beneath the surface.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
Plaintiffs claim that Google silently activated its artificial intelligence system, Gemini, across its communication platforms, turning private conversations into raw material for machine analysis.
The lawsuit, filed by Thomas Thele and Melo Porter, describes a scenario that reads like a breach of trust.
It accuses Google of enabling Gemini to “access and exploit the entire recorded history of its users’ private communications, including literally every email and attachment sent and received.”
The filing argues that the company’s conduct “violates its users’ reasonable expectations of privacy.”
Until early October, Gemini’s data processing was supposedly available only to those who opted in.
Then, the plaintiffs claim, Google “turned it on for everyone by default,” allowing the system to mine the contents of emails, attachments, and conversations across Gmail, Chat, and Meet.
The complaint points to a particular line in Google’s settings, “When you turn this setting on, you agree,” as misleading, since the feature “had already been switched on.”
This, according to the filing, represents a deliberate misdirection designed to create the illusion of consent where none existed.
There is a certain irony woven through the outrage. For all the noise about privacy, most users long ago accepted the quiet trade that powers Google’s empire.
They search, share, and store their digital lives inside Google’s ecosystem, knowing the company thrives on data.
The lawsuit may sound shocking, but for many, it simply exposes what has been implicit all along: if you live in Google’s world, privacy has already been priced into the convenience.
Thele warns that Gemini’s access could expose “financial information and records, employment information and records, religious affiliations and activities, political affiliations and activities, medical care and records, the identities of his family, friends, and other contacts, social habits and activities, eating habits, shopping habits, exercise habits, [and] the extent to which he is involved in the activities of his children.”
In other words, the system’s reach, if the allegations prove true, could extend into nearly every aspect of a user’s personal life.
The plaintiffs argue that Gemini’s analytical capabilities allow Google to “cross-reference and conduct unlimited analysis toward unmerited, improper, and monetizable insights” about users’ private relationships and behaviors.
The complaint brands the company’s actions as “deceptive and unethical,” claiming Google “surreptitiously turned on this AI tracking ‘feature’ without informing or obtaining the consent of Plaintiffs and Class Members.” Such conduct, it says, is “highly offensive” and “defies social norms.”
The case invokes a formidable set of statutes, including the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, the Stored Communications Act, and California’s constitutional right to privacy.
Google is yet to comment on the filing.
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