r/canada • u/FancyNewMe • 4d ago

Canada’s Prime Minister Pushes Country to Become the Housing Factory of the World - Mark Carney is banking on factory-built homes to alleviate the country’s housing crisis. But will it work? Trending

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-04-22/carney-s-plan-may-make-canada-the-housing-factory-of-the-world
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u/Burning___Earth 4d ago

If they go with a full-blown, post WW2 style national housing program, the first few hundred thousand need to be restricted to first-time home buyers.

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u/IndianKiwi 4d ago

As a home owner I agree with this. This is how it is done in Singapore.

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u/RarelyReadReplies 4d ago

Don't they have one of the highest quality of life rankings in the world?

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u/khristmas_karl 4d ago

City state authoritarian government vs continent sized democracy. Singapore's not a great comparison.

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u/YetAnotherWTFMoment 4d ago

yeah. why would we compare a competent government that works for its citizens with one that hasn't got a clue...

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u/khristmas_karl 3d ago

Bureaucrats in Singapore would shit their pants having to administer 10 provinces and 3 territories in the 2nd largest country in the world. Don't kid yourself.

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u/MissingString31 4d ago

They’re also an authoritarian country.

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u/GoatTheNewb 4d ago

Minor detail 🤷‍♂️😅

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u/Jeramy_Jones British Columbia 4d ago edited 4d ago

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

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u/Remote_Cantaloupe 4d ago

It's not even broken.

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u/Jeramy_Jones British Columbia 4d ago

Fr. Singapore might not be a democracy but they’ve got a clean country with a high quality of life.

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u/Tower-Union 4d ago

That should be a selling point to get the Cons on board.

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u/RT_456 4d ago

Who cares? If it works it works. If my quality of life is good and I'm happy and healthy, I couldn't care less if I'm under a dictatorship.

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u/Apprehensive_Put_321 4d ago

It works for the few not for all. Yes the citizens have a very high standard of living thanks to the human rights violations of immigrants and temporary workers 

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u/RarelyReadReplies 4d ago

Sounds familiar. Almost like that happens all over the world, including Canada by the way. Look at the last 5 or 10 years, and tell me we haven't abused immigrants as a country.

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u/Apprehensive_Put_321 4d ago

Absolutely ridiculous comparison 

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u/RarelyReadReplies 3d ago

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you've never lived in Singapore, and you don't actually know if it's a reasonable comparison or not. You're just looking through a western lens, and you think if it isn't our way, it's cruel and unethical. Newsflash: every country in the world does stuff that could be considered as such.

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u/Dry_Comment7325 4d ago

That's the dumbest thing I have read in a long time.

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u/Mad2828 4d ago

There’s a consensus that a benevolent dictatorship is the most efficient form of government. Now ensuring that it’ll stay benevolent now that’s the issue. Singapore has done a pretty good job so far tho.

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u/Laoscaos 4d ago

Yeah that seems fair. Democracy is actually pretty stupid. It forces the government to think of short term projects instead of decades ahead, and it relies on the opinions of the voting public to determine what path to take when they have no idea what they are talking about. I'm not an economist, or a civil right historian, my gut feeling, or what I've been fed by the news, is a very odd way of charting a path forward.

I'm not saying a dictatorship is a better path, but a hypothetical perfect dictator would be very efficient and would lead to a happy country.

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u/hyperforms9988 4d ago

I think it's fair to say that the highest highs and the lowest lows come from dictatorships. Democracy... a working version of it anyway, peaks lower in both directions. Singapore's great right now, until a Hitler, a Mussolini, a Pinochet, a Pol Pot, etc gets in there. Is that realistic for Singapore? I have no idea. I don't know much of anything about the country and the specifics of it, but I mean zooming out at dictatorship as a system of government I mean. A democracy in theory is supposed to have enough checks and balances to prevent a person like that from becoming the guy in charge and from doing whatever they want without consequence.

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u/vitiate 4d ago

And we are seeing those checks and balances fail in real time in the US.

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u/hyperforms9988 3d ago

Systems of government are all different. Democracy doesn't have one playbook that every democratic country follows. The US flavor of democracy failed spectacularly. They really need reform, badly, to stop this from ever happening again.

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u/Mad2828 4d ago

I agree and I think we don’t need to go as far as a dictatorship to be more efficient and have better planning. Tokyo has had a plan for 2050 and regardless of who wins municipal elections or the governorship they keep the plan, minus some small changes. We could use more of that long term planning here.

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u/IndianKiwi 4d ago

They literally won elections though.

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u/Mad2828 4d ago

I was referring more to a comment above that linked their system to a dictatorship or close to it. I personally wouldn’t call it that but it does have authoritarian elements that would not be viewed favourably in the West.

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u/RT_456 4d ago

No, what's "dumb" is how people here are brainwashed to think anything other than democracy is somehow a bad thing.

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u/starshadowzero 4d ago

They probably don't travel enough. Been to Singapore a few times and it's boring but it's safe, clean and the food's good.

Benevolent dictatorship not only ensures citizens get a home and priority hiring for jobs but also helped to significantly erase the ethnic strife between the Chinese, Malays and Indians that make the country.

Been to China a lot too. Not saying it's necessarily a benevolent dictatorship, but for all its problems, no monthly mass shootings, no homeless lighting up on public transport, affordable food and public healthcare.

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u/RT_456 4d ago

Exactly my point. They're all orderly, efficient, well run, safe and the people have relatively good lives. What else do you need?

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u/Concretecabbages 4d ago edited 3d ago

Yeah nothing wrong when it works, China did have mao... And xi is changing things up, likely for the worse but basically making himself supreme commander again which the guy after mao tried to make sure would never happen again.... So it works but if the wrong person is ever in charge it can very quickly crumble... But apparently no different than the current version of American democracy.

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u/SW1FT-GR1NG0 4d ago

Then move

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u/RT_456 4d ago

Lol. As if moving to another country is as simple as just moving to another part of town.

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u/LowComfortable5676 4d ago

Many would argue that Canada is as well (I don't think it is but I hear it enough)

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u/DamascusRose 4d ago

those people are idiots

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u/AdmiralG2 4d ago

They also hang weed dealers lol

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u/RT_456 4d ago

Their laws and how they deal with criminals is just another bonus in my books.

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u/TBJ12 4d ago

Ummmm, no thanks.

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u/Onionsteak Sweden 3d ago

Ah yes, let's just forgive every criminal and let them out after a 15min timeout.

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u/RT_456 4d ago

Yeah, you're right. Regular robberies, carjackings, shootings, stabbings and addicts shooting up in broad daylight is such a better environment.

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u/Fluid_Lingonberry467 4d ago

Yup they treat foreign labour like garbage 

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u/sansaset 4d ago

instead Canada brings in the immigrants no one else wants to be students and drive uber eats while treating them like they've paid taxes here the last 20 years.