Canada has a trades workforce deficit of ~400,000 workers. The federal housing target of 3.87 million homes by 2031 requires 650,000-900,000 construction workers; Canada has approximately 350,000. The immigration system optimizes for point-tested professionals while the economy bleeds from trades shortages. The apprenticeship absorption rate is 23%.

Epoch: 100

Domain: immigration

Fiscal cost estimate (LLM): $0.68B CAD

Structural estimate (RIPPLE): +$7.93B CAD net (v3-bfs-signed depth=2, decay=0.5/hop; diverges)

Top RIPPLE cost paths

• +$6.19B → consumer_spending (Consumer Spending Growth) via housing_starts
• +$1.74B → healthcare_spending (Healthcare Spending) via housing_starts

Causal effects: 4 downstream variables affected (2 immediate)

Divergence after: 0.180

Variable changes

• trades_workforce_deficit: 400 → 250
• apprenticeship_absorption_rate: 23 → 85
• trades_immigration_intake_annual: 12 → 50
• construction_labour_bottleneck_index: 78 → 55

Chamber amendment (round 1): Mandate that 40% of the pipeline intake be directed to designated rural and remote communities with housing retention incentives.

Targets trades_workforce_deficit.