On the Global Forces That Contribute to Homelessness in Canada
Introduction
Homelessness is a major crisis in Canada. The most recent reliable Canada-wide statistics on homelessness say that over 40,000 people experience it every night (Government of Canada, 2024b). Canada’s homelessness crisis is a complex and multidimensional issue, with both local and global contributing factors. This paper will focus on the rarely-discussed global dimension of homelessness in order to foster a broader and deeper understanding of an issue that appears deceivingly domestic in nature due to its impact on the lives of local Canadians. For the sake of fostering greater understanding of the seldom-discussed global dimension of homelessness, it is worth asking the following question: what are some of the broad, generalized categories of global political and economic forces that contribute to homelessness in Canada? Ultimately, this essay argues that a wide range of the general overarching global forces that contribute to homelessness in Canada may be collectively categorized as global economic interferences, the global drug trade, the global spread of beliefs and the global spread of trauma.
For the sake of ensuring that the body of the essay is structured in a consistent and logical order, this essay organizes its list of factors that contribute to homelessness in accordance with the framework of causes of homelessness established by the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (COH). The COH’s framework sorts the contributing factors into three groups: structural factors, system failures and individual and relational factors (Gaetz et al., 2013). Structural factors are “economic and societal issues that affect opportunities and social environments for individuals,” such as a society’s lack of affordable housing, systemically inadequate incomes and institutional discrimination (Gaetz et al., 2013, p. 13). Systems failures occur when public systems of care and support — such as inadequate discharge planning for individuals leaving prisons and hospitals or inadequate support for newcomers — fail in preventable manners, thereby causing vulnerable people to require support from the homelessness sector (Gaetz et al., 2013). Individual and relational factors are the personal circumstances, experiences, traumas and events that occur in individuals’ lives that factor into their path towards homelessness. The COH’s framework is integral to this essay’s search for examples of contributing factors to highlight.
In order to substantiate the thesis, the essay first travels through each of the COH’s three groups of factors that contribute to homelessness and, within each group, identifies and explores any examples of contributing factors to Canadian homelessness that can defensibly be argued as being influenced by global activities or trends. A global force is defined as a factor that both contributes to homelessness in Canada and is influenced by global activities or trends. Each individual factor’s section below demonstrates that the factor meets both qualifications. Then, the essay takes all of the identified causal factors and sorts them into a new set of groups based on the general kinds of global forces that they are in order to determine what general global forces cause homelessness in Canada.
This essay elects to create new broad groups of global forces rather than simply keeping the global forces sorted as individual forces within the existing groups pre-established by the COH framework. The ultimate purpose of the new groups is that, unlike the COH groups, these new groups are specifically global in nature. Furthermore, the new groups’ broadness allows this essay to summarize in a single sentence what general global forces are influencing homelessness in Canada.
Body
Structural Factors
Foreign Involvement in the Canadian Housing Market
The Canadian housing market is a major factor that contributes to homelessness in Canada. Housing unaffordability is positively correlated with homelessness in Canada. According to a Government of Canada (2021a) survey, 38% of Canadian households who experienced homelessness spent more than 30% of their total household income on shelter. This significantly contrasts against the broader Canadian population, as 22% of all Canadian households spent more than 30% of their total household income on shelter (Government of Canada, 2021a). Furthermore, a different Government of Canada (2024b) survey asked people experiencing homelessness what the reasons were for their most recent loss of housing, and the most frequently identified response was not having enough income to pay for housing, which was a reason provided by 28% of survey respondents. Insufficient income for housing was cited a full ten percentage points more than substance use issues, which was the second most frequently identified reason for housing loss provided by 18% of respondents (Government of Canada, 2024b). Although, this does not necessarily mean that insufficient income was the primary reason or deciding factor behind each of these individuals’ loss of housing, as survey respondents were allowed to attribute their loss of housing to combinations of reasons. Nonetheless, these statistics accord with Colburn and Aldern’s (2022) theory that a given area’s rent prices is one of the main explaining factors behind the rate of homelessness in that area, with rental vacancy rates being the other main explaining factor, as these two factors are much more strongly correlated with homelessness in an area than other factors such as mental illnesses and addictions. Colburn and Aldern’s (2022) explanation for the correlation between rent prices and homelessness, in simple terms, is essentially that if prices in the market are too high for a person to pay, they may lose their housing and may become homeless.
The housing costs that Canadians are subjected to have risen dramatically in recent years. Between 2015 and 2024, the ratio of house price to income per head for Canadians has increased by 37% (Statista Search Department, 2024). Furthermore, according to data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (2024), average rents across Canada have increased by roughly 59% over the past decade and have roughly tripled since 1990. These increases in housing costs correlate with the fact that the number of people experiencing homelessness in Canada has increased by 20% between 2018 and 2022 (Government of Canada, 2024b). While this dramatic increase in homelessness is rooted in many factors, the above-mentioned fact that homeless Canadians commonly cite housing unaffordability as a cause of their homelessness suggests that recent increases in housing costs is partly to blame for recent increases in homelessness.
The presence of high market prices in the Canadian housing market is connected to global activities because there is a significant degree of foreign investment in the market. Many investors from outside of Canada purchase housing in Canada for use as investments from which they can generate capital gains (Gordon, 2020). These investors’ ability to outbid ordinary local homebuyers causes the prices on the market to rise and become higher than what many Canadians can afford to pay (Gordon, 2020). This also occurs elsewhere in the world, as demonstrated by Liao et al.’s (2015) discovery of the same pattern in Singapore. Ultimately, the rising housing costs that cause homelessness in Canada are partly a consequence of the investing activities of foreign investors around the world. Foreign investment is not the sole cause of rising housing costs in Canada, but it does partly contribute to it, meaning it also contributes to the homelessness that results from rising housing costs.
Market Shifts, Recessions, Financial Crises, etc.
Economic factors, such as shifts in financial markets and recessions, can contribute to homelessness by increasing unemployment. Any change in financial markets that induces job losses can lead people to homelessness; recessions are not the only market shifts that can cause job losses and homelessness. However, this essay uses recessions to illustrate its point because recessions provide the clearest examples of job loss causing homelessness, seeing how recessions make this process happen on a massive and highly-noticeable scale. If a person loses their source of income, they are put at greater risk of becoming homeless because they may not be able to afford to pay for housing, as was seen in Canada during the Great Recession of 2008, particularly in the Waterloo Region, where the job loss and lack of job availability caused by the crisis led to a 24% increase in shelter use over the following four years (Region of Waterloo, 2013). Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated financial turmoil, a Government of Canada (2024b) study asked homeless individuals in 2021 and 2022 whether their recent loss of housing was attributable to COVID-19; 12% of respondents said it was, and 43% of those respondents who blamed COVID-19 also cited lack of income as a cause of their homelessness, which is 15 percentage points higher than the 28% of all respondents across the entire study who cited lack of income as a cause of their homelessness. A British Columbia-focused retrospective on COVID-19’s impacts on homelessness and the social welfare sector said that the economic crisis and job loss induced by the pandemic caused many people who were previously financially secure and stably housed to seek services from the social welfare sector relating to homelessness, food assistance and mental health (Van Tuyl & Young, 2023, pp. 115–116).
Some market shifts, recessions and financial crises are influenced by global activities, as is demonstrated by the reality that these financial forces sometimes originate from outside Canada and influence the Canadian economy through the global markets within which Canada is integrated. Again, using recessions to illustrate the point, the Great Recession was sparked by the collapse of the American housing market and the COVID-19 recession was sparked by the global spread of the virus from China. The former recession became global as financial turmoil in America harmed foreign investors and foreign banks that had invested heavily in US housing (Duignan, 2023). The latter recession became global because people in countries across the world changed their behaviours to avoid catching the virus from others, leading them to spend less money in their local economies (Romei & Burn-Murdoch, 2020). The Government of Canada is committed to maintaining the stability of the economy to the best of its abilities, just as individual Canadians are committed to maintaining their own financial stability. Nonetheless, Canadians are still at risk of job loss — and therefore homelessness — if financial turmoil or shifts in markets spread from elsewhere in the world.
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is an ideology which argues that “the state should play a smaller role in managing the economy and meeting public needs” and opposes obstacles to “the free exchange of goods and labor”; champions of this ideology often promote government budget cuts (Menand, 2023). Neoliberalism is a cause of homelessness in Canada because the neoliberal defunding of housing has decreased Canadians’ access to affordable housing. One of the factors that contributed to making homelessness more common in Canada was the federal government’s gradual reduction in spending on the construction and operation of affordable and social housing, which began in the 1980s and carried on throughout the 1990s as a part of the government’s efforts to eliminate its budget deficits (Piat et al., 2015, p. 2379; Falvo, 2007, p. 2). This made housing less affordable overall and imposed greater economic strain on low-income households (Piat et al., 2015, p. 2379), especially when combined with the subsequent decline in affordable housing — from 2011 to 2021, Canada lost around 552,000 affordable rental units with rents of $750 per month or less (Pomeroy, 2022, p. 2). These harmful budget cuts were prompted by the genuine need to reduce the deficit; in the early-to-mid 1990s, the deficit was contributing to then-increasing public uncertainty about investing in Canadian debt, which led Canada to pay larger premiums on its debt (Reuters, 2011; Thiessen, 2001). At the same time, the cuts can also be attributed to neoliberalism as budget cuts are a staple of neoliberal policy. The administrations of the era — under Prime Ministers Mulroney, Campbell and Chrétien — championed neoliberalism, especially by means of their broad efforts to downsize the Canadian federal government (Clark, 2002, p. 782). In reference to these budget cuts, homelessness expert Nick Falvo said that, “The 1990s may well have represented the peak of neoliberalism in Canada” (2007, p. 2).
Neoliberalism is influenced by the global sphere as it developed in multiple places across the world and influenced political thought worldwide. Friedrich von Hayek, one of neoliberalism’s progenitors, preached the wisdom of the markets from the London School of Economics, and Milton Friedman did the same from the University of Chicago (Menand, 2023). Friedman’s works were globally popular, as hundreds of thousands of copies of his books were sold and were translated into over 18 languages (Menand, 2023). Furthermore, neoliberalism gained much of its global momentum as a result of the 1973 oil embargo resulting from the Yom Kippur War and the stagflation-laden recession that followed, which caused a global crisis that prompted governments and the public to turn to neoliberalism’s advice on budget cutting as these events made governments no longer able to spend to the extent that they could in the preceding decades (Menand, 2023). Governments’ apparent incapability to help alleviate people’s problems created opportunities for politicians who championed neoliberalism, like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, to have electoral success in their respective countries. These politicians promoted their ideas partly by means of “bureaucracy bashing” rhetoric that frames bureaucracy and those who work in it as inefficient and incompetent; they presented an approach defined by smaller government and privatization as a preferable alternative (Aucoin, 1995, pp. 1–12).
To summarize the connection between neoliberalism and homelessness, the global rise of neoliberalism led to government budget cuts, and the cuts made to affordable and social housing made housing more expensive, thereby contributing to homelessness. Ultimately, neoliberalism developed and spread in many places across the world, and one of the ways in which it locally affected Canada was by increasing homelessness.
Colonialism
Colonialism contributes to homelessness by exposing Indigenous peoples to factors such as trauma, abuse, violence, the child welfare system and inadequate systems of support, all of which heighten their risk of becoming homeless. Indigenous peoples in Canada are overrepresented among Canada’s homeless population, as they make up roughly 5% of Canada’s overall population, but they also make up roughly 30% of Canada’s homeless population (Government of Canada, 2024b; Press, 2019). This is largely a consequence of the harm done to Indigenous peoples by Canada’s colonial interventions. Starting in the 19th century when Canada was a British colony, the Canadian government implemented a system of federally-funded residential schools that sought to assimilate Indigenous youths into the mainstream culture of Canada instead of their families’ Indigenous cultures and to displace Indigenous peoples from their lands (Christensen, 2016a, p. 16). These schools became spaces of frequent physical and sexual abuse as well as spaces of excessive disease and mortality (Christensen, 2016a, p. 16). The consequences of the trauma of the residential school experience on their former students — and indirectly on their descendants via intergenerational trauma — include mental health issues, substance abuse, violence and criminal activity leading to incarceration, all of which are major risk factors for homelessness (Christensen, 2016a, p. 17).
Furthermore, largely during the 1960s, Canada’s seizure of large numbers of Indigenous youths and placement of those youths with adoptive parents was also done initially with the intent of assimilating them (Christensen, 2016a, p. 16). While this was not done by the British government, organizations and individuals such as the Métis National Council (n.d.) and researcher Tara Williamson (2017) have described this as a continuation of the incumbent pattern of colonialism due to the efforts’ intentional “erasure” of Indigenous children and assimilation of those youths into mainstream “Euro-Canadian” culture. Indigenous overrepresentation in the child welfare system persists today, as roughly 8% of all children in Canada are Indigenous while roughly 54% of all children in the child welfare system are Indigenous (Hahmann et al., 2024). Canada’s child welfare system is a notorious path to homelessness for the youth within it, even today, as 31% of people experiencing homelessness and 45% of youth experiencing homelessness in Canada have been in the system (Government of Canada, 2024b). A major reason for the correlation between involvement in the child welfare system and experiences of homelessness is the inadequacy of the supports provided to those who are leaving or have left the system to help them gradually become independent (Bonakdar et al., 2019; Kraus et al., 2001). Indigenous overrepresentation in the child welfare system and child welfare’s path to homelessness are both simultaneously reflected in the fact that 71% of Indigenous youth experiencing homelessness have previously had experience with child protection services (Gaetz et al., 2016, p. 9). Experience in the child welfare system is often cited by homeless Indigenous adults as a key factor that contributed to their homelessness (Christensen, 2016a, p. 17). The cause and effect relationship is clear: a high number of Indigenous youth in the system results in a high number of Indigenous peoples on the street.
The most straightforward argument that can be made to say that Canada’s colonial interventions into Indigenous peoples’ lives are influenced by global activities is that these efforts began while Canada was a settler colony of the British Empire. Just like in Canada, Indigenous peoples make up disproportionate shares of the homeless populations of Australia and New Zealand — which are also former British settler colonies — as a result of “colonial processes of social, cultural, economic and physical marginalization,” which particularly manifest through displacement from traditional lands, inadequate housing and poverty (Christensen, 2016b, p. 1; Memmott & Nash, 2016, pp. 213–219; Groot & Peters, 2016, pp. 323–328). Regarding Australia’s Indigenous population, the colonialism-linked pathways into homelessness that they experience include their displacement from their traditional lands, which involved forced travel and restrictions on movement, as well as traumatizing assimilation initiatives; these policies remained enforced by the Australian government to some extent until the 1970s (Memmott & Nash, 2016, p. 215). As for New Zealand’s Māori population, their overrepresentation among the country’s homeless population is largely rooted in them migrating en masse to cities and towns from their traditional rural tribal homelands, from which they were dispossessed and socio-economically marginalized by the British colonial government and the New Zealand government (Groot & Peters, 2016, p. 324). Ultimately, British colonialism’s causation of Indigenous homelessness manifests around the world.
System Failures
Arrival of Immigrants, Refugees and Asylum Seekers During a Housing Crisis
The arrival of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers in Canada amid the ongoing housing crisis often leads to their homelessness due to the challenges in integrating them into the existing housing system that already experiences shortages of affordable housing. The supply of affordable housing, the shortage of which is a significant contributor to homelessness, is put under even greater strain with the entry of newcomers. In the summer of 2023, the shelter systems of Canada’s major cities, especially Toronto — already overwhelmed by demand, including from refugees, who were allowed into Canada by the tens of thousands from places like Syria and Afghanistan — became further strained by an influx of African asylum seekers who sought help and housing upon their arrival (Milton, 2023). However, particularly in Toronto, the lack of shelter space and affordable housing meant the service providers such as shelters, the Toronto city government, aid organizations and other philanthropic groups could do little to house them except leave them on the street or crowd them into makeshift shelters within churches (Milton, 2023). Studies in Richmond, Surrey and Toronto have found that the difference between housing costs and immigrants’ incomes is a major factor that makes immigrants homeless in Canada (Teixeira, 2014; Raicevic, 2013, p. 38). This is true for immigrants in urban Canada just as it is true for immigrants in rural Canada, which lacks housing in general in some places (Waegemakers Schiff et al., 2015, p. 94). This is a system failure because Canada’s system of service providers including governments, shelters and other humanitarian nonprofits lack the affordable housing supply needed to get people into housing, and they are unprepared and incapable of handling massive influxes of people.
Other systemic issues within Canada’s immigration system include the reality that immigrants’ search for employment is made more difficult by Canadian institutions’ unwillingness to recognize their employment credentials that they earned abroad (Danso, 2009). Additionally, discrimination based on immigrants’ uncertain legal statuses, especially while their cases are pending, further limits immigrants’ housing options (D’Addario et al., 2007, p. 111). It is worth mentioning that immigrant households experience homelessness at rates below the national average, as 11% of Canadian households had experienced some form of homelessness in their lifetime while 8% of immigrant households have experienced the same (Government of Canada, 2023). Nonetheless, the evidence provided above demonstrates that many immigrants have experienced system failures that have led to their homelessness, and these experiences are recurring enough to embody a trend even as immigrants to Canada as a whole have disproportionately avoided homelessness compared to all Canadians.
Issues relating to immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers are influenced by the global sphere because they travel to Canada from around the world in pursuit of economic opportunities in the global economy and often leave turbulent areas of the world en masse. The largest category of immigrants to Canada are economic immigrants; over half of all immigrants who settled in Canada between 2016 and 2021 were admitted as economic immigrants (Government of Canada, 2022). The federal immigration system has prioritized economic immigrants since 1967, who come to Canada to work and who are brought in to help fulfill Canada’s labour and skills needs and shortages (Picot & Mehdi, 2024). As for refugees and asylum seekers, recent massive influxes into Canada have resulted from those people fleeing violent conflict, persecution or political and economic turmoil in the places from which they came. This is reflected in the recent African asylum seeker crisis as many of them fled economic turmoil, corruption and anti-LGBTQ laws in East Africa (Milton, 2023). Events, activities and trends around the globe help to determine the extent to which Canada’s systems of support for immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers are used and who uses those supports.
Inadequate Supports During Transition Out of Military
Transitioning from the Canadian military to civilian life is often difficult for veterans and puts them at risk of becoming homeless, especially if mental health issues and addictions are involved. In a study that involved interviewing homeless Canadian veterans, many of the interviewees made recommendations that they felt would have helped ease their transitions to civilian life and thus may have prevented their homelessness. Many said that the military and Veterans Affairs Canada both need better early identification and screening of specific problems especially with regards to alcohol and drug abuse before or during soldiers’ departures; interviewees credited these substance abuses as factors that led to their homelessness (Ray & Forchuk, 2011, pp. 17, 20). Most interviewees in the study felt that the transition services offered to them were inadequate and said that they would have benefitted from a more structured transition program that occurs over many months and addresses topics of civilian life such as financing, budgeting, résumé-building and vocational rehabilitation (Ray & Forchuk, 2011, p. 17). Ultimately, the veterans’ statements suggest that the military’s current discharge system does not engage enough with soldiers, which is a systemic flaw that makes it difficult for veterans to function as civilians and makes it easy for veterans to fall into homelessness.
Military discharge planning is connected to global activities as the Canadian military is a global organization by nature; it represents Canada abroad and exerts Canada’s will across the world. According to the Government of Canada’s website, the Canadian Armed Forces is currently involved in 38 active operations across North America, the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania and waters across the world (Government of Canada, 2024a). Additionally, throughout the twenty-first century, Canada has concluded 69 other operations that took place across the world (Government of Canada, 2024c). A more specific reason why this factor is influenced by the global sphere is because many of the traumas that Canadian soldiers have upon their departure from the military are traumas that they acquired on missions abroad. Canadian soldiers deployed on land are more likely to be exposed to traumatic events compared to those deployed to air or sea, as are Canadian soldiers in the regular force compared to the reserve force, as are lower-ranked soldiers compared to officers, and as are male soldiers compared to female soldiers (Brunet et al., 2015, pp. 490–491). These demographic differences in exposure to trauma within the military make sense because those four more-at-risk demographics are those who are typically deployed abroad on the ground in warzones. These are the soldiers who are most directly and intimately involved in Canada’s military activities. In other words, their trauma came from their direct participation in global politics. As per Canadian military policy, many soldiers who develop chronic and severe mental illnesses, such as PTSD, are asked to leave and many soldiers who develop such mental illnesses leave on their own as well (Brunet et al., 2015, p. 493). These discharges lead to transitions to civilian life that make it easy for Canadian veterans to fall into homelessness. Ultimately, the traumas and mental illnesses that may lead Canadian soldiers to be discharged, and thus may contribute to their homelessness, are often a result of those soldiers’ involvement in global military activities. This means that the soldiers’ discharges and transitions to civilian life simultaneously are influenced by global activities and are a contributing factor to homelessness.
Individual and Relational Factors
Addictions
Addiction to illicit substances is simultaneously a cause of homelessness and a behaviour that increases as a result of homelessness (Didenko & Pankratz, 2007, p. 9). A Government of Canada (2021b) study found that, out of a large sample of people experiencing homelessness across Canada, 25% of survey respondents identified “addiction or substance use” as a reason for their most recent loss of housing, making it the most commonly cited reason for housing loss in the entire survey. As was stated before, a different Government of Canada (2024b) survey found that substance use issues was the second most frequently identified reason for housing loss provided by 18% of respondents, behind insufficient income for housing which was a reason provided by 28% of survey respondents. Again, this does not necessarily mean that either substance use or income was the primary reason for these individuals’ loss of housing, as many respondents to both surveys attributed their loss of housing to combinations of reasons. According to a study by Zhao (2023, p. 2), substance addiction often strains addicts’ closest relationships and causes job loss; the financial strain of job loss, in turn, often causes people to lose their homes. This explains the correlation between addiction and homelessness.
Addiction’s global influences lie in the global trade of illicit drugs. Using the global illicit opioid market as a case study, that market was worth 65 billion US dollars in 2010 according to the United Nations; Afghanistan and Mexico are the dominant exporters of heroin while China and India are the dominant exporters of fentanyl and its inputs (Reuter et al, 2021, pp. 2, 4). The process of creating the opioids in exporter countries, trafficking the drugs into consumer countries and dealing the drugs is carried out by a network of actors that involves hundreds of thousands of people who collectively form a worldwide value-added chain (Reuter et al., 2021, p. 3). Canada has a significant illicit opioid market and much of the product in that market comes from Asia. 205 kilograms of fentanyl was discovered by Canadian border officials in the 2016–2017 fiscal year and these officials claim that nearly 100% of that came from China (Russell, 2017). Similarly, 200 kilograms of heroin was seized by Canadian border officials in 2015; India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda were key transit points for this product that was largely produced in Afghanistan (Russell, 2017). This demonstrates that the illicit drug trade, as well as the addiction that comes with it, is a global force that affects Canada locally.
Homophobia and Transphobia
The LGBTQ community make up a disproportionate share of Canada’s homeless, with 13% of the homeless in Canada identifying as “2SLGBTQI+” compared to 4% of the general Canadian population (Government of Canada, 2024b). Among homeless youth in Canada, 26% identify as “2SLGBTQI+” (Government of Canada, 2024b). Regarding reasons why homeless LGBTQ people in Canada lost their housing, conflict with a parent or guardian was cited by 12% of them, making it the second most commonly cited reason for LGBTQ homelessness behind mental health issues at 15% (Government of Canada, 2024b). Canada has a long history of LGBTQ youth being thrust into homelessness because conflict with non-affirming parents and guardians led them to get kicked out of or voluntarily leave their homes; many studies from throughout the past quarter century present such events as a recurring theme among the experiences of homeless LGBTQ youths (see Abramovich, 2013; Miller et al., 2004). The most recent statistics mentioned above suggest a perpetuation of the incumbent trend, meaning homophobia and transphobia remain a cause of homelessness in Canada.
Anti-LGBTQ sentiment has a long history of being spread around the world through global forces. Historically, notable forces that have spread these sentiments include religion and colonial law. For example, Catholicism, as led by the Vatican and by many Catholic churches across the world, long maintained and promoted strictly anti-gay interpretations of the Bible and publicly argued that homosexuality and any social acceptance of it is immoral and harmful to people and society (Revol, 2008), thereby maintaining those beliefs in places where the church had influence. Colonial laws that render homosexuality legal or illegal often reflect the laws of the colonizer countries that exported such rules. Many of those laws persist in former colonies today, which is why many former French colonies in Central Africa, such as Chad and Gabon, do not have sodomy laws while many neighbouring African countries do, because France did not have sodomy laws past the eighteenth century while other colonizer countries did (Albertini, 2008).
Today, anti-LGBTQ sentiment is perpetuated on a global scale with increasing online political discourse, notably originating from within the US, which affects Canadians’ beliefs through the spread of myths. For example, amid widespread debate in Canada and the US about transgender inclusion in schools, a myth circulated by American social media users suggested that kitty litter purchased by US schools was for students who identify as animals (CTV News, 2023). This myth has since spread to Canada as some Canadian parents have expressed concern that local schools are purchasing kitty litter to accommodate animal-identifying students (CTV News, 2023). The international spread of this myth distorts and obscures the discussion about inclusion because it fills the discourse with falsehoods that make inclusion sound ridiculous, which reduces the perceived importance of being inclusive of groups such as transgender youth. This is not to say that global online myths like the litter box myth directly cause LGBTQ youth homelessness. Rather, global online discourse contributes to a pre-existing widespread general distaste for sexual and gender minorities, which is broader homophobic and transphobic sentiment in society. This distaste can cause family conflicts between non-affirming parents and LGBTQ youth, which can lead to those youth becoming homeless by leaving or being kicked out. The influence of global anti-LGBTQ online discourse on homelessness is indirect but it exists nonetheless seeing that global online discourse adds to pre-existing anti-LGBTQ sentiment in society and that anti-LGBTQ sentiment in society contributes to LGBTQ youth homelessness.
Sorting Global Forces by Type of Global Force
Now that this essay has laid out all of the global forces that contribute to homelessness in Canada, the next step is to sort them into four categories based on what general types of global forces they are. This answers the main research question.
The foreign involvement in the Canadian housing market factor and the market shifts, recessions, financial crises, etc. factor are both factors that are based on activities in global financial and economic markets in which investing behaviours ultimately contribute to people becoming homeless. Consequently, these two factors shall be grouped together and collectively called global economic interferences.
Addictions is a factor which deeply relates to the sale and purchase of illicit drugs, much of which was smuggled into Canada via the global drug trade. Despite the importance of market economics in the global drug trade, it does not make sense to place addictions within the global economic interferences category because, in the drug market, the product itself is what contributes to homelessness rather than investing behaviours. Consequently, addictions shall be placed within its own category called the global drug trade.
Neoliberalism and homophobia and transphobia are ideas that have been widely disseminated by thought leaders, popular movements and media around the world and have been widely incorporated into the beliefs of Canadians. Acting upon these beliefs has sometimes contributed to homelessness. Consequently, these factors shall be categorized as the global spread of beliefs.
Finally, colonialism, arrival of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers during a housing crisis and inadequate supports during transition out of military are all factors that often involve people in Canada experiencing psychological harm or persecution that came from a source outside of Canada. Consequently, these factors shall be grouped together as the global spread of trauma.
This ultimately shows that a wide range of the general overarching global forces that contribute to homelessness in Canada may be collectively categorized as global economic interferences, the global drug trade, the global spread of beliefs and the global spread of trauma. The table below is a visual aid that shows how the global forces explored in this essay can be both sorted by kind of global force and sorted into the COH’s categories of structural factors, system failures and individual and relational factors.
Table 1
Global Forces That Contribute to Homelessness in Canada Sorted by Global Force and by COH Category
Conclusion
Ultimately, this essay used the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness’s framework of causes of homelessness to identify and lay out contributing factors to homelessness that affect Canada and are influenced by the global sphere. The essay then grouped those contributing factors into general categories of global forces. These efforts have led to the conclusion that a wide range of the general overarching global forces that contribute to homelessness in Canada may be collectively categorized as global economic interferences, the global drug trade, the global spread of beliefs and the global spread of trauma. Considering how diverse and plentiful the contributing factors to homelessness in Canada are, any public policy effort to end homelessness in Canada must be multifaceted and must match solutions to each of the problems laid out above. An effective homelessness policy regime must also address the major contributing factors to homelessness that this essay did not explore because they are not influenced by the global sphere to the same significant extent as the examples explored above, such as domestic violence and discharges from prison. This is the only way to have a sufficiently comprehensive homelessness policy. As was said above, housing unaffordability is a major factor behind Canadian homelessness. Increasing the housing supply dramatically, especially with affordable non-market housing, must be the centrepiece of Canada’s homelessness policy regime. Canada cannot entirely insulate its people from the harmful impacts of global forces but it can create a system that can more effectively catch people when global forces make them fall to their lowest points.
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Edit made on June 21, 2025: All percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number to give the article a uniform style.
