Globalization of trade was part of austerity, to force down local wages through use of cheaper foreign workers. Same way we use Temporary Foreign Workers here while unemployment is still high, to make Canadian workers more desperate. Expensive housing isn't based on immigration, housing is way up in areas where immigrants haven't landed in Canada. Unions are under fire and the decline of the middle class is linked to the long term decline in unionization. Government corruption is mostly at the top, where you have people like DoFo handing off public assets like the LCBO, Ontario Place, Wasaga Beach, Greenbelt land to rich donors.
I think we're operating under separate definitions of what austerity is. I'm talking about economic policy, designed to reduce government deficits. For example, the measures Chretien enacted in the 90s.
What you're talking about is trade policy. Regardless, we do agree that globalization of trade puts downwards pressures on local wages.
I know the previous trend of landed immigrants is in the cities. However, migration out of the cities (of both immigrants and native Canadians) is happening in record numbers, because there is no affordable housing supply in the cities (due to, at least in large part, excessive immigration). This puts inflationary housing pressures all across the country.
Government corruption is all across the spectrum. The top is merely the most identifiable.
The decline of the middle class and the decline of unionization are correlated, but I don't believe strongly causally related. Rather, they're both symptoms of the same thing: globalization of trade.