this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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Of course it didn't.
Foreign ownership and immigration were always just distractions.
They sound good, seem to make sense, and the people they are meant to mislead will never look deeper than that.
It took less than 10 minutes on Google to determine that neither of these were significant factors.
Sort of. The thing is - they are factors, just the small low hanging fruit; more specifically it's the easiest to attack from a political stand point: Foreign owners don't vote in Canada.
The reality is - we need to pull out the stops at this point. Go after Foreign ownership, corporate ownership. Go after Vacant properties through taxes, and go after the short term rental market.
Foreign ownership might be say a few percent, short term rentals might be a few percent. But you couple 3-4 small sources and suddenly you are freeing up some 5-10% of housing and putting it back on the long term rental market or they are being sold on the open market... to people who want a home.
Except not really. Freeing up less then 5% and then stopping doesn't actually help anything.
The bunch that hate immigrants are happy, and honestly that seems to be about 30% of the population. And that's enough to elect a government, so that's as far as that will ever go.
It's silly to point to the data on % of buys from foreign buyers because foreign buyers don't buy as foreign buyers, they buy through companies or children that they sent here as a student.
It's a quick hot take that many I know like to spout off without any effort to look into things. They aren't interested in looking any further into it unfortunately. Much like reading in school, they are done with that phase of their lives.
I think if they did, they would realize the major thrust of immigration are students to support universities higher tuitions and a continual new workforce for low wage jobs that others aren't going to work.
There is the added bonus of these people needing rental housing but it's not the main thrust of the issues which are too much for many to bother looking into.