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Don't know their source, but I can confirm that relevant Canadian laws are wide open for abuse due to both being toothless and because of near zero enforcement,

by raquo 10y ago

Don't know their source, but I can confirm that relevant Canadian laws are wide open for abuse due to both being toothless and because of near zero enforcement, at both federal and provincial (BC) levels. You can google how CRA actively avoided auditing foreign buyers "for fear of racism allegations" (yeah right) or how people bring hundreds of thousands of dollars in paper bills on themselves and their children, paying only $2.5K if caught (cheaper than Western Union!). Or the latest Vancouver 15% foreign investor tax designed to appease the population, but wholly ineffective because it relies on self reporting which no one ever checks and allows for other obvious loopholes. Much better proposals were ignored in favour of this purposely flawed one. It's amazingly fucked up, I'm surprised Canadians are taking it so willingly.

aianus 10y ago
> It's amazingly fucked up, I'm surprised Canadians are taking it so willingly. Nothing surprising about it, ~69% of Canadian households (and a much higher percentage of voters!) are homeowners and directly benefit from this influx of capital.
- raquo 10y ago
  That home ownership rate includes everyone who lives in a dwelling owned by their family, so it includes the youth who lives with their parents because they can't afford to move out. Besides, all the home owners I know are not happy about constantly increasing prices either. Many of them think it's unfair, many don't like the foreign inflation aspect, and even pragmatically speaking it's harder to jump to owning a bigger dwelling now. So I don't know why this is going on, but it's not because most people want higher housing prices.