A frank admission acknowledges what many have been saying - but does the government really care?
In an interview this week on TVO’s The Agenda (click play button to watch above) the federal Liberal government's Parliamentary Secretary for Housing, Adam Vaughan, had this to say about Canada’s housing market:
“We’re a very safe market for foreign investment but we’re not a great market for Canadians looking for choices around housing.”
This is an unbelievable admission from a federal politician. It is the first time ever that our federal government has made it clear that they have allowed our housing market to work better for foreign investors than for hard working tax paying Canadians.
Now you might be asking yourself, why would our federal government prioritize foreign investors ahead of Canadians? Because they believe it’s the only way to build new housing. In the same interview Vaughan had this to say about the foreign investment:
“We have a very good system of foreign investment creating a lot of new housing in Canada.”
The problem with this statement is that it is categorically incorrect.
Having foreign investors finance the supply of new single family home construction is a great system for those investors, but as Vaughan himself admits, it has left Canadians worse off than these foreign investors.
The reason for this is something I’ll be unpacking in more detail in an upcoming monthly report - you can subscribe to these reports here.
But for now, I will say that if our federal Parliamentary Secretary for Housing believes that the only way to build new homes in Canada is to court foreign investors while ignoring the significant negative consequences of such a policy - he is unfit to hold his office.
I really don’t know what to say when our federal government admits that they have made housing in Canada work better for foreign investors than for Canadians.
Who are they serving? Clearly, not Canadians!
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John Pasalis is President of Realosophy Realty, a Toronto real estate brokerage which uses data analysis to advise residential real estate buyers, sellers and investors.
A specialist in real estate data analysis, John’s research focuses on unlocking micro trends in the Greater Toronto Area real estate market. His research has been utilized by the Bank of Canada, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
