VANCOUVER HOUSING: Federal finance minister says ?we need to consider the evidence? before any decision
PETER O?NEIL
The Province
The Trudeau government was accused Wednesday of foot-dragging after Finance Minister Bill Morneau said his department is still weighing evidence on the role of foreign buying in Vancouver’s housing affordability crisis.
“If you are in Vancouver today, it’s challenging for people to think about how they can get into the market and how their children can get into the market,” Morneau acknowledged at a Toronto conference.
But he said his officials are still in the process of doing a “deep dive” as they study the role of foreign investors in the skyrocketing prices.
“As we get at the challenge of around whether there are foreign ownership issues, we need to consider the evidence,” he said.
“We are going to remain focused on this, using real evidence to think about what are the measures that we can do in order to ensure that this market stays healthy for Canadians.”
Morneau’s position was questioned by critics who said it’s obvious that offshore buying is playing a key role in bringing the average Metro Vancouver detached home to more than $1.5 million last month.
“Mr. Speaker, we don’t need another study to prove that water is wet,” New Democratic Party MP Don Davies said in Question Period.
He said Morneau, who boasted again Wednesday he’s already taken action by bringing in tougher down-payment rules in December, actually hurt aspiring Canadian middle class homeowners with that move.
Those changes “target the wrong buyers,” said Davie, MP for Vancouver Kingsway.
“This is a crisis. Where is the real action from this government?”
Mayor Gregor Robertson, in Ottawa this week to lobby the federal government on both the housing and Kinder Morgan pipeline issues, has blamed the problem on “unregulated, speculative global capital flowing into Metro Vancouver’s real estate.”
In an interview Wednesday, he gently urged the federal government, as well as that of B.C., to move more quickly from studying trends to taking action.
“It’s been a slow response from both the federal and B.C. governments to intervene at the higher end of the market,” Robertson said.
“It’s frustrating to not see more deliberate actions when there are examples in Hong Kong and Australia and in Europe where governments did intervene to address rampant price escalation.”
Robertson has called on Victoria to bring in a speculation or luxury tax, and wants Ottawa to more strictly enforce tax laws to ensure that buyers aren’t dodging capital gains taxes.
Robertson said it’s more than just “challenging” — as Morneau put it — for young families to get into the market. In fact, Robertson said it is likely too late for the vast majority of young families to dream about living in a detached home in Vancouver.
Instead, he said, he has stressed in his discussions with federal officials the importance of getting more support to build more rental housing.
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