Stephen Harper vows to track foreign property ownership

Under the plan as it now stands, first-time home buyers withdraw up to $25,000 from an RRSP, but must repay that money in set annual increments, generally over 15 years, to their retirement fund.

Harper tested the waters of the controversial subject by promising to spend $500,000 in 2016 to collect data on foreign buying of homes, if re-elected.

“For most Canadians, the family home is their biggest asset and their most significant investment in their future financial security”, Harper said in making this campaign promise.

“Home ownership is good for Canadian families, it’s good for Canadian communities and it is good for the Canadian economy”, Harper said.

Rapidly rising house prices in Toronto and Vancouver are a “growing concern”, said BMO senior economist Sal Guatieri, given they “could encourage some households to take on larger mortgages than they can handle when interest rates rise”.

“A re-elected Conservative government will commit to collecting comprehensive data on the foreign non-resident purchase of Canadian real estate”, Harper said Wednesday. The Conservatives also abolished the Long Form Census in 2010, a decision decried by statisticians and provincial governments.

Harper took aim at the record of the New Democrats in B.C., which held power in Canada’s westernmost province twice in the last 40 years.

“If, in fact, foreign speculators are driving the cost of housing to unaffordable levels, that is something the government can, and should, find a way to address”, Harper said.

Andrey Pavlov, a professor of finance at Simon Fraser University, said it’s hard to accurately tell how much of Metro Vancouver’s market is affected by foreign home ownership.

The Manitoba government’s increase of the PST from seven to eight per cent in 2013 raised the ire of many in the province and was partly responsible for a cabinet revolt and leadership contest that nearly cost Premier Greg Selinger his job. “I think it is actually a tragedy”.

“This is a process that’s been going on since Expo 86”, he said. It has been suggested, including by the candidate himself, that NPA mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe – a political rookie and relative unknown who only declared his intent to run four months before election day – might have had a better shot of unseating Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and his entrenched Vision political machine – which, frankly, is constantly campaigning – if he’d had more time to become known.

The association pointed to the plan’s success in helping 2.8 million Canadian attain home ownership since 1992, but added that a hike is needed to maintain the value of the withdrawal limit against inflation. Some have gone farther, creating taxes to cool foreign speculation as have New Zealand and the United Kingdom, while Australia has even passed laws restricting the abilities of non-residents to buy housing.