Justin Trudeau’s Plan To Ban Foreigners From Buying Canadian Homes Won’t Make Housing Affordable – By Christian Britschgi (Reason) / April 8, 2022
Foreign buyers are a small percentage of new home purchases. Excluding them from the housing market does little to reduce housing costs.
The Liberal government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is proposing a ban on foreigners purchasing homes in the country in an effort to combat high housing prices. If the small number of existing foreign homebuyers and other countries’ experience are anything to go on, it won’t do much good.
“We will prevent foreign buyers from parking their money in Canada by buying up homes. We will make sure that houses are being used as homes, rather than as commodities to be traded,” said Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s finance minister, in a forward to the government’s proposed 2022 budget.
The plan would ban foreign commercial enterprises and people who are neither Canadian citizens nor permanent residents from purchasing “nonrecreational, residential property” for a period of two years.
