[HN Gopher] Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes
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Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes
 
Author : vincent_s
Score  : 145 points
Date   : 2023-01-02 09:42 UTC (13 hours ago)
 
web link (www.voanews.com)
w3m dump (www.voanews.com)
 
| ls15 wrote:
| This seems like a good idea and it carves out exceptions for
| foreigners who are residents. I presume this puts pressure on
| other countries to do the same, since investors are looking for
| other opportunities.
 
  | smnrchrds wrote:
  | It is important to note that according to Canadian law,
  | permanent residents (equivalent to green card holders in the
  | US) are not considered foreign nationals. They enjoy roughly
  | the same rights and privileges as Canadian citizens, with very
  | limited exceptions such as voting, running for office, serving
  | as a jury, and some high-level government positions.
  | 
  | > Foreign national: A person who is not a Canadian citizen or a
  | permanent resident.
  | 
  | https://www.canada.ca/en/services/immigration-citizenship/he...
 
    | kashunstva wrote:
    | However the law does seem to exclude people who reside in
    | Canada on a work permit, many of whom are accruing time to
    | apply for PR status. Since those who reside in Canada on a
    | temporary work permit pay income taxes, it seems unjust to
    | limit their housing choices. Ideally the law could have been
    | worded with more specificity around prohibition of income
    | generation by the property and still allow work permit
    | holders to buy property.
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | asdff wrote:
  | Such opportunities for investors only exist if the government
  | artificially strangles the housing supply as many local western
  | governments have done over the past century. If a nation wanted
  | to effectively end such investment into the housing stock, then
  | lawmakers should devalue this asset by allowing production of
  | an excess by updating restrictive zoning codes, not ban foreign
  | investment which could very well bring in benefits in some
  | cases.
 
| hestefisk wrote:
| Good symbolic act, but as the fine article states, it's unlikely
| to have material effect on housing affordability for the average
| person until supply is increased.
 
  | grecy wrote:
  | Improving something is a multi-step process that takes time.
  | 
  | I'm happy they've taken a step in the right direction, an I'm
  | hopeful they'll take more.
 
    | asdff wrote:
    | Its really not a step in the right direction. Imo its even a
    | bit into the wrong direction because they are opting to
    | sidestep the vastly easier step that would actually solve
    | this problem for good: updating the zoning to keep up with
    | job growth. Blaming foreign investors for today's home prices
    | is like blaming the boogyman, because its zoning that
    | explains everything about today's home prices and its the
    | zoning creating a supply crisis that attracts investors in
    | the first place (foreign _and_ domestic lest we think this
    | investor problem poofs into thin air with this).
 
      | 7e wrote:
      | Update zoning? Humans are breeding creatures. Like all
      | animals, they will reproduce to fill their available
      | habitat and back pressure is needed to keep the population
      | from strangling this planet.
 
        | asdff wrote:
        | No one looks up the zoning code before having kids.
        | Zoning is also not related to the carrying capacity of an
        | environment, usually its decided by busybodies who
        | actively ignore the literature on the subject in favor of
        | perpetuating a status quo.
 
  | tomohawk wrote:
  | Exactly. This is only attracting foreign interest due to th
  | artificially constrained supply. If they were serious about the
  | issue, they would increase supply.
 
    | JacobThreeThree wrote:
    | Imagine if the government of Canada used just 1% of the 89%
    | of crown land it owns out of all the land in Canada to give
    | to people for housing.
 
      | bparsons wrote:
      | Crown land is controlled by the provinces. The feds only
      | control national parks, military bases and areas covered
      | under Indigenous title.
      | 
      | The provinces hand over crown land to municipalities for
      | development all the time.
      | 
      | Land isn't the problem. The lack of density within desired
      | metropolitan areas is the problem.
 
      | asdff wrote:
      | There's no shortage of land in Canadian cities or really
      | any western city in a housing crisis today. The problem is
      | that this land is squandered on lower density development
      | that is illegal to improve into higher density development
      | thanks to zoning mandating low density. Zoning must keep up
      | with job growth or else you end up with the situations we
      | see today: wealthy people entering bidding wars on an 80
      | year old originally working class home.
 
  | standardUser wrote:
  | Just because a policy does not solve a problem outright does
  | not make it symbolic. The article discusses other measures that
  | have already been implemented and points out that current
  | housing prices are way off their peak from a year ago. If this
  | policy further reduces demand even a little, that will have an
  | impact on the trajectory of housing prices. That's not
  | symbolism.
 
    | loeg wrote:
    | It doesn't move the needle. It's symbolic.
 
    | asdff wrote:
    | It is symbolism when everyone who is paid to think in this
    | space considers it not to be a solution to the root of the
    | problem, which is a lack of housing supply to keep up with
    | job growth. You've banned foreign investors, great, there are
    | still domestic investors who will fill the void in the market
    | like gas in a small room. If you want there to not be
    | investors, then housing shouldn't be such a great speculative
    | asset to invest in, and it only is such an asset because
    | local governments have opted to constrain supply and support
    | investors rather than the workers they represent in their
    | constituency.
 
    | voisin wrote:
    | > current housing prices are way off their peak from a year
    | ago
    | 
    | The only policy that impacted this was the Bank of Canada's
    | interest rate policy. Houses were rocketing up right until
    | the moment rates started increasing.
 
| BurningFrog wrote:
| One good rule of thumb is that whenever people are blaming
| foreigners for their problems, they're wrong.
| 
| Investment in housing and price increases are related. But it's
| the price increases that _cause_ the investments, not the other
| way around.
 
  | db48x wrote:
  | Luckily you can depress prices really quickly by forbidding
  | sales of property :)
 
    | BurningFrog wrote:
    | The value of housing comes from how much you can charge
    | people who want to live in them.
    | 
    | That number doesn't change because foreigners can't buy.
 
      | elcomet wrote:
      | What do you mean? Foreigners can't buy therefore it will
      | decrease the number of people trying to buy there
 
      | db48x wrote:
      | By definition it will. Fewer potential buyers always means
      | lower top prices. Especially in this case, where the whole
      | point is to prevent rich foreigners from outbidding poor
      | locals.
 
    | Redoubts wrote:
    | A lot of other cool things happen when you do that too.
 
  | notatoad wrote:
  | i don't think there's too many people (or at least, people
  | making these decisions) who think foreign ownership is the real
  | problem here. it's just the portion of the problem that's
  | politically easiest to tackle.
  | 
  | banning foreign ownership will help, even if only a little bit.
 
  | newfriend wrote:
  | Sure, they should blame their government instead -- which
  | allowed those foreigners to cause the problems, instead of
  | protecting the citizens they are meant to serve.
 
| garbagecoder wrote:
| A better title would be "absentee foreigners." I think this is
| part of Airbnb blowback to some extent. Are these people really
| competing for even middle class housing? Seems weird to me. A few
| wealthy foreigners pipping millionaire Canadians for penthouses
| doesn't really seem like a problem for normies. Am I
| understanding this wrong? Portugal is also de facto eliminating
| its "golden visa" which basically lets you be an absentee owner
| with residence, but it's still easy to move there if you want to
| you know actually live there. Some countries are embracing this.
| Costa Rica just lowered its residence through real estate
| threshold to 150k USD.
 
  | brailsafe wrote:
  | Middle class housing is a ridiculous investment vehicle in the
  | primary few viable Canadian cities, and has provided wild
  | returns to people who bought a few years ago, to the point
  | where only the rich can really afford anything now. Even people
  | who live in modest old 1 bedrooms that they bought a few years
  | ago couldn't afford their own places if they needed to. It's
  | not by any stretch exclusively wealthy foreigners influencing
  | the market though, otherwise the government probably wouldn't
  | be enacting any legislation that specifically targets them.
 
| smnrchrds wrote:
| If you think this law will be easy to sidestep, please read this
| post first:
| 
| https://old.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/zz92li/prohi...
| 
| It appears that the law is well-designed to avoid such abuses and
| loopholes.
| 
| Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1494/
 
  | rippercushions wrote:
  | > _" The ban doesn't apply to properties with 4 units or more"
  | - good. If the goal is to allow single family homes and
  | duplexes, condos, etc. to drop in price, it's providing aid in
  | the right place. The goal wasn't to make life easier for people
  | buying investment properties._
  | 
  | This seems like a massive gap though, and the counterargument
  | doesn't make sense. Surely high-density housing is (should be)
  | cheaper than the alternatives, and provides fine homes for many
  | people who can't afford/don't want a suburban single family
  | home with all the expenses that entails? (Car, maintenance,
  | etc.)
 
| voisin wrote:
| Foreign buyers had an insignificant impact relative to the Bank
| of Canada leaving interest rates way too low for way too long.
 
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| So if you're the stereotypical rich foreigner who wants to invest
| in real estate here, what's the stop them from incorporating a
| company locally, and then having that own the house(s)? And
| that's just one workaround I can think of in the first 30
| seconds. As with all well-intentioned simplistic schemes, this
| will hurt normal folks - immigrants who don't have their
| paperwork sorted out yet - and do absolutely nothing to the big
| $$ driving home prices up.
 
  | refurb wrote:
  | It's already covered in the law. Most provinces are requiring
  | that "beneficial ownership" of any corporation is reported to
  | the government.
  | 
  | https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/british-columbia-finalizes...
  | 
  | What is more likely is that some foreigner would use a relative
  | in Canada, who has PR or citizenship, to buy the property on
  | their behalf.
  | 
  | But foreigners buying home in Canada was never that big of an
  | issue. I think in the hottest areas it was high single digits.
  | It did have an impact no doubt, but it was mostly Canadians
  | running amuck on cheap debt that ran home prices into the
  | stratosphere.
  | 
  | But the funny part is that home prices are already dropping
  | fast (due to rising interest rates) so I can't wait until some
  | politician claims this legislation works.
 
    | JacobThreeThree wrote:
    | >it was mostly Canadians running amuck on cheap debt that ran
    | home prices into the stratosphere
    | 
    | The root causes are thanks to the policies of the Bank of
    | Canada and CMHC.
 
    | jleyank wrote:
    | While I didn't follow the news closely, this seems to have
    | come from the Vancouver and Toronto real estate markets. City
    | level laws might have been tried but they lack teeth. This
    | issue is also leading towards a vacancy survey and tax for
    | vacant houses to provide material to escalate (I feel) if
    | necessary.
    | 
    | And worldwide, people might want cheaper housing but they
    | din't want their own house value to decline. The former
    | occurs in the neocortex while the latter seems to lie deep in
    | the lizard brain.
 
      | blitzar wrote:
      | > seems to lie deep in the lizard brain
      | 
      | Wanting an asset you purchased on 10 times leverage, with a
      | 5% interest rate on the debt to decline in value would be
      | total and utter insanity.
 
        | jleyank wrote:
        | Yup. You made my implicit contradiction explicit.
 
      | sokoloff wrote:
      | Housing cannot durably be both a good investment and remain
      | affordable.
 
        | vlovich123 wrote:
        | It's a fine investment in a diversified portfolio because
        | traditionally it was a hedge in both capital and monthly
        | cash flow, and decoupled from other asset classes. It
        | also offered freedom where you can make improvements to
        | the land to increase the rate of growth. There were also
        | non-monetary investments because your lifestyle choices
        | had certain kinds of freedoms it offered (in exchange for
        | giving up others)
        | 
        | So it's definitely a good investment when it's
        | affordable. In current environments, it's actually less
        | of a good investment than how it used to be used (stable,
        | inflation-protected hedge) because it's more in the asset
        | class of stock and intertwined with other asset classes.
        | That's good for you on the upswing (which is why you
        | think it's incompatible with affordability) but not so
        | good on the downswing. Also high volatility and even
        | rapid growth isn't something most people look for in
        | housing and housing-related costs. In other words, people
        | now treat housing stock the same way as company stock
        | which does make it incompatible with affordability but
        | it's traditional role is a hedge in your portfolio.
 
        | sokoloff wrote:
        | Typically when we say that something is a "good
        | investment", we mean that it's something that increases
        | in value faster than inflation.
        | 
        | Conversely, for something to remain affordable over a
        | long period of time, its price _must_ grow no faster than
        | inflation.
 
  | blitzar wrote:
  | > and do absolutely nothing to the big $$ driving home prices
  | up
  | 
  | Are the price rises because 1 person bought a penthouse for
  | $100mil or because a million 'normal' people outbid each other
  | for the 100k house in the suburbs?
 
    | asdff wrote:
    | Prices rise because a certain proportion of workers are high
    | income workers, and when you limit supply such that a region
    | can't fit all its workers, that's who wins the bidding war
    | for the house or who happily overpays for that ratty
    | apartment and this process raises all boats over time.
    | There's no backstop either; people on the low end of the
    | economy end up paying more and more of their disposable
    | income until they have to start putting bunks in bedrooms and
    | living rooms to pay the rent on their wages. Only middle
    | class people can afford to move to a lower cost of living
    | area since moving as high upfront costs with sometimes no
    | prospects of a job at the other end so you need a savings to
    | float for some time.
 
    | feet wrote:
    | Or perhaps because one corporation is outbidding a million
    | normal people for 100k homes?
 
      | blitzar wrote:
      | Sounds a bit like zillow buying up 100k properties for 200k
      | and then selling them on a few weeks later for 90k.
      | 
      | I dont see that as much of a problem personally.
 
        | feet wrote:
        | Well most of the companies doing this aren't completely
        | harebrained and they actually capture rental markets,
        | Zillow is an outlier
 
        | housingisntbiz wrote:
        | And this is exactly why the society should not subsidize
        | rental living in any way and heavily make it a priority
        | to help private people to buy and maintain ONE house for
        | themselves. Just taxing rental predators out of the
        | market would be a good start, there's no need to ban or
        | outlaw anything. Then actions like giving huge tax
        | exemptions for both the seller and buyer if it's between
        | private persons and the buyer is going to live there
        | would actually send the good signal for society.
        | 
        | However, after all tTis whole thing is just another
        | reason to live in rural areas because rental predators
        | are pretty much non-existent. Of course not everyone is
        | so privileged, but those who are should seriously
        | consider leaving cities for their own good.
 
      | asdff wrote:
      | It wouldn't be such a good investment if the supply wasn't
      | constrained. If you want do devalue the dollar, print more.
      | If you want to devalue the housing market, make it legal to
      | build more.
 
      | brailsafe wrote:
      | It's more like corporations and individuals and rich
      | foreigners outbidding a million normal people for the house
      | in worthwhile cities that are $1.5m+
 
  | kennend3 wrote:
  | Well, there are fines for helping bypass the laws.
  | 
  | "The Act has a $10,000 fine for any non-Canadian or anyone who
  | knowingly assists a non-Canadian and is convicted of violating
  | the Act. If a court finds that a non-Canadian has done this,
  | they may order the sale of the house."
  | 
  | I would assume opening a numbered corp to own the house would
  | fall under this category?
  | 
  | Most of the "super-rich" owned houses in Canada are already
  | owned by corporations to leverage the protections corps have.
 
    | gruez wrote:
    | Only a $10k fine? On a 1 million dollar house that works out
    | to 1%, and your house doesn't even get seized, it only gets
    | sold so you keep all the appreciation that occurred during
    | that time. Considering that transaction fees (eg. for the
    | agent) are probably more than 1%, this doesn't seem like a
    | huge impediment.
 
      | angry_octet wrote:
      | ... and you don't legally own the property. The original
      | owner can just return your money and move back in. People
      | can squat on your property and you have no legal right to
      | evict them. You've just created a legal nightmare.
 
      | robrenaud wrote:
      | > the repayment of the non-Canadian of amounts not greater
      | than the purchase price for the sale
      | 
      | The foreigner does not keep any appreciation.
      | 
      | https://www.bennettjones.com/Blogs-Section/New-Rules-for-
      | For...
 
    | cainxinth wrote:
    | Seems like that will just drive the foreign super rich to
    | 'buy' citizenships too. With enough money and in-country
    | fixers/ lobbyists, that's usually not unobtainable in most
    | countries.
 
      | asdff wrote:
      | I wonder if you'd eventually get a weird marriage for
      | citizenship market from such legislation. Like say you are
      | a modern millennial couple and both you and your partner
      | don't care about the institution of marriage. Are you going
      | to leave money on the table, or get a huge lump sum for
      | both you and your partner to be legally married to some
      | investors that you might never need to meet in person?
 
      | JCharante wrote:
      | The downside is the requirement to stay in Canada during
      | that time. Plenty of people don't want to do it so they
      | commit fraud
      | 
      | https://www.scmp.com/week-
      | asia/society/article/2158716/speci...
 
  | emsixteen wrote:
  | Not being able to stop it entirely doesn't mean it's not a good
  | idea. Increasing the hurdles that need to be jumped through
  | will be off-putting to some who would have otherwise went down
  | this road, and provides the state with more avenues to actually
  | have control over foreign buying. Immigrants who don't have
  | their paperwork sorted out yet shouldn't be buying homes imo.
  | Get your ducks in a row.
 
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| The problem is not rich people overseas, its rent seeking rich
| people everywhere.
| 
| 1 person - 1 property.
| 
| Commercial property should be state owned with perpetual leases.
 
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Of all the things that a person can own, land seems the least
| justified to me. There is a finite amount of it, you did not
| create it, you cannot destroy it, and essentially all ownership
| derives from conquest, in recent or ancient history.
 
  | dylan604 wrote:
  | >you cannot destroy it,
  | 
  | is this really true? you can definitely do things to it that
  | would make it uninhabitable, no longer "fertile", or any other
  | terms that essentially come to the same conclusion of the land
  | being essentially destroyed.
  | 
  | at least as far as the context of desirability to be owned
 
    | ThrowawayTestr wrote:
    | I mean, China is pretty good at creating land.
 
      | tromp wrote:
      | The Dutch excel at creating land where before there was
      | sea...
 
  | drowsspa wrote:
  | Owning land makes a lot of sense, I'd say. What doesn't make
  | much sense to me is subjecting it to so much speculation
 
    | asdff wrote:
    | It makes poor sense because landowners are often selfish, and
    | choose use cases with their property that maximize personal
    | benefit and if there is a collective benefit to these
    | decisions it is a happy accident. I'm including local species
    | into the collective in this case. Often a landowner will put
    | up barriers (e.g. a fence around a sprawling ranch or a
    | beltway of roads around a suburban development) for species
    | or will introduce invasive species or otherwise lower the
    | biodiversity of a place through disruptive development.
 
  | cek wrote:
  | There's actually a near-infinite amount of land.
  | 
  | We just haven't yet gotten to the point where we can access any
  | of the land not on this planet.
 
    | steve_adams_86 wrote:
    | Of course, but that has no practical implications in the near
    | or perhaps even distant future.
    | 
    | Even using the ocean as a fresh water source -- which is
    | right here on earth -- is a challenge with significant
    | hurdles to overcome.
    | 
    | Even with near infinite land it will presumably be a long,
    | long time before common people can set out into this new
    | frontier and carve out anything like a familiar, safe, let
    | alone comfortable life.
 
  | ryan93 wrote:
  | Its a practical not a philosophical discussion. Try driving
  | through the western united states and see if a lack of land is
  | a real issue.
 
  | daqhris wrote:
  | Land is where you can build a shelter. My current experience as
  | a refugee made me realize the importance of shelter and food.
  | The rest comes afterwards.
  | 
  | Basically, all land on Earth has an owner. Be it individuals,
  | corporations or governments. It's finite, so highly valuable.
  | 
  | I'm currently unable to return _safely_ to my homeland because
  | the current land owners marked me as an adversary. I wish it
  | wasn 't the case but societal rules have been this way since
  | ever.
  | 
  | It's thousand times easier to me to build something, by using
  | software, in the metaverse/on internet. In the real world, I
  | now have no place to call home, except refugee camps and squats
  | in abandonned buildings.
 
  | charcircuit wrote:
  | Everything physical you can buy is made up of things that are
  | of a finite amount and were not created by humans.
  | 
  | All ownership works like that.
 
    | michaelt wrote:
    | When I buy a wooden table it's true that the tree grew from
    | the ground - but I'm _also_ paying for the efforts of the
    | foresters, the sawmill workers, the truck drivers, the table
    | designers, the machine operators, the assemblers, the store
    | salespeople, and the delivery drivers.
    | 
    | I buy a plot of land, on the other hand? The lazy sellers
    | won't even deliver it to my home :)
 
  | xkcd-sucks wrote:
  | Land seems like one of the oldest and most "natural" forms of
  | ownership -- Many animals, plants, bacteria, fungi will
  | establish territory and defend it against conspecfics and
  | competitors
 
    | tpush wrote:
    | Natural doesn't imply good.
 
    | asdff wrote:
    | They aren't defending land though, they are really defending
    | access to resources contained in that land. If you drop a
    | plant on empty land with no relevant resources for it, the
    | plant will die. It will not become a landowner. Land
    | ownership is a very recent concept in our history. Most of
    | human history on this planet happened with no concept of
    | owning land.
 
  | dzhiurgis wrote:
  | Cue Georgism
 
| pestatije wrote:
| In Spain they'll give a residency permit to foreigners buying a
| home over 500k euros.
 
  | garbagecoder wrote:
  | Costa Rica it's $150,000 US and they just lowered it in 2021
  | from 200. Portugal also has/had a similar setup, but it seems
  | gridlocked by the bureaucracy. I thought Canada actually had a
  | similar law several years back, but maybe not. There are easier
  | ways to get residency in Portugal and Spain, the difference is
  | these let you be absentee 90% of the time. This Canadian law is
  | typical of left-isolationism as opposed to right-isolationism.
  | Keep out the rich instead of keep out the poor.
 
    | blitzar wrote:
    | Eligible applicants must invest CAD $350,000 into a Canadian
    | "authorized designated organization". Accredited investors
    | must also demonstrate their net worth with an income of at
    | least $200,000 or proof of $1,000,000 of financial assets
    | 
    | https://www.goldenvisas.com/canada
 
  | kennend3 wrote:
  | This is where Canada's new law gets really weird.
  | 
  | We also have an "investment" class visa and almost everyone who
  | has used this bought a house to meet the "minimum requirements"
  | 
  | https://www.cic.gc.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=653...
  | 
  | So.. earlier they encouraged foreigners to buy houses in order
  | to get PR cards, now they ban it??
 
    | runnerup wrote:
    | >> So.. earlier they encouraged foreigners to buy houses in
    | order to get PR cards, now they ban it??
    | 
    | Yes, because at one point they thought they had enough
    | property and could use more money. Either they were wrong or
    | at some point that changed, and now they've reacted in
    | acknowledgment that Canadians need local property more than
    | they need foreign cash.
 
    | dmix wrote:
    | Both foreign housing sales and startup visa-style investments
    | flood foreign capital into the country making everyone
    | wealthier (either getting reinvested in more housing/jobs or
    | spent in stores then taxed). So hopefully the new law won't
    | do much to stop that.
    | 
    | It's probably not surprising that for all the things to get
    | upset about, re: lack of housing supply, people always choose
    | the foreign boogeyman route.
 
      | housingisntbiz wrote:
      | >"making everyone wealthier"
      | 
      | That's not the case. More like "making everyone suffer the
      | consequences of inflation more". And even more stronger
      | point is that Canadians shouldn't be more wealthier.
      | Especially so if the excess wealth comes from foreign
      | countries. And if the country of wealth origin belongs to
      | the third world it's outright evil, nothing less. It's just
      | another form unholy imperial colonialism and I can't
      | believe somebody still defends that kind of immorality.
 
    | antoniuschan99 wrote:
    | Difference is they live here
 
    | cgh wrote:
    | Canada's Immigrant Investor visa program was canceled in
    | 2014. This new law has nothing to do with visa applications
    | and is intended to address foreign speculation in local
    | housing markets.
 
  | dzhiurgis wrote:
  | Doesn't Spain has excess residential housing?
  | 
  | Visited recently and there seemed tons of empty housing and
  | it's quite cheap.
 
| Jemm wrote:
| Canada is also bringing in one million immigrants a year to feed
| the exploitative low paying job market and to try to stave off
| recession. These immigrants tend to gravitate in either Toronto
| or Vancouver.
| 
| Meanwhile corporate and rich investors are snapping up any
| property they can get their hands one.
| 
| In Ontario the Premiere is reclassifying conservation land owner
| by his buddies to allow them to build developments. In Toronto
| they tore down a vital section of the main highway to allow their
| buddies to build condos. The also allowed polluted lands to be
| developed a residential by simply putting a thin layer of top
| cover over the industrial pollution.
| 
| The foreign ban is only for high density areas. Small towns and
| rural land have become unaffordably for the people who grew up
| there.
| 
| It is a major catasrophe that is not being solved, just postponed
| by a year.
 
  | verdenti wrote:
  | As a Canadian, Canada needs way more people for how much
  | habitable land we have.
 
    | voisin wrote:
    | I 100% concur. Canada would benefit by having a population
    | 2-3x current. I am always amazed how in the US there are so
    | many cities with vibrant cultures in the 50-80k range whereas
    | in Canada you can drive vast distances and only find tiny
    | settlements of a few thousand people and no services or
    | culture to speak of.
 
    | betaby wrote:
    | We don't have 'much habitable land'. Most of the 'land' is
    | literally a rock
    | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Shield
 
  | kennend3 wrote:
  | Instead of being critical of the decisions of others, what do
  | you suggest?
  | 
  | Arm chair critics are a dime a dozen, what are your ideas on
  | how to address the housing problems?
 
    | throwayyy479087 wrote:
    | Zone every inch of currently settled land to allow 6 story
    | mixed use buildings, by right. Don't require anything to
    | build besides engineering and safety checks - no chance for
    | NIMBY input. Do this federally.
 
      | adverbly wrote:
      | Not sure if I'd do it federally... maybe start with a few
      | trial cities or areas where the idea has a lot of
      | support... But I'd be all for trying something like this!
 
    | ThrowawayTestr wrote:
    | Not import half a million immigrants per year, to start.
 
  | ravendug wrote:
  | It's nowhere near 1 million per year. The record from 2021 was
  | 405,000 and the plan for the next 3 years is < 1.5 million in
  | total.
  | 
  | https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ne...
 
  | rsync wrote:
  | "The foreign ban is only for high density areas."
  | 
  | Is this correct ?
  | 
  | Under these new laws a foreigner can still purchase farm, or
  | ranch land or, for instance, a ski chalet in Golden ?
  | 
  | Asking for a friend ...
 
| credit_guy wrote:
| Killing the golden goose?
 
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| There is still the immigration-by-visa route, no?
| 
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Immigrant_Investor_Pr...
 
  | brailsafe wrote:
  | "With the passing of Economic Action Plan 2014 Act (Bill C-31)
  | on June 19, 2014, the program was terminated and undecided
  | applications were cancelled."
 
  | smnrchrds wrote:
  | No. Out of all the provinces, territories, and federal
  | immigration schemes, only Quebec still has an immigration by
  | investment program, and they have changed it to make it super
  | difficult. It's no longer enough to just have or invest large
  | amounts of money. One has to score enough points from a
  | selection grid, which for example requires B2-ish level in
  | French. The language component alone disqualifies most of the
  | people who benefited from the original program and the current
  | prospective applicants.
  | 
  | https://www.quebec.ca/en/immigration/immigrate-business/inve...
 
    | jkaplowitz wrote:
    | It goes beyond that:
    | 
    | https://www.quebec.ca/en/immigration/immigrate-
    | business/inve...
    | 
    | Applications have been on hold for a while now, with no talk
    | of re-opening it. There is no active immigrant investor
    | program in Canada. There are several other immigration paths
    | open to many skilled tech professionals, but the details of
    | one's specific situation matter greatly and it is quite far
    | from open immigration.
 
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