Canada will change how it counts non-permanent residents, the main statistics agency said on Thursday, after an economist said the current methodology may have overlooked about a million foreign students, workers and others.

Canada will change how it counts non-permanent residents, the main statistics agency said on Thursday, after an economist said the current methodology may have overlooked about a million foreign students, workers and others.

  • Hiccup@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    82·
    10 months ago

    There are entire floors and even entire buildings sitting vacant in Vancouver because of certain foreign “investment.” They were having real estate conventions where property was being sold in a certain country sight unseen and is now just sitting there doing nothing and rotting. These “investments” were/ are merely vehicles for money laundering to get it out of a certain country. This has been basically known about for years and has been going on for years. A person making a decent wage used to be able to afford a home in Vancouver. Now, everyone is priced out of the market. The Olympics were the worst thing that probably has ever happened to Vancouver and derailed the city. Olympics were basically free advertising for foreign investment that opened the eyes of a certain country to decide to buy up anything and everything because of the lax controls in place and the politicians being cool with the grift.

    • RehRomano@lemmy.ca
      21·
      10 months ago

      Ah okay I’m asking because people seem to always point to empty homes as the problem and support that thesis with anecdotal evidence.

      The reality is new vacancy taxes in Ontario and BC captured a lot of those empty homes and there’s simply nowhere near the scale of empty homes to make any reasonable dent in the housing crisis, even if we converted every single one to occupied.