Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am going to focus my questions on the housing tax that's being proposed here in these measures.
I cite in the House of Commons the example in British Columbia, where there is a municipal tax already on foreign transactions in the housing market of up to 2%, depending on the buyer, plus a provincial tax of up to 3%, for a total of up to 5%. In addition, there is a 20% transfer tax on foreign buyers, and yet 7.7% of activity in the Vancouver real estate market is still being consumed by foreign buyers of real estate in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland.
These small taxes aren't having much of an effect on buying, unless we're looking ex post facto at this. How do you suppose an extra 1% jurisdictional overreach is going to solve the housing problem in Canada?