Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to move this motion. Both the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party.... I will just note that technically we put our platform out first in the last election, so it was our idea first to ban foreign buyers from the residential real estate market in Canada. Then the Liberals soon after decided they would follow suit.
Now the challenge in this, Mr. Chair, is that there are so many loopholes in this so-called foreign buyers ban. At committee, I asked simple questions, and at the technical briefing I asked simple questions that seemed to enunciate that a foreign national could still purchase a home in Canada. If a family gets separated because a spouse leaves, they can purchase another home, and their children, when they turn 18, can purchase another home, so there are so many different loopholes in this that I don't think it is really a forceful mechanism, and I think it was designed like that.
Second to note is that I still don't understand how the mechanism is to work in terms of how we will know who is purchasing properties. As you know, Mr. Chair, most of these assets are recorded provincially, so whether or not the authorities would have information available federally is still in question.
Setting those aside, the purpose of this amendment, Mr. Chair, is that despite those differences, we believe that the biggest loophole has been reserved for the government itself. In fact, if you look at the enabling legislation here in Bill C-19, it actually gives the Governor in Council, in this case the cabinet, the right to decide when it comes into force. While members of the NDP and the Liberals can go home to their constituencies and say, “Look, I voted in favour of a ban against foreign buyers in the residential market,” essentially cabinet has a law whereby it could say it's never going to have it come into force.
Mr. Chair, we believe that the Liberals made the commitment that they would ban foreign buyers. I don't necessarily think it captures what the government says it intended to in that original commitment, but we think there should at least be some certainty for the market. I've seen on Twitter—and, of course, we should always bear in mind that when we see something on Twitter, we shouldn't always take it as real—that some realtors actually say that the federal government has banned foreign buyers, when it has only introduced legislation in this bill do to so.
In order for there to be certainty in the industry so that realtors are made aware of that and can inform their clients that they may inadvertently be misaligned with the law, we just think it's easier to set an enforcement date, so everyone knows it. Then the government would, I think, at least keep its word to the Canadian people in a sensible and straightforward way. That is why we are suggesting that clause 235 should come into force on January 1, 2023. We think that between the passage of this bill and over the summer and into the winter months, the industry stakeholders could be consulted. They would know that that was the date on which it would come into force, and they would become better acquainted with the rules, rather than having the status quo that's in this bill, whereby you have a ban that really isn't a ban and a law that may never actually become law.
