Human Resources committee  I hear you just fine.

Human Resources committee  Thank you so much, and I appreciate your being environmentally friendly and letting me testify without flying. In my seven minutes, in terms of seniors' well-being I want to talk about problems and prospects in the reverse mortgage industry, with a little bit of special referenc

Human Resources committee  Yes, absolutely.

Human Resources committee  A few of you have mentioned zoning and using federal enticements to improve zoning, and I'm going to expand beyond aging. If you want affordable housing, you cannot allow municipalities like Vancouver, West Vancouver, and affluent suburbs around Toronto to take land that sells fo

Human Resources committee  First of all, I think one reason reverse mortgages have not been more popular is a blanket policy of slamming the door on salespeople with complicated financial products to offer. It is probably not a bad blanket policy in retirement, of course, because there are scams. That sa

International Trade committee  Hi there. My name is Tom Davidoff. I'm a housing economist at the University of British Columbia. I'm going to focus my remarks on the following considerations. Number one, expensive housing markets in the U.S. historically have had high property tax rates overall and required

International Trade committee  I can't tell you what the rationale of the government was. I'm sure it was a concern about housing affordability. Of course, homes that aren't used as primary residences, be they by non-Canadian or Canadian people able to afford second homes, take away the affordability for peopl

International Trade committee  I believe that is absolutely correct. People are mobile, as you know, and immigrants are particularly mobile inherently. Before too long, the deal—the total amenity, wage and cost of living package—in any two Canadian cities has to equalize. It can't be a better deal to live in M

International Trade committee  Is that for me or Mr. Halinda?

International Trade committee  I'm going to defer to Mr. Halinda in terms of implementation on the ground.

International Trade committee  That's my understanding, but I didn't implement it. I'm not familiar with that detail.

International Trade committee  Thank you for the question. When thinking about property taxation, two issues come up in terms of where you want to have high property taxes. You don't want to have property-linked taxation. You don't want to have taxation where people can run away from the tax. In markets whe

International Trade committee  The speculation and vacancy tax is essentially an empty homes tax with some other issues related to higher rates for people from overseas. If you earn overseas income predominantly, there's an additional tax, but it's largely an empty homes tax. It is, as you say, implemented in

International Trade committee  I can speak to exemptions if you provide them to me. I just do not have the thorough administrative knowledge of this. I was asked to testify Friday. I can't itemize them for you. I'm happy to respond to itemization by your committee. What I can talk about is the impact on affor

International Trade committee  I believe it could be applied here, of course. As I mentioned, there are a lot of ways. The central issue is that, generally speaking in Canada, particularly in the expensive markets—and you could demarcate expensive markets—property is undertaxed, and working for a living and bu