International Trade committee  I have not done an estimate of how many properties would be subject to the tax. I just don't have that. I don't know if that would be easily done, but it's a good question.

International Trade committee  Just off the top of my head, my understanding is that Florida has preferential rates, and maybe Hawaii. There may be preferential rates for the U.S. Again, I'll re-emphasize that for many years Americans with high incomes were able to deduct state and local income and property t

International Trade committee  Let me take exception to one category that you mentioned, which is multi-generational. We have the severe problem that there are people who can't afford a place to live. Now, on vacation communities, of course, you can raise issues, but if I inherited a lovely place on a lake fr

International Trade committee  Of course, yes. The tax problem is one problem that I mentioned. The other major issue, of course, is regulation. Something like 70% or 80% of residential land in Canada is zoned for single-family homes. Anywhere near Toronto, probably increasingly Ottawa, Montreal, obviously Va

International Trade committee  Right. There will be two impacts in terms of affordability—neither of them huge. Properties owned and lightly used by people from overseas have largely been addressed in Toronto and particularly Vancouver, and, of course, foreign buyers are now banned. We're not talking about a

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

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  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'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  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