Don’t blame foreigners, but governments, for high house prices

Sean Speer and I released a paper through MLI on 29 Sept. making the case that the fingering of foreigners as the primary cause of rising house prices is a pure piece of theatrical misdirection. Rising prices in Vancouver and Toronto are a direct result of burgeoning opportunity in those cities (e.g. that is where all Canada’s recent net job creation has been) PLUS a decades long campaign to dry up the supply of new housing. Rising demand + stable supply = higher prices. We laid out the case in an op-ed that appeared in the ROB on the 29th.