NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is pitching a 20 per cent foreign homebuyers' tax in a bid to capture votes in Metro Vancouver ridings where the cost of housing has skyrocketed beyond the reach of many middle-income families.
Speaking in front of a multi-million dollar home in Burnaby, B.C., on Wednesday, Singh said the tax would apply to the sale of homes to individuals who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents.
The NDP leader placed the blame for housing prices squarely on Justin Trudeau, who also campaigned in B.C. on Wednesday. Singh accused the Liberal leader of allowing rents to rise and housing prices to balloon by more than 20 per cent in less than a year in Vancouver. The Liberal government kicked off a 10-year, multibillion-dollar national housing strategy in 2018-19. The parliamentary budget officer recently found program delays at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, expired community housing deals with the provinces and a shift toward more expensive affordable homes have limited the impact of the strategy.
Singh said addressing the housing issue was "a matter of will" that other parties did not have the desire to tackle.
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