Living wage laws tend to reduce employment opportunities for low-wage and low-skilled workers, and push up taxes
By Charles Lammam and Hugh MacIntyre The Fraser Institute The City of Vancouver's plan to become a living wage employer will likely be a costly failure. Vancouver city council voted recently to make the city a living wage employer, and proponents claim this will help vulnerable workers. But the unfortunate reality is that the implemented policy will likely increase costs…
Vancouver's Robertson and Montreal's Coderre are front and centre when it comes to policy pronouncements that are dangerously delusional
Mayor Gregor Robertson wants Vancouver to be “the world’s greenest city by 2020.” That's a laudable goal, provided the path is rooted in sound science and economics, rather than a religious belief in a carbon-free heaven. The first step, narrowing already-busy streets in favour of bike lanes, is infuriating drivers while their gridlocked cars increase…
A typical home in Palo Alto goes for about $2.5 million because of onerous land-use regulations, much like those in Vancouver
By Josef Filipowicz and Steve Lafleur The Fraser Institute Palo Alto, California, home to high-tech giants including Facebook and Tesla, made the news recently when planning commissioner Kate Downing resigned and announced her family’s plan to move to another city due to her family’s inability to afford housing in Palo Alto’s red hot market, where…
Heavy-handed policies have consequences that are worse than the problem they seek to fix
By Kenneth P. Green Steve Lafleur and Josef Filipowicz The Fraser Institute Foreign nationals purchasing homes in Metro Vancouver and the Greater Toronto Area is a topic that continues to make national headlines, especially as housing prices rise. This came to a head recently when B.C. Minister of Finance Mike de Jong announced an additional…
The Vancouver area's sky-high real estate market looks even more inflated when seen in conjunction with the city's below-average incomes
A look at Vancouver-area incomes brings new clarity to the British Columbia government's moves to dampen the region's red-hot real estate market. Recent months have seen a politically charged debate over the causes and consequences of sky-high housing prices in Metro Vancouver. The pace of price increases has been unprecedented, particularly for detached homes. In some…
A tax on foreign buyers may seem like an easy fix but it ignores the fact the housing supply is not keeping up with demand
By Kenneth P. Green Steve Lafleur and Josef Filipowicz The Fraser Institute In response to the fear that foreign homebuyers are driving up Vancouver housing prices, the provincial government has decided to introduce an additional 15 per cent property transfer tax on foreign home buyers in Metro Vancouver. This move diverts attention from the underlying…
Statistics Canada explicitly warns against using the Low Income Measure to measure poverty but a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives uses it anyway
By Charles Lammam and Hugh MacIntyre The Fraser Institute Poverty is a complex issue that concerns us all but it’s important to have clear understanding of the extent and nature of the problem before discussing ways to alleviate it. So it’s unhelpful when researchers present statistics that misrepresent the state of problem. The latest misleading…
Cutting local red tape will increase housing stock and reduce prices in Toronto, Vancouver and beyond
By Ken Green Ian Herzog and Josef Filipowicz The Fraser Institute House prices have grown substantially in recent years, especially in Canada’s biggest cities. Many Canadians are concerned about this trend, and a number of solutions have been proposed. However, many of these solutions are unlikely to be effective. Taxes on luxury properties might be…
Reforming the minutiae of the building permit process might not be fashionable, but it can encourage homebuilding and affect prices
By Ken Green Ian Herzog and Josef Filipowicz The Fraser Institute Vancouver might have the best scenery of Canada’s metropolises, but its real claim to fame is sky-high housing prices, which have risen 86 per cent over the last decade. Common explanations for this relentless growth include foreign investment, low interest rates and questionable practices…
Millennials would like to buy a house and raise a family in Vancouver. It's not going to happen
Much has been said about Vancouver’s rollicking real estate market over the past few months, and at the root of the commentary is very little fact. No agency of the municipal, provincial or federal government seems to know how much mainland Chinese cash is flooding into Richmond and the Point Grey, Kerrisdale, and Dunbar west…
