A foreign buyer tax is USELESS.

Vancouver house prices are up about four percent from a year ago, and we are about half a year in from the introduction of the foreign buyer tax. Read about it in today's news report, "Canadian new home prices rise in January".

House prices still cost dozens of times the average annual local income. The foreign buyer tax was USELESS at making houses more affordable for local workers in Vancouver.

If the government wants to help young families looking to buy a house, they need to go after the overseas money that gets here via NEW CANADIANS who recently bought their citizenships through investor immigrant programs. Meaning you have to end those programs (eg Quebec's) and related programs (eg visas for foreign students that let them buy Vancouver houses without the tax, etc).

Vancouver got expensive MOSTLY because of investor immigrant, new-Canadian citizens, NOT foreign passport holders.