To those who feel that the 15% Foreigner Tax implemented by the British Columbia government is a violation of human rights:
Let me ask you this?
Was colonization of foreign lands and forcing those who were rightfully
there first right? We can ask the
British, Spanish and other colonizing nations that. We are 300+ years removed from the colonization
of North America by Great
Britain and many injustices have been
rendered against the original inhabitants of this continent, however we need
not increase those injustices by compounding them.
Vancouver
is a housing market out of alignment with reality. The housing bubble has forced Canadians to
the point where they are unable to afford to live in the city in which they
grew up or were born in unless they mortgage away their future and their own
children’s future.
Having done a calculation of the costs of owning a home, it
doesn’t make sense that you have to earn over $100,000 to be able to buy a
starter home or you'd better have a windfall to be able to afford to buy it with the minimal mortgage that you'd be able to qualify for working a standard wage job. But due to the drastically over-inflated prices in the Vancouver housing market, it costs exactly that to be able to qualify for a mortgage to buy a home.
Just as it was in the 1600s, is it right for foreigners to kill off a country's population to take over the country? No...it isn't. Just as it is not right for foreigners to use financial leverage to take over a country. Except that we have legal ways of preventing foreigners from doing things like that now.
Implementing a 15% foreigner tax on homes purchased by non-Canadians is not a violation of human rights. Using one's financial or military leverage to enforce poverty on those who were there first is.
Canada is not a free-for-all. And those who have worked hard to build this country and build their own lives in this country, choosing to take citizenship and work for the benefit of this country deserve to own a home. Not financial carpetbaggers from a foreign nation.
If Canadian law-makers and realtors cared about the fact that we are selling Canada out from under our children, then there would be wide-spread support for a ban on foreign buyers and restrictions put in place.
After all the UN has indicated that they consider this to be a human rights situation in their information pamphlet "The Right to Adequate Housing".
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FS21_rev_1_Housing_en.pdf
"The obligation to protect
The obligation to protect requires States to prevent third parties from interfering with the right to adequate housing. States should adopt legislation or other measures to ensure that private actors—e.g., landlords, property developers, landowners and corporations—comply with human rights standards related to the right to adequate housing. States should, for instance, regulate the housing and rental markets in a way that promotes and protects the right to adequate housing; guarantee that banks and financial institutions extend housing finance without discrimination; ensure that the private provision of water, sanitation and other basic services attached to the home does not jeopardize their availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality; ensure that third parties do not arbitrarily and illegally withdraw such services; prevent discriminatory inheritance practices affecting women’s access to and control over housing, land and property; ensure that landlords do not discriminate against particular groups; ensure that private actors do not carry out forced evictions."
Yet we are trumpeting the rights of the foreign buyer to buy housing in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland yet, maligning those who would be forced into impoverishment by those same foreign buyers.
It is an unjust situation when the rights of foreigners are being touted over the rights of Canadians.
If Canadian law-makers and realtors cared about the fact that we are selling Canada out from under our children, then there would be wide-spread support for a ban on foreign buyers and restrictions put in place.
After all the UN has indicated that they consider this to be a human rights situation in their information pamphlet "The Right to Adequate Housing".
http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FS21_rev_1_Housing_en.pdf
"The obligation to protect
The obligation to protect requires States to prevent third parties from interfering with the right to adequate housing. States should adopt legislation or other measures to ensure that private actors—e.g., landlords, property developers, landowners and corporations—comply with human rights standards related to the right to adequate housing. States should, for instance, regulate the housing and rental markets in a way that promotes and protects the right to adequate housing; guarantee that banks and financial institutions extend housing finance without discrimination; ensure that the private provision of water, sanitation and other basic services attached to the home does not jeopardize their availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality; ensure that third parties do not arbitrarily and illegally withdraw such services; prevent discriminatory inheritance practices affecting women’s access to and control over housing, land and property; ensure that landlords do not discriminate against particular groups; ensure that private actors do not carry out forced evictions."
Yet we are trumpeting the rights of the foreign buyer to buy housing in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland yet, maligning those who would be forced into impoverishment by those same foreign buyers.
It is an unjust situation when the rights of foreigners are being touted over the rights of Canadians.
