I posted this in the other thread before I saw you had made this one. Reposting it for relevance here.
If you really wanted to discourage foreign ownership you could charge foreigners higher property taxes. Florida does this with the "Homestead exemption" where properties owned by full time Florida residents get a property tax discount.
On the other hand, foreigners buying real estate puts a lot of money into Canadian hands. The sellers get more than they would have, the real estate industry (agents, mortgage providers, renovators, etc) are all better off, and the gov't gets more taxes (withholding tax on foreign owned property).
It might force young people into renting instead of buying, but at current BC prices that might be a blessing for them, not a curse.
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