This has the potential to be hugely devastating for Canada.
I am not much a doomsayer when it comes bubbles, but there are just too many indicators that suggest we are in some serious trouble.
If this issue is as pervasive as this article (and many articles) seem to suggest, Canadian banks are going to find themselves holding on to a lot of devalued Vancouver/Toronto real estate with little to no recourse.
Maybe Goldman Sachs and other Wallstreet banks had it right when they began shorting the Canadian real estate market over a year and a half ago:
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/ca...ting-to-happen.
This is just all too similar to 2008 with the US. Couple foreign buyers purchasing homes with Canadian bank's money along with any type of significant hike in interest rate on the already overleveraged Canadian population and you have a huge huge issue. This won't nearly have the same impact on a global scale, however domestically, this could be really bad.