According to Dan Scarrow, vice-president for corporate strategy at Macdonald Realty, he says the numbers provided by the real estate board does not reflect the trail-off in foreign investment. Rather than looking at the falling sales as an offset to a cascade of lower prices, he considered them to be “an offshoot of sellers listing more properties to take advantage of a hot market.” Although he does mention that there has been some fallout, at the very high-end of the housing market, he is still doubtful that the investment will slow down. He also speculates that increased tax sharing between Canada and China will simply make real estate investment from China more transparent, leading to “more money coming out of China, rather than less,” he says.
Moreover an article by immigration.ca lists a number of factors behind the continuing inflow of investor immigrants into the British Columbia, or more specifically Metro Vancouver. For one, under the program the candidates were given up to a year to activate their PR after they had undergone their medical assessments. Moreover, there were several approved immigrant investors who had not undergone the medical checks at the time IIP was scrapped on February 11, 2014, implying that their arrivals in Canada could stretch to another year. And finally, there are also a few applicants who were granted residencies on or after February 11, but before June 19, when IIP was legally removed. It is predicted by immigration experts that most of these investor immigrants from the previous program would have arrived in Canada by mid-2015.
Moreover, in addition to this backlog of IIP applicants, Quebec’s still functional version of the IIP serves as a gateway for investor immigrants to arrive in Vancouver. Statistics show that between 2008 and 2012, 89% of the 27,490 permanent residencies were granted under the Quebec IIP showed non-Quebec residential addresses when they renew their permanent residency cards after five years. We see that despite the scrapping of IIP at the federal level, Quebec’s still functional investor program will contribute to steady arrival of rich immigrants into Vancouver. Statistics suggest that the total number of arrivals in BC may not even be halved but rather at most be reduced by a third compared to previous levels. Although the article does not directly undermine whether if the cancellation of the IIP is the solution to stabilizing housing prices, we see that it is not an immediate answer in restricting the number of immigrants.