Invitation to foreign investors a dark legacy

There’s ongoing reporting and discussion about the severity of house pricing in several Canadian cities, with Vancouver and Toronto the two mainly affected areas reported on.

Its effects on today’s generation and many future generations to come deserves to call out the initial perpetrators of this dastardly political gaff and the dark legacy left by our past prime minister, Stephen Harper, with his failed attempt to invite wealthy foreign investors to Canada on a five-year tax-free bonanza. Well, they came, from all corners of the world, invested and bought, and then left!

Maclean’s Magazine even reported on this 2015 political adventure and said it was a failure.

I was naturally also interested in it because I had purchased a very expensive property in the Buckingham Avenue area of Vancouver at a very reduced price at the time.

Suffice it to say that all three levels of government — federal, provincial and municipal — have all desperately tried to gain some tax revenue from these very expensive affected properties and have been battling them for some time.

To change the subject, on the academic side of our own Lethbridge area, it is rewarding, refreshing, and a big congratulations to our longtime friend and educator, Tony Hall, who was given a reprieve for his wrongful and shameful treatment, and for his right to our hard-fought freedom of speech and expression.

The major domo of the University of Alberta was briskly asked by members of our SACPA group about the state of our good friend Tony Hall, and his answer was subdued and not too positive.

Let’s all keep fighting for all our hard-won rights and freedoms!

Frank J. Toth

Lethbridge