Grits hoping tax will soothe angry voters

Premier Christy Clark says she imposed a 15-per-cent tax on foreign home buyers after seeing new statistics showing rich foreigners were hyper-inflating the housing market.

But I suspect Clark’s governing Liberal party looked at another set of statistics, too: Polling data showing the Liberals facing an angry voter uprising, especially in the suburbs of Metro Vancouver.

The Liberals hold many closely contested seats in Burnaby, Coquitlam, Surrey, Port Moody, Maple Ridge, Delta and North Vancouver, where even a small voter tilt toward the rival NDP could see those seats change hands.

With housing prices spiking throughout the entire Metro Vancouver region — and the government so previously reluctant to intervene — the Liberals faced an existential electoral crisis in the suburbs.

In other words: If Clark lost all those seats in the ’burbs, she could lose the whole election next May. The polling numbers made it clear. “We had 79 per cent dissatisfied with Victoria on this file in Metro Vancouver, including 53 per cent who were very dissatisfied,” Insights West pollster Mario Canseco told me Monday.

The data suggested anger at the Clark government crossed all income brackets, meaning even high-income voters who normally voted Liberal were poised to punish the government.

The Liberals got a preview of that suburban angst in February when the NDP stole the Coquitlam-Burke Mountain riding in a byelection.

“Housing affordability was a big issue,” said MLA Jodie Wickens, who broke through in a riding the Liberals won in a walk in the 2013 general election.

Wickens said Coquitlam voters told her they were dismayed by home prices that had skyrocketed beyond the reach of working people with good jobs.

“I’m an MLA and I can’t afford a place,” said Wickens, who lives in a basement apartment with her husband. “Even well-paid professionals — civil servants, police officers, teachers — can’t afford to live in the community where they work.”

I asked Housing Minister Rich Coleman — co-chair of the Liberal election campaign — if he thinks foreign money in the housing market will be a big election issue in May.

“Not now,” Coleman said, insisting the government’s dramatic new tax on foreign buyers has been well received by the public.

“People are saying ‘Good on you. We know you had to do something. We know it wasn’t easy.’ ”

But the New Democrats say the Liberals acted too late, homes are still unaffordable and voters will remember how the government initially argued against intervention.

“They are in big trouble on this issue,” said Port Coquitlam MLA Mike Farnworth. "A lot of people see this for what it is: Electioneering. They have not defused the issue.”

The Liberals — after fiddling so long while the real-estate market burned — are fortunate they have 10 months until the election to convince voters otherwise.