Canada tax agency reveals secret study linking home prices to millionaire migration, five years after freedom-of-information request

The 1996 study found rich migrants made more than 90 per cent of luxury purchases in two Vancouver municipalities while declaring refugee-level incomes

A freedom-of-information expert said the study could have swayed the city’s notoriously unaffordable housing market, and delaying its release was a ‘tragedy’

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The Canada Revenue Agency’s response to a 2016 freedom-of-information request on housing prices was received by the South China Morning Post after five years. Photo: Ian Young

Published: 4:30am, 31 Aug 2021Updated: 4:26am, 2 Sep 2021

Canada’s tax agency has released details of a secret investigation by its auditors linking millionaire migration and suspected tax cheating to high home prices in Vancouver, now one of the world’s most unaffordable cities, after taking five years to fulfil a freedom-of-information request to hand over the material.

The response to the South China Morning Post’s request, lodged on August 30, 2016, arrived by mail this August 17, a delay that a freedom-of-information expert called a “tragedy” and “troubling”, given the importance of the material.

The documents confirm the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) knew 25 years ago that wealth migration and foreign money were playing a vast role in Vancouver’s luxury housing market, and that government millionaire migration schemes appeared connected to systematic tax abuse, with participants declaring refugee-level incomes.

But the process was allowed to continue for decades before the lucrative immigration programmes behind the phenomenon were halted in recent years, for the reasons identified by auditors so long before.

The programmes were dominated by Hongkongers and Taiwanese in the 1990s, then mainland Chinese millionaires from about 2001.

The Canada Revenue Agency’s response to a 2016 freedom-of-information request was received by the South China Morning Post after five years. Photo: Ian Young

It is the first time the CRA has acknowledged the existence of the 1996 study, which a CRA whistle-blower said was covered up then ignored by bosses.