Hell yes they should. Every city should. And expand labour laws to force companies to pay for some of it that would otherwise be coming out of worker paychecks. Make companies share the burden of sprawling development and car dependency. When companies decide to put their offices in Richmond and selectively hire people who commute from North Vancouver, it ruins transportation and the planet for everyone.
This might actually lead to housing prices dropping significantly.
This has been scarcely fulfilled promise so far, looks like this prediction has been a bit overestimated. I would very much welcome it but wouldn't bet on it.
It's understandable that this person has this much influence, even though it's not an elected position. But I do agree that the PBO tone and positioning is very worrying. There's clearly some agenda in there and the man felt he had something to gain in this biased report. 100% influence peddling, though this is usually hard to prove.
I appreciate the Tyee squeezing every possible angle against this but...
trading partners take the threat of climate change seriously and use carbon tariffs to punish other countries they see as free riders
The US and they would be happy to see the carbon tax go away, so they don't have "communism" nearby, and we know that "trading partner" for Canada means mostly the US. The odds of Canada getting sanctioned for backtracking a 1 yr old tax is negligible.
This is addressed in the article (A greening American leviathan), but I won't be holding my breath. Even if carbon tariffs has bipartisan appeal for now, let's see what happens when the time comes.
keeping returns below inflation will divert investors from the real estate market over time.
There are multiple types of Real Estate investors. We want to attract investors who build, who finance land development, infill, retrofits and so on. These will keep coming because the goal is to sell the labor of construction, and that can still be profitable. We don't want to attract land speculators or rent-seekers, these provide little value to the market.
They will HODL however if not presented with exit strategy. If they are allowed time to divest and exit - they will IMO
Investors (i.e. institutional/professionals, not amateurs) don't hold on to investments because they lack an exit strategy. It's the exact opposite. Investors get rid of assets as soon as there's enough information to say a loss is likely.
But in any case, I was discussing the outcomes under the hypothesis that home prices are following inflation, so the hypothesis includes the assumption that there's enough market transactions to put those prices under control.
This is just amazing