I’ve taken to listening to CBC radio as I drive around the area. Sometimes I listen to CBC while working in the shop art our son’s far as well. I enjoy the somewhat laid back approach, at least when compared with most commercial radio in the US. So, I usually have a cursory awareness of what makes news in Canada. Yesterday was budget day in Canada. At 1 pm (in the Pacific Time Zone), the federal budget was released with a bit of ceremony and flair. Much of the contents of the budget has been discussed and released prior to the official release of the entire budget, but budget day is the day that the Parliament receives the official budget proposal from the office the Prime Minister and begins its work of debating, refining and finally passing the budget.

The Canadian federal budget has been a topic of conversation on CBC for at least a week. Expectations were high that there would be items in the budget to address the high cost of housing in Canada. Like the area where we live, prices of housing have jumped in Canada. There were some areas where housing costs increased by more than 20%. If you are a homeowner, such increases are good news - your equity grows at a very fast rate. If you are not a homeowner, the rapid increases threaten your ability to have a home at all. The average home in Canada is now nearly $817,000, which translates to about $650,000 in US dollars. Analysts say that Canada has some of the worst housing affordability issues in the world. As a result Canadians were eager to see if the federal budget would provide some means of addressing the issue.

I’m no budget analyst, and I don’t know much about how the Canadian economy works, but I was interested to hear that the Trudeau administration has proposed a two-year moratorium on foreigners purchasing family homes. There are exceptions and I suppose that the details are very important, but the theory is that foreign buyers compete with locals for limited housing and that the foreign buyers are not likely to make the Canadian home a permanent residence, and therefore not available for Canadians to purchase. More foreign buyers means more competition for houses and prices go up. It is arguable that the number of foreign buyers is fairly small and the impact on the availability of affordable housing will be negligible. At least that is what commentators were saying on the radio yesterday.

The idea of a limit on foreign ownership of homes struck me as interesting because the community where I live has a fairly large percentage of Canadian ownership. In the 1920s as roads improved and access became easier, seasonal residents began to come to Birch Bay. The area didn’t offer luxury accommodations, but rather a place to get away from the city. The closest city is Vancouver, British Columbia, so by the 1970s the majority of the owners of seasonal cabins and properties in Birch Bay were Canadian. If you look west from the bay, what you see are the Canadian gulf islands. Birch Bay is actually north of the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island, which is the capitol of British Columbia.

We didn’t notice it much when we first moved here, but now that the border is open to nonessential travel and Covid tests and quarantining are no longer required to cross the border, the number of cars with British Columbia license plates has definitely gone up. A walk along the beach path reveals a lot of Canadian cars. It is easy to hear a gentle Canadian accent in nearly any business place, but that might not mean much, as language dialects don’t rigidly follow political boundaries.

In the early days, most of the cottages and cabins in the area were small and inexpensively constructed. People would acquire a lot and build a small cabin. A local historian reports that one of the oldest resorts in the area, Birch Bay Resort, had 12 small cabins in the 1920s. Those 12 cabins shared a single outhouse. Businesses catering to tourists including restaurants, candy and ice cream shops, trailer courts and rental cabins were clustered along the shore. These days most of those small cabins and cottages have been purchased and remodeled. Many have been replaced with larger four-season homes. The few cabins that remain have been insulated and upgraded for year-round living.

Our area, however, remains a tourist destination. According to locals, the population more than doubles on summer weekends. We haven’t yet lived here during the summer, so we don’t have much experience, but it is hard to imagine the sleepy village we know having parking problems or long lines at the grocery store. “Just wait,” the locals tell us.

The high cost of housing is an issue in the United States as well as Canada. A shortage of affordable homes means that people who are employed often can’t find suitable housing. We ended up in this area precisely because the price of homes is a bit lower than neighboring cities such as Bellingham. That lower cost is also attracting Canadian buyers. Although a daily commute across the border isn’t convenient, Canadians can gain equity by purchasing a house at or below half of the cost of a house in Canada. That means more houses that are not occupied full time. Here in the US, those homes can be rented as bed and breakfasts or vacation rentals, providing income to the owners. Those homes, however, don’t provide solutions to workers here in the US who are scrambling to find affordable homes.

I doubt if the 2022 budget will solve Canada’s housing woes. Policy changes are needed, but they have to be more dramatic than the symbolism of a moratorium on foreign ownership. The ban, however, appears to be popular in Canada and is likely to be included in the budget once approved.

In the meantime, Canadians will continue to purchase homes in our neighborhood. The good news is that they make good neighbors. After all, Canadians and US citizens have been living as neighbors in this area for a long time.