"supply 100, demand 99, price goes down. Supply 100, deman 101, price goes up."
5% isn't a lot, but it could have a disproportionate impact.
Housing isn't a federal responsibility, so the provinces are more to blame for the crisis. Ontario just totally whiffed implementing a report on how to reduce housing costs, so I expect the problem to continue.
I don’t feel this is broadly true. I just watched a friend jump though ridiculous hoops and inefficient bureaucracies to get her PR. Is there a particular method for getting a PR that you feel is too easy?
In particular, there has been pretty widespread abuse of investor visas, region-specific incentives, and student work visas. Investor visas have an extremely poor economic return, and most of the people who benefit from regional programs immediately move to the GTA. There are also a plethora of degree mill community colleges that count as "Canadian postsecondary institutions" for immigration purposes. In reality, their students do a few hours of academic work a week to keep their student work visa and moonlight as a trucker or in some other blue-collar field.
Canada's approach to immigration, with over 400k people last year, is to take whoever as long as it keeps wages down and property prices up.
Also, if you look at the 5% in different ways, it becomes more significant. In your neighbourhood across Canada, 1 in 20 of the houses is owned by a foreigner. Now if you concentrate that in to Vancouver and Toronto... lets say 1 in 10 is owned by a foreigner... really starting to have an impact.