Apart from my law practice, I work to improve public policy on issues that are important to our community (and interesting to me). Recently, those issues have included high house prices and natural resource revenues. I use these policy initiatives to experiment with tactics and techniques. Some of them have proved successful. I hope others soon will.
House Prices
Canada has a house price crisis because, for decades, we have used tax policy and obscure mortgage programs to encourage excessive investment in residential real estate. Now, our houses are expensive financial assets and our economy is woefully unproductive. I think the answer to the problem is more finance, not less. We need to build houses and house price markets.
House Price ETFs Can Help Solve the Crisis – Backgrounder
House Price ETFs – Presentation
Natural Resource Revenues
In the glorious years before the GFC, the British Columbia government made billions by selling oil-and-gas tenures to bullish proponents. After the crash, it gave those billions back by relaxing its “Deep Well Credit” program and effectively slashing royalties on public gas resources. Political pressure led to a public review, but the proposed “New Royalty Framework” would use opaque formulas to reduce royalties even further and would continue to subsidize natural gas production.