The Hongcouver | A Vancouver real estate cheerleader crying ‘racist’? Don’t bother kow-towing in gratitude

Speaking as an ethnic Chinese new immigrant to Vancouver, forgive me if I don’t kow-tow in gratitude, as Ransford tries to hose down timely debate on the impact of foreign money here. When a rich, white political consultant cries “racist” about Vancouver’s most pressing issue of equity and social justice, in a city with one of the lowest median incomes in Canada, it reeks of the worst kind of opportunism.

Ransford devoted Saturday’s column to calling for more information on the phenomenon of foreign ownership before debating it. Until we have the “real facts”, he argued, we are working with “innuendo, cobbled-together best guesses, armchair estimates and uninformed hand-wringing”.

No sensible person would dispute that more information would be better. It’s a no-brainer. But Ransford is also seeking to shut down the current debate, branding it “idle chatter”, even though there is already plenty of data that points to the same conclusion: Foreign money has been the driving force behind Vancouver’s sky-high prices.