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“We are working on those details now, including all of the issues people have been raising, those are on our table, those are part of our considerations and you’ll see the responses and specifics come before the legislation,” James told reporters Wednesday.

The speculation tax would function more like an empty homes tax, because it provides exemptions for owners who put their second properties on the long-term rental market.

It’s a modified version of a housing affordability plan first proposed by academics from Simon Fraser University and the University of B.C.

UBC professor Tom Davidoff, who helped craft the plan, said the original goal was to tax people who leave second properties partly vacant in urban areas like Metro Vancouver, where the supply is scarce. “In a place like Vancouver, I don’t care where you are from, if you are staying in a place two nights a week there’s no way you should pay a bargain basement property tax,” he said.

The original academic housing plan, which the NDP endorsed in the election, allowed for local regions of the province to opt in to the tax, recognizing some areas, like the Gulf Islands, might not want the penalty. The NDP government’s version mandated the locations and expanded the second property exemptions beyond what the academics originally proposed.

Nanaimo-North Cowichan NDP MLA Doug Routley, whose riding includes Thetis, Gabriola and Valdes islands, said he took complaints from his constituents to James and received assurances they would be addressed. “The minister and her deputy both assured me the tax introduced in the budget, not to be completed until May, will be tweaked and designed in such a way that it achieves as surgically as possible its intended purpose to curb speculation in the housing market by non-residents of B.C.,” Routley said Wednesday. “The target is not B.C. residents who own a cabin.”