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Last week’s government data release, which was the most comprehensive study to date of foreign ownership of Canadian real estate, was just “the tip of the iceberg,” says the director of Statistics Canada’s new housing program.

The new year will bring the release of more data providing a deeper, broader, and “much more nuanced” look into Canadian property ownership, said Haig McCarrell, director of the Statistics Canada division overseeing the Canadian Housing Statistics Program (CHSP).

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Last Tuesday marked the first release from the CHSP, an initiative supported by both StatsCan and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The release made local, national, and international headlines, with the Wall Street Journal reporting the study’s initial findings “garnered global attention.”

But there’s much more to come, said McCarrell, reached by phone in Ottawa.

As Postmedia reported last week, among other noteworthy findings, CHSP’s initial release showed that in pricey markets like Vancouver and Richmond, one in five of the most recently built condos is owned by non-residents.