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The provincial government is reviewing the foreign buyers’ tax in the Vancouver area and the interest-free loan program to first-time homebuyers to determine whether they have been effective in improving affordability, the province’s new housing minister says.

In an interview Monday, Selina Robinson said she and provincial Finance Minister Carole James will go over real estate transaction data in an effort to decide whether such measures should be kept, revised or scrapped altogether.

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“I don’t know that we have any plans to eliminate it,” Robinson said of the 15 per cent foreign buyers’ levy, nearly a year after the previous Liberal government introduced it for Metro Vancouver.

“There’s certainly enough data that would help us to understand its value, and so, we have to look at that data.”

Robinson said she understands the tax had some impact early on, but that is starting to slip away.