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VICTORIA — B.C.’s finance minister will unveil new exemptions and rebates for the foreign buyer tax on Metro Vancouver real estate this week.

International citizens with work permits, who pay taxes in B.C., won’t have to pay the foreign buyer surcharge. That’s a bid to recruit high-tech workers from the United States. And foreign nationals who were hit with the 15 per cent foreign buyer tax on their real estate, but then months later become Canadian citizens, could get a rebate.

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But if you think the changes are an acknowledgment from the Liberals that the bombshell tax on foreigners last year was crafted too hastily, reached too far, had too many unintended consequences, or did too little to fix home prices in the region — well, think again.

“The tax on foreign purchasers in British Columbia has done exactly what the government and what citizens hoped it would do, and that is slow down the tremendous growth in the cost of housing in the Lower Mainland,” declared Premier Christy Clark in the legislature last week.