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VICTORIA — The B.C. government moved so quickly to institute its new tax on foreign buyers that it never finished a promised study into the impact of foreign ownership on housing affordability. And now it won’t reveal the cost of what critics say is wasted work.

The study was commissioned by government agency B.C. Housing in February, with what it said at the time was an effort to “examine the key factors affecting home prices in B.C., including land supply, municipal approval processes, the economy, interest rates and foreign ownership.”

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It was part of what was then a government plan to gather more data about the factors influencing skyrocketing real estate prices in the Lower Mainland and to what extent foreign buyers were responsible for driving the market out of reach of locals.

Finance Minister Mike de Jong had cited the research in his February budget as one of the ways government would better educate itself on what was driving house price increases, before crafting a plan to tackle the problem.