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“I remember I had this neighbour who was Portuguese,” said Thompson, who was a Caledon councillor for 11 years before becoming mayor two years ago. “He said to me, ‘For 20 generations back in Portugal, we all lived and rented houses in town. We had our sheep and our goats and our cattle.’ He said to me, ‘I was the first one ever to have a home.'”

That dream of home ownership is central to the escalating prices in Canada’s housing market, especially in larger cities such as Toronto where immigrants tend to settle.

Even though worries about so-called foreign buyers inflating prices dominate some discussions about runaway housing prices, the housing boom is more likely being driven by new immigrants looking to get a piece of that Canadian dream. It’s a mentality that says home ownership is a sign you have made it.

How much foreign buyers — often really just speculators — have entered the Canadian market is a hot topic

Canada has a home ownership rate of about 70 per cent, one of the highest in the world, and immigrants are buying in. A report from real estate consulting firm Altus Group Ltd. in January found that immigrants — defined as someone whose country of origin is not Canada — are purchasing one out of every two new homes in the GTA.

Matthew Boukall, senior director, Residential Products, Data Solutions, at Altus Group, said demand could get even stronger as the federal Liberals boost immigration totals from the annual base target of 260,000 that existed from 2011 to 2016.

“The Liberal government has announced their immigration targets will increase to 300,000 per year. The fact that half of our new home market is going to new immigrants and we are going to get (more) immigrants to Canada bodes well for the new housing market,” said Boukall, noting Toronto gets about 30 per cent of those immigrants every year.