Last call for poppies; debate over Canada’s foreign-buyer ban

A newsletter from a fellow Canadian organization in the Bay Area.


Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Program News

• Reminder: Get your 2026 Remembrance poppy

News from Canada

• Canadian Studies affiliates weigh in on lifting of foreign-buyer ban for new homes

Upcoming Events

• The Canadian Transition from Whaling to Whale Watching

PROGRAM NEWS

Reminder: Get Your 2026 Remembrance Poppy

Still need a poppy for Remembrance Day this Wednesday? In partnership with Royal Canadian Legion US Branch #25, the Canadian Studies Program is proud to serve as an official distributor of remembrance poppies. Visitors may pick up poppies at our office in 213 Philosophy Hall on the UC Berkeley campus, weekdays between 9 am-5 pm. While the poppies are free, the Legion gratefully accepts donations to its Poppy Fund, which directly supports Canadian veterans and their families. You can also create a digital poppy honoring a loved one at MyPoppy.ca.

NEWS FROM CANADA

Canadian Studies Affiliates Weigh in on Lifting of Foreign-Buyer Ban for New Homes

Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that his government planned to partially lift a ban on foreign purchases of residential property in Canada to encourage new housing development. The move has sparked debate among experts, who are divided over its potential effects on the country’s housing prices.

An article published on Saturday in the Toronto Star asked two Canadian Studies affiliates with expertise in housing and urban planning to weigh in on the proposed changes.

The national foreign-buyer ban was implemented under Prime Minister Trudeau in 2023. Supporters argued that the ban would help rein in Canada’s soaring housing costs by preventing foreign entities from purchasing Canadian homes as investment vehicles. Carney’s proposal would extend the ban on foreign buyers purchasing existing housing stock, but allow them to buy new construction. The move follows several years of declining home prices, with a particularly sharp drop in sales of new homes and condos. This has led to the cancellation of many housing projects in Canada’s largest cities.

Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto and a professor emerita of City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, is quoted as saying that the government’s focus on foreign buyers was always misguided. She argues that the more equitable approach would be to focus on investment properties. “If we are trying to attack financialization, why aren’t we attacking where it is mostly concentrated, which is among Canadians, not foreigners?”

The tendency to blame foreigners for high housing prices is also central to the research of Taesoo Song, a former Canadian Studies Hildebrand Fellow who was also interviewed for the article. Song, now an assistant professor at Virginia Tech, received his Hildebrand Fellowship to study the effect of foreign-buyer taxes in BC and Ontario. He published the results of his research last year.

Song argues that the focus on foreign investors had racist, xenophobic, and anti-immigrant undertones, given its focus on overseas Chinese investors. His report noted that four-fifths of investor-owned properties in Canada belonged to Canadians. If the government was concerned about housing prices, it could have broadly attacked speculation without targeting noncitizens. Blaming foreigners, he argued, allowed the government to avoid addressing structural problems in Canada’s housing market or angering domestic investors and homeowners.

Photo of Toronto by Dillan Payne on Wikimedia Commons.

UPCOMING EVENTS

The Canadian Transition from Whaling to Whale Watching

Wed., Nov. 18 | 12:30 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP

Despite the International Whaling Commission’s establishment of a moratorium on commercial whaling in the 1980s, some countries and Indigenous communities continue to take part in the practice commercially, for research, or subsistence. Whaling is a centuries-long practice whose data baseline is often set without deep historical consideration, and whale watching has taken the legacy of these human-cetacean relations, rebranded it, and brought it into public view through the lens of conservation and sustainability. One recommendation the IWC makes to shift cultural perceptions and economic viability of what it deems “putting the cetacean population to use” is to transition whaling into a whale watching industry. This highlights the inherent reliance on capitalistic drivers to incentivize international compliance.

 

This study explores the historical trajectory of whaling to whale watching, and investigates arguments regarding their compatibility and continuity within Canadian contexts. It also seeks to elucidate how international nongovernmental organizations have mobilized whale watching as a new purveyor of conservation education, the realistic ability of community-based transitions to an industry highly reliant on tourism, and the ecological implications of whale watching as a capital-driven industry. By honing in on Canadian participation in both the whaling and whale watching industries, this study will frame a global issue through commercial and Indigenous Canadian and First Nations perspectives. By assessing centuries-long global whaling industries and investigating the fairly new IWC whale watching transition agenda, this historical analysis transcends maritime boundaries to interrogate the realities of imposing strict top-down regulations and expectations on communities whose ability to implement them may be limited or nonexistent.

About the Speaker

Sophia Chapple is a PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin. She is one of four PhD students on the Life in the Currents Project, which seeks to better understand the interplay between marine extraction, ecosystem dynamics, and global climate change by combining methodologies and expertise from computer engineering, zoology, physics, and history. She is particularly interested in the human experience of the early modern climatic cooling phenomenon known as the Little Ice Age, and questions whether coastal communities turned to the sea to alleviate terrestrial subsistence pressures, and in what capacity they were able to do so. Her PhD thesis focuses on community resilience and the experiences of marginalized people in early modern Scotland, but her background in political science and work as a research assistant with 4OCEANS has allowed her to expand her scope beyond her typical temporal and spatial boundaries in order to trace specific historical narratives through to the present day.

Canadian Studies Program

213 Philosophy Hall #2308

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Canadian Studies Program | Univ. of California, Berkeley 213 Philosophy Hall #2308 | Berkeley, CA 94720 US

Announcing the Canada Remembers Challenge! // Lancement du Défi Le Canada se souvient!

An item from the folks at Veterans Affairs Canada that may be of interest to any of our members who are educators or have educators in their family.


Salute! November 2026

A newsletter from Veterans Affairs Canada that may be of interest to members.


The latest issue of Salute! is now available.
Read Salute! online

Highlights of the November 2026 edition:

2026 Veterans’ Week poster

Veterans’ Week 2026 – Importance of remembrance

Every year from November 5 to 11, Canadians mark Veterans’ Week, a time to reflect on the service, sacrifice and stories of those who have worn Canada’s military uniforms. But have you ever stopped to consider why Remembrance Day remains so important nearly a century later?

Read more about the importance of remembrance.

Canadian Veteran cancer research recognized internationally

Research led by Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) and the Department of National Defence (DND) is helping us better understand the health of Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel and Veterans. This important work is now gaining international attention.

Read more about this important research.

Veteran employer recognition initiative launched

Many employers have taken important steps in supporting Veteran employment. It’s time to give these organizations a meaningful designation, while encouraging them to share their best practices and further develop Canada’s ecosystem of Veteran Ready employers.

Read more about the Veteran employer recognition initiative.

Let us know what you think about Salute! by emailing us.

Sincerely,

Salute! Team

Veterans Affairs Canada

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Veterans Affairs Canada

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Legion Announces Financial Support Following CFB Wainwright Tragedy

An announcement from Dominion Command related to the Canadian Forces tragedy last month.


Veterans Day Interfaith Service – Presidio Chapel – November 11, 2026 at 11 am

A reminder of this event that may be of interest to members in the San Francisco area.