"With limited data, those who had their eyes open often had to rely on anecdote. But inconveniently for the real estate lobby, the inferential, and no longer just anecdotal, case was growing stronger and stronger. The report I wrote last year on Vancouver, for instance, which made the case that foreign capital was playing a major role, did not rely on a single anecdote. All the data it presented were carefully gathered, some of them by Canadian governments. But the evidence had to be pieced together to get a clearer grasp of the issue – including by eliminating other alleged, but ultimately insufficient, causal contributors.<p>When the B.C. government finally collected data, then, it was no surprise that the amount of “foreign citizen buying,” about 13 per cent, in Vancouver was much more than the 3 to 5 per cent estimated by the real estate industry."<p>"Why did speculative buying and total sales suddenly pick up in 2014–15 after a few years of stability? The obvious explanation is that capital flight from China acted as a catalyst."<p>Josh Gordon: It's all the fault of the foreigners.<p>Government: But they only make up 13% of the buyers.<p>Josh Gordon: Ok, foreigners only make 13% of the buyers but they're a CATALYST.<p>Um ok, so no one else is to blame?