Mine was a short comment, and I actually address the point you raise, but I'll recapitulate it. Namely, if one is a foreigner caught buying a Canadian residential property, one is certain to pay $10,000, but may be forced to sell it, if the Minister and provincial superior court can be bothered.

IANAL, but between the two sections we've excerpted, and the already-posted, short law, it doesn't seem particularly well-designed, except as a temporary budgetary boost to the government.

> if the Minister and provincial superior court can be bothered.

I know that for immigration and citizenship cases, officers at the border are called minister's delegates in certain contexts: they do things that the law authorizes the minister of immigration to do.

It's not like the minister has to get personally involved. It just means the ministry is in charge of referring cases to the court, so they will create and office and hire a bunch of bureaucrats to do this.

Nobody suggested that the Minister had to be personally involved. The point remains that the only certain effect of the law is that every foreign purchase will incur a $10,000 fine. If the overworked courts deign to get involved, the property might have to be sold, again!

Given the government's storied, multilateral, multi-decade unwillingness to do anything about the housing crisis (many MPs and MPPs are landlords!), I just don't see this law as anything but a $10,000 cost of doing business.