In the same week, two provinces ran two very different plays on cost of living. Manitoba's Budget 2026, tabled March 25, removed the provincial sales tax from all food sold in grocery stores, effective July 1. That means the rotisserie chicken, the sparkling water, the birthday cake supplies, the prepared salad you grabbed on the way home from work. All of it, tax free. Ontario's budget, tabled March 26, went further in dollar terms: it's wiping the full 13% HST off newly built homes priced up to $1 million, for a maximum saving of $130,000 per buyer, running April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027.

And BC? BC's budget dropped back in February, before either of those announcements. What it delivered on housing was, depending on your vantage point, either restrained fiscal management or a step backward. The province cut $1.4 billion in previously committed housing spending, paused the Community Housing Fund indefinitely, and posted a record $13.3 billion deficit. There were no new tax breaks for buyers. No rebates for builders. No matching program for the federal GST relief that already exists. The BC Real Estate Association's chief economist summed up the feeling on LinkedIn with a link to the 1992 Sloan song "Underwhelmed."

That gap, between what other provinces are doing and what BC is doing, is now the story.

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The Policies on the Ground in BC

To be fair to BC's government, they've been busy. The province has layered on more housing-related legislation over the past few years than most provinces have seen in a decade. The problem is the direction of those policies.

The BC Home Flipping Tax, in effect since January 1, 2025, hits profits from residential property sold within two years of purchase. The rate starts at 20% for sales within the first 365 days, then slides to zero at 730 days. It applies on top of federal income tax, not instead of it. Builders with genuine exemptions can avoid it, but ordinary buyers who need to sell early for personal reasons face a real burden.

The Speculation and Vacancy Tax has been expanded and the rates are going up. For foreign owners and untaxed worldwide earners, the rate climbed from 2% to 3% of assessed value for the 2026 tax year, and is set to rise again to 4% in 2027. Canadian citizens and permanent residents pay 1%, up from 0.5%. The federal foreign buyer ban, which restricts non-Canadians from purchasing residential property, runs through the end of 2026 with no clear replacement policy in place yet.

BC also levies a 20% Additional Property Transfer Tax on foreign buyers in Metro Vancouver and several other regions.

Every one of those tools was designed to cool demand and curb speculation. Some of them have achieved real results. More than 20,000 units have been returned to Metro Vancouver's long-term rental market since the Speculation Tax launched in 2018, according to the province. Rents in BC fell faster than anywhere else in the country in early 2026, down roughly 4.9% year-over-year, with Vancouver recording a 7.2% drop in apartment rents. Kelowna saw two-bedroom asking rents fall about 11% from a year earlier.

But here's the thing. Cooling demand and building supply are different problems. BC's tax toolkit is mostly about the former. And right now, the province desperately needs help on the latter.

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Where the Supply Side Falls Apart

Housing construction in BC is slowing. The developers who should be building the new homes that buyers and renters need are pulling back. A big part of why comes down to cost, and a lot of that cost is government-imposed before a shovel hits the ground.

Development charges are a major driver. CMHC released data in December 2025 showing that in BC's Coquitlam, development charges on a two-bedroom condo run about $62,000 per unit, the highest in the province of the municipalities CMHC was able to analyze. Vancouver wasn't included because its fee structure was too complex to compare. According to the Central Okanagan branch of the Canadian Home Builders' Association, municipal taxes, fees, and charges now make up roughly 30% of the cost of a new home in Kelowna. That's before construction costs, before land, before financing.

BC Budget 2026 did nothing to reduce those charges. It also added a new PST on architectural and engineering services, effective October 1, 2026, which will add costs to the very professional services developers need to get projects designed and permitted.

The Urban Development Institute put it plainly: it now costs more to build a condo in Metro Vancouver than 80 percent of residents can afford to pay. BCREA has warned that if construction continues to slow and demand eventually picks back up, the lack of supply could push BC home prices up by 27% by 2032. That's not a distant concern. The same dynamic played out after 2008. When demand collapsed, the pipeline dried up, and when buyers returned, prices spiked hard.

Meanwhile, Ontario just announced an $8.8 billion deal with the federal government that includes funds to help municipalities reduce development charges by up to 50% for three years. BC doesn't have an equivalent arrangement yet, though the province has acknowledged that development charge reform is part of the conversation with Ottawa.

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What the Comparison Actually Shows

It's not entirely accurate to say other provinces are simply cutting taxes while BC stands still. Alberta never had a provincial sales tax to begin with, so every housing transaction there skips an entire layer of cost that BC buyers face. Manitoba's PST cut on groceries costs the province an estimated $32 million a year — meaningful, but not huge. Ontario's HST wipe on new homes is a bigger swing, projected at $2.2 billion in total relief over the year-long program, and it comes with real conditions and a hard end date.

What BC would need to match Ontario's move isn't simple. BC doesn't have a harmonized sales tax system the same way Ontario does. The province collects its own PST separately, and coordinating a comparable relief program with Ottawa would require a different structure. That doesn't make it impossible, but it does mean a direct copy of the Ontario model isn't on the table.

What is on the table, and what BC hasn't done, is find a meaningful way to reduce the cost of building new homes. The provincial government has talked at length about supply — density rules, transit-oriented development, housing targets for municipalities. But the cost side of the equation, the taxes, fees, and charges that add tens of thousands to every unit before anyone moves in, hasn't seen the same attention.

The BC government has made a philosophical bet: squeeze out speculation, let rents fall, build through non-profit programs, and let the market gradually adjust. That bet may not be wrong. Some parts of it are working. But it's a slow play, and it asks a lot of the people who are trying to buy or build right now.

Meanwhile, Manitoba's July 1 grocery tax change will show up immediately in every checkout receipt. Ontario's HST rebate changes the math on new home purchases starting this month. Those are visible, immediate, concrete. That contrast, between tangible relief elsewhere and a "wait for the long game" message in BC, is what's making people impatient.

The question isn't really whether BC has done nothing. It's whether what BC has done is enough, and whether the province is willing to take the same kind of bold, buyer-facing step that other provinces just did.

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If you're buying, selling, or building in the Okanagan and want to understand how the current tax landscape affects your decision, the team at Coldwell Banker Horizon Realty can walk you through what it actually means for your situation.