Canadians are outraged that Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis wants Canadians to face a tax hike to subsidize Florida residents.
It’s outrageous, but it’s also a little rich. Canadians are angry at Americans for wanting to do something we’ve been doing to them for years.
A story from CBC’s J.P. Tasker is making the rounds. There is nothing wrong with it, no bias or misinformation, but it does lack some important context.
“Florida weighs ditching property taxes and sticking Canadians with the bill,” reads the CBC headline.
It then details a proposal, backed by DeSantis, that would see non-school property taxes drastically lowered for many homes if they are valued below $250,000 and occupied by a Florida resident. That means living there most of the year, voting there and having a Florida driver’s licence.
“I want Canadian tourists and Brazilian tourists subsidizing the state and making it so Florida residents pay less taxes. I don’t want to give Canadians a tax cut,” CBC quotes DeSantis as saying.
CBC’s article understandably focuses on Canadians, but this measure applies to everyone not of the Sunshine State. That would include the thousands of people from Columbia, Brazil, Argentina and the United Kingdom - all big foreign buyers of Florida properties.
Florida’s new message to Canadians…
I don’t get DeSantis. His state sees a lot of money come in from Canada. The latest stats from Visit Florida show that despite a slight decline, 3,174,000 Canadians still visited the Sunshine State in 2025.
In normal times, DeSantis, like most elected officials in Florida, would care about making Canadians happy. It’s not because Canadians can vote for him; it’s because they support the jobs and businesses of the people who can vote for him.
In the past, both Democratic and Republican politicians have worked hard to make snowbirds happy, to make them feel welcome.
Not DeSantis. He’s gone out of his way to do the opposite.
To be blunt, he’s been a jerk, made a ton of inflammatory comments and has turned many people off. I get it. He’s not making you feel welcome, but is this really something Canadians should be upset about?
Canada already does this…
Here’s the part many Canadians seem to forget: we already discriminate against foreign homebuyers.
Did you know that we have a federal ban on foreign property buyers in residential areas of urban settings?
That means that while I can go to Tampa, Orlando, Miami, Fort Myers or elsewhere and buy a house, townhouse or condo, it’s actually illegal for Americans from those cities to come and buy a similar property here. The Trudeau government instituted the ban, which started on January 1, 2023, and then extended it in February 2024 until January 1, 2027.
I’m not sure how stringently this is enforced, but let’s say you were able to bypass it and buy a condo in Toronto.
The Province of Ontario would hit you with a 25% Non-Resident Speculation Tax, while the City of Toronto would add another 10% tax on the purchase price. On a $1 million two-bedroom condo, that’s an extra $350,000 in taxes before you even move in.
Then, if this were a secondary home, a place that you didn’t live in full time, the city would charge you an additional 3% vacant home tax.
Vancouver has a similar vacant home tax, as does Ottawa.
British Columbia has its own vacant home tax, which sits at 3% this year and is going up to 4% next year. In the middle of the provincial election, NDP Leader David Eby threatened another tax hike on non-residents.
And if you ever want to have a vacation home in Nova Scotia, expect to get hit with a 10% non-resident provincial deed transfer tax.
So why is it so outrageous for Florida to do to Canadians what we already do to everyone else?
It reminds me of the line from the Bible in Matthew 7:5, where Jesus says, “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
The politics of making someone else pay…
What DeSantis is proposing is wrong and unfair. So, too, is what we have been doing to others for years.
You know what, though? These ideas, wrong and unfair as they are, remain politically popular, which is why politicians propose them.
Anyone who has owned a cottage knows there is a similar tension over tax rates between full-time residents and seasonal cottage dwellers.
We all want someone else to pay.
In Canada, we have banned foreign buyers, slapped massive surcharges on foreign purchases and increased their property taxes.
When we do it, we call it housing policy.
When Florida does it, we call it discrimination.
