Note, the post is an interview with the head of Transparency International, who got data from 1.4 million transactions from the main land and mortgate registries in Ontario.
The article isn't just some opinion about "foreign buyers," with racist undertones, there is a real pattern and data.
They found Toronto matches matches markets around the world that real estate is being bought by companies, with cash, and through unregulated lenders. Given their general agenda, they have conflated holding companies with all foreign companies, and they are suspicious of private enterprise in general, but as a stopped clock they appear right on this issue.
Their transparency issue is real money laundering for a change instead of capital flight, and even though I don't care much for their usual agenda, for them to criticize the housing market in Canada is accurate.
Casual BBQ conversations in Toronto are as likely to be about real estate prices as they are to talk about how many of the neighbourhood businesses are foreign money laundering operations. It's an open secret, and most milenials are priced out of the cities they grew up in. Not only are investment banks churing real estate (see Blackrock buying homes search) with Fed driven liquidity, Canada's political parties forfeited their national focus, and instead spend their time courting foreign leaders and their diaspora networks to get dodgy campaign funding sources and voting blocs. The parties realized it's easier to raise money from and pay off constituencies to stay in power in foreign countries to work votes here because there is no transparency once aid, loans, financing, and other money vehicles leave the country.
The logic appears to be, "why should our globally elite and governing classes be subject to the opinions of working class people we disagree with in these mere nations when we can just import people and money dependent on our policies, both from educated and wealthy and poor dependent classes, and then manage them to keep us power." It's post-national policy. The parties run offense by calling everyone they disagree with racists, and the whole thing is absolutely rotten. A big part of that is attracting capital flight from other countries into assets like real estate and lax beneficial owner enforcement and turning a blind eye to it in return for political support.