The B-C Real Estate Association says the province's housing market is staying relatively calm this spring,
The association says sales were up more than 15 per cent last month compared to February 2023.
B-C-R-E-A Chief Economist Brendon Ogmundson says activity is picking up, but home sales are still below normal and prices have been essentially flat since last summer.
Active listings are up more than 20 per cent over last year's levels as a result of slower sales.
Certain cellphone plans in Western Canada are not as cheap as they were prior to the Rogers-Shaw merger, Canada's competition watchdog says. Jeanne Pratt, the Competition Bureau's senior deputy commissioner of mergers and monopolistic practices, told MPs on Monday that before Shaw was purchased by Rogers Communications last April, the company was "a particularly growing and disruptive competitive force" in B.C. and Alberta.
The Liberal government plans to create a new digital safety regulator to compel social-media platforms to take action against online harms and remove damaging content — including child sex-abuse material and intimate images shared without consent — under penalty of millions of dollars in fines. Justice Minister Arif Virani tabled the long-awaited Online Harms Act on Monday, along with a suite of other amendments to the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Policy watchers are split on the value of British Columbia's upcoming provincial flipping tax targeting those looking to make a quick buck in the real estate market. Brendon Ogmundson, chief economist of the British Columbia Real Estate Association, says the tax could end up reducing the overall number of homes on the market while only applying to a small number of properties.
Officers have found a stolen car used to flee a deadly hit-and-run following a high-speed police chase on the weekend, and they continue to search for a suspect. The Honda Civic was recovered early this morning outside Edmonton.
A 32-year-old man is accused of stabbing another man in a wheelchair in what Vancouver police say was an unprovoked attack. Police say the 34-year-old victim had been outside a shelter in the Downtown Eastside over the weekend when he was stabbed multiple times in the neck, sustaining non-life-threatening injuries.
Minimum-wage workers in British Columbia will get a pay hike of 65 cents an hour to $17.40 starting June 1, a move the government says will help lift more people out of poverty. The Ministry of Labour says in a statement the 3.9-per-cent increase is consistent with the province's average inflation rate last year.