Canada's Housing Bubble

In Hong Kong, land is being auctioned to private developer. Proceedings go to the government and it is one of the main source of revenue. Clearly, a high price in housing benefits the government. Sure the government doesn't want any collapse of the market, for reasons beyond just revenue from auction. Still in the case of Hong Kong, government is a beneficiary of the rising housing market.

How about in Canada. Is the government directly or indirectly, taking advantage or being better off from having a housing bubble? Any opinion, comments, observations?

The Harper government is actually the creator of the bubble and is unfortunately also the clear winner of the bubble. The governments rise in the polls largely coincide with its economic policies surrounding housing. There was a window of opportunity in the years 2006-2008 when the american market soured for Canada to let the housing bubble deflate in a more manageable way. Instead Harper throw gasoline on the flame to keep the housing bubble afloat in an effort to secure a majority government. Now it is going to get quite nasty. The end result of this...

...likely a federal election in the coming weeks as Harper seeks to get another mandate before prices fall. He is an expert of sorts in using public policy to manipulate the media. As a matter of fact it is known that he wrote his economics thesis on the topic of 'how governments manipulate elections through economic policy'.