Victoria’s mayor wants the province to implement a foreign buyer tax to help tame the city’s housing market and level the playing field between it and big cities like Vancouver and Toronto.

“Victoria, Vancouver, and Toronto are the most expensive housing markets in the country,” Lisa Helps said in an interview on BNN. “It doesn’t make sense that out of the three most expensive real estate markets in the country, two of the three have one tax regime and Victoria has another one.”

The city voted in favour Thursday of a foreign buyer tax, similar to the one implemented in Metro Vancouver. Once the vote is formally ratified, councillors will move to ask the province to implement the tax.

Helps says there are many options to tame the housing market, but they’re not able to put them to work themselves.

“The unfortunate thing for municipalities is those solutions are not at our disposal,” she said. “We have to rely on higher levels of government to help with the affordability crisis that we’re facing in our cities.”

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The latest data from the Victoria Real Estate Board shows the benchmark value for a home in March has risen 19.1 per cent to $790,100 from that time last year.

The number of foreign buyers in the region has risen from around 3 to 10 per cent following Vancouver’s foreign buyer tax that came into effect August 2016, according to provincial data.

Victoria has deployed several tools at hand to cool its market such as streamlining re-zoning approvals and fast-tracking rental buildings, but Helps wants higher levels of government to step in.

“We’re just trying to advocate for one small piece of the puzzle which we’ve seen work somewhat in Vancouver,” she said. “This tax is aimed at people who are buying properties, holding them vacant, waiting for them to increase, and then flipping them.”