Canada had a more or less total stop to immigration until recently, and despite that Toronto managed to have another crazy housing rally earlier this year before vaccines were widely available. Before that, the 15% Non‑Resident Speculation Tax caused a brief scare until the market realized that it can rally just fine with bona-fide residents.

I'm not buying the "wealthy foreigner as the main culprit" story. Surely they add to the existing demand and it's always nice to have an external scapegoat, but there's clearly something bigger going on than just foreigners. I'm thinking continued difficulties to build housing without going through multi-year permit processes, most of the city still being NIMBY'd into low-rise SFH zoning, and the sizeable number of millenials both getting wealthy enough to buy into housing as well as getting FOMO from continued price appreciations.

But it's always nice to have a plausible explanation for why the innocent locals aren't at fault.

I agree, there is a ton of local demand and not enough building of medium density stuff people actually want. I was just saying that people don't want wealthy migrants buying homes, regardless if they are the true driver of the prices skyrocketing. Maybe wasn't the best example.