How transnational crime groups target Canada
‘It’s a crisis’: B.C. Attorney General David Eby responds to report linking drugs, money laundering, real estate
https://globalnews.ca/news/4155822/vancouver-model-david-eby-money-laund...
One of the reasons real estate prices skyrocketed in BC.
Let's see - who was the government in BC for the 16 years prior to last year's BC election, and which allowed this to happen!
How Chinese gangs are laundering drug money through Vancouver real estate
Criminal syndicates that control chemical factories in China’s booming Guangdong province are shipping narcotics, including fentanyl, to Vancouver, washing the drug sales in British Columbia’s casinos and high-priced real estate, and transferring laundered funds back to Chinese factories to repeat this deadly trade cycle, a Global News investigation shows.
The flow of narcotics and chemical precursors — and a rising death count in western Canada caused by synthetic opioids — is driven by sophisticated organized crime groups known as Triads.
The Triads have infiltrated Canada’s economy so deeply that Australia’s intelligence community has coined a new term for innovative methods of drug trafficking and money laundering now occurring in B.C.
It is called the “Vancouver Model” of transnational crime.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4149818/vancouver-cautionary-tale-money-laund...
Public inquiry may be needed into role of money laundering in high B.C. housing prices
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-public-i...
All of the above posted by someone who accused me of saying things that could be 'racist'...
To put things into perspecctive, roughly 40,000 homes per year are sold in Metro Vancouver, and given an average of 1 million per that makes the Metro Vancouver real estate market about $40,000,000,000 (that's 40 billion) per year.
Against that sum, the provincial government is saying that a few hundred millions of dollars spent by Chinese drug lords is wreaking havoc in the market.
For another bit of perspective, the BC Attorney General is talking about sacks of $20 bills. Well, how many twenties does it take to make a billion dollars? 50,000,000, that's how many. Pretty big sack. That sack would represent about 2.5% of the real estate market.
I'm perfectly willing to believe people are laundering money through BC's casinos. Whether there's enough being laundered to have a significant effect on Vancouver real estate is another thing altogether. And why the Chinese? Couldn't it just as well be the Hells Angels?
Of course there's an easy solution if in fact the government found the evil Chinese were totally disrupting the Vancouver real estate market. Just close the casinos. No more money laundering, no more evil Chinese real estate buyers.
What a crock!
You sound like you are still in mourning over the results of the last BC election. Suck it up!
In that I voted for the NDP candidate in the prior provincial election (Judy Darcy), and every election before that, it would be a bit strange if I felt dismayed by the result.
No, I'm sorry, but it is just the inherent racism in the implication that somehow evil gangs of Chinese drug pushers are driving up the price of residential property in Metro Vancouver.
I think it's pretty clear from the figures I posted (and which you're welcome to check, or find some other source) that the proposition it's evil Chinese drug lords driving up prices is 100% pure bullshit.
The one thing that is most responsible for housing prices here, and everywhere else, is the bargain basement interest rate. Trust me, you raise the rate to 15%, and house prices will come down.
Another cause, although it applies mostly to downtown Vancouver is simply there isn't any more land to build on. If you want to build something, you have to tear something down first. And that's not always so easy. The Woodward's building is a good example. From the time it was purchased (as an empty building) to the time the new construction was started was 11 years.
And last, and probably least, people want to live here. Vancouver has the most temperate climate of any city in Canada barring Victoria (but Victoria is on the island). It also has one of the most diverse populations. So demand remains high.
In other words, if the government of BC completely shut 'foreign' buyers (read Chinese) out of the market, I doubt it would have much effect on overall prices.
Perhaps what the NDP is trying to do is to gloss over the fact they promised 114,000 new residential units (over ten years) during the last election campaign, and recently announced the real number was going to be 14,000 units, not 114,000 units (over the next ten years). And they weren't actually going to build them, you know, they're going to 'partner' with privtate enterprise, offereing a subsidy of roughly $135,000 per unit, under certain conditions.
Again, just to put those figures in perspective, the number of housing starts in metro Vancouver in July of 2016 was 30,000 units, roughly double in one month the provincial governments commitment for ten years. In other words, the NDP government is doing dick.