The Vancouver Sun published an article on the amount of “dirty money” that has been used to purchase real estate in Vancouver. According to the article, the amount is paltry.
The thing is, is the article and the study it was based on, remotely true? According to commenter, Michelle Lee, it’s not even close:
As we all know, the $100 million dollar figure German quoted is exceedingly low and has already been proven to be low in another casino story which quoted at least $600 million dollars going through one casino.
And given that the criminals were blatantly able to launder $200,000 to $600,000 or more at one time, in plastic grocery bags no less, it’s apparent that a reasonable person would conclude that since this was allowed to go on for over a decade, more than $100 million dollars was laundered.
You can continue to argue that $100 million dollars wouldn’t make a dent in the Vancouver real estate market, but you can’t argue that we have an effective or efficient system of stopping any money laundering occurring within our real estate market. This was proven in a recent story where the sale of a luxury West Vancouver home was denied due to the US stopping a money transfer to Canada because of money laundering concerns. Canada did not stop nor investigate the incoming laundered funds. Canada did not investigate the home builders or the realtor who was involved in the failed deal.
They never come out and say what they mean. It’s the Chinese. They never say it. It’s always “speculators” and “foreign buyers”. They mean Chinese. Personally I think it’s local buyer’s and unrelated to drug money laundering.
Chicom money is always dirty by definition. They are Communist, and they are corrupt. Chicom is in effect a state run mafia. It doesn’t matter how they come by the money. It is still dirty if they simply took it from the people, rather than run drugs.
There is a Chinese saying, “the cunning rabbit has three holes.” The Chicom are just getting their third holes in Canada in case things fall apart in China. And it is the Chicom, the “absentee owners”, who drive up the price. The truly local buyers only suffer the consequence.
Every single lie and slander you have ever heard the left repeat about the Jewish people is a simple statement of fact in the case of the Chinese—their ugliness, their sexual immorality, their cheapness, their clannishness, and their delusions of grandeur to the effect that they are a superior race fated to enslave the world.
But please, let’s hear more from the MSM about how the “Siberian Mongols” of Russia are the reasons we can’t have nice things. Let’s ignore the real Mongols turning the Pacific Ocean into a pool of pig shit and discarded “bubble tea” containers.
My comments on the Chicom does not give you leave to post racist slander against the Chinese. What you said denigrated the entire Chinese race regardless of politics, and is hilariously inaccurate to boot.
To feel you can denigrate the Chinese because of the Communist regime is the same as denigrating the Russians because of the Communist regime they once had. Every single race has had periods in history where it was ruled by very bad people, and as a result did very bad things.
And I’ll buy none of your crap trying to start a Chinese vs. Jews argument. I have never, and I will never, say anything against the Jewish people. Full disclosure, due to an interesting assortment of circumstances, I was on the executive committee of Hillel when I was in graduate school. For a weekend retreat, I once cooked kosher meals for over forty people, half of whom was Hillel. For a Passover seder, served to at least a hundred Jews from the community, I sat on the dais with the rest of the executive committee.
I once served ham (and other meat) to a Jew. I told him it was ham. He told me to phuuuk off. Perhaps I sounded too much like his grandmother.
Vancouver has, for all the reasons cited in the article, always been expensive even before the foreign buyers and apparent money laundering (moving money out of the US in quantities over $10,000 without declaring it qualifies). Using the word “crisis” just plays into the hands of the NDP types more than anxious to save you from reality by enacting more legislation and regulation making it even more expensive. Pimping hysteria is not limited to environmental issues.
BINGO.
The crisis is the use of the word ‘crisis’ by pols.
One philosopher, whose name escapes me at the moment (Randolph Bourne?) P, said:
WAR IS THE HEALTH OF THE STATE.
‘Crisis’ would be an apt substitute for ‘war’.
Between the commie china men, the corrupt politicians, the corrupt Media, the Province is almost as bad as Queerbek. The city is unrecognizable from the city that I grew up in and getting worse. Pretty much every structure or landmark that isn’t related to the Indians, and a lot of the times because the Indians have been payed off, is being obliterated and replaced. High density, congestion, suffocating traffic, the place is a mess. British Columbia and Vancouver are a wasteland of corruption, large transient population rendering locals obsolete. The likes of Gregory Robertson, Darrel Mussatto, Krusty Klark and other foreign funded gangsters are obliterating the place… a real shame. Leftists love to destroy don’t they?
If the money buying the real estate is coming from offshore then we have a problem than can easily be solved. If it is inflation then the government of Canada is the problem. They may be the problem anyway.
Why on earth would Canada “stop or investigate the incoming laundered funds” or “investigate the home builders or the realtor who was involved in the failed deal”???
Do you not understand that part of those funds were “donated” to the Right People by the home builders and that realtor? Just how naive are you , anyway???
Western government today is one big steaming pile of lies, fraud, corruption, and treason. Across ALL national borders, and at every level. The exceptions, if they exist at all, are pathetically few and far between.
And it is your Only Ones who make sure it continues. As always, they will do WHATEVER they are told, as long as that paycheck keeps comin’ in.
For the truth about government unwillingness to do anything about crooked real estate transactions, just follow the money.
The feds, the provinces and cities are raking in billions via HST, land transfer taxes, municipal taxes, capital gains, etc. because of these grossly inflated property sale prices. There is little will to take any constructive action to stop it.
We must all distinguish between crime sourced black money, which is bad, and tax evaded black money, which is good. However, governments hate the latter more than the former. Never mind the Chinese, there is a ton of European “Schwartzes Geld” coming in to Canada because Euro tax rates are so high, and that money has been coming in since the EU was formed, and probably before.
Much of the world has reached the place where tax evasion has become a patriotic duty. Starve the beast. I fear this includes Canada, or is at least close. I have already liquidated some of my assets and moved them to the USA. The TSX is shite and the NYSE and NASDAQ are on a tear. I’m researching the lowest taxed place in the USA that is not too hot so I can move my own most precious asset there too. I’m afraid Justin and his Butt buddy will have to do without my tax money and my sunny personality.
Agree that much of the money coming in is dirty and governments are taxing the hell out of it. I can live with that to an extent. It’s like taxing booze and smokes.
Many of the owners are absentee which means they are not consuming government services and assets like transportation, schools and utilities. That’s also good.
So if you are a native Vancouver home/condo owner, you get to sell your house for 2 to 3 times as much as the rest of us and retire in a nice place. That’s pretty damn good.
If you are whining because you cannot afford a place to live in Vancouver well go live somewhere else ya dumb sh!t. Take control of your life and stop being a pussy.
These are excellent points. I might add that life in the lower mainland kind of sucks regardless of cost; I’d recommend living elsewhere if possibly just for that.
Chinese organized crime? What should we believe? It doesn’t exist or it owns the Liberal Party of Canada. Canadian cops are too busy chasing bikers for dime bags of whatever to be concerned with real criminals. The RCMP have brains that can catch bikers. They don’t have brains that can catch the triads.
1) There is nothing wrong with money laundering. It’s freedom from theft by taxation or confiscation of profits of victim-less “crimes” like drug trafficking, or just a way to get your money out of a state where it’s financially repressed (like China).
2) The quoted text, even if true, does not contradict the statement that laundered money is inconsequential to land values. Just because it’s being cleaned at a casino does not mean it’s being plowed into real estate.
3) Foreign money has nothing to do with Vancouver’s outrageous cost of living. It’s all down to various restrictions on development the most obtuse of which is probably the ALR. Death to the ALR. Contrast this to Calgary, where the city council just opened up more land for suburban development.
4) There is no such thing as a right to affordable housing.
It was Premier Dave Barrett’s NDP government who started the ALR (Agricultural Land Reserve) in 1973. No surprise there; socialist government loves to prevent the market from doing its job. Read about it. Fully half the farmland in the lower mainland imprisoned in the ALR is sitting idle.
Yup. Another sop to farmers by old-school socialists. Gordon Campbell was a glorious premier but not killing the ALR was his biggest mistake arguably.
On that note, Ford better start deregulating land development and opening up greenbelts to building stuff.
This is why I am real happy that Calgary just slotted more land for development. Druh Farrah was upset = bonus prog salt.
“Ford better start deregulating land development and opening up greenbelts to building stuff.”
Not much chance of that happening after he flip-flopped on the issue during the campaign.
Another ridiculous position he took, along with the impossible promise of balancing the budget without cutting government jobs.
1. The real money laundering in BC is from the local $8 Billion/year underground pot industry. This dwarfs foreign money. It will be interesting to see what happens when pot is legal.
2. Every year we bring to Canada 350,000 legal immigrants, another ~ 50,000 refugees and illegal immigrants, ~ 300,000 foreign workers and ~ 300,000 foreign students. Granted some of these people leave each year and some students are billeted but that means we need a lot of new housing. The most popular place for these people to move to is Toronto and Vancouver. The housing supply is not keeping up with this influx of newcomers.
“According to commenter, Michelle Lee, it’s not even close:”
But, I have no idea who Michelle Lee is, so why should we take her word over the editors at the Sun?
Lee may very well be on the up and up, or perhaps she works for the NDP government of John Horgan and Andrew Weaver.
The B.C. government was warned many years ago about dirty money coming over from China when the generals decided to get some of their loot offshore before the CCP caught them, but it was expedient for the Campbell/Clarke governments to ignore the warnings, probably for financial gain.
We are governed in this Province either by socialist idiots with a grade six education in economics, or the outright thieves of the Liberal Party. There seems to be no happy medium.
Unme says: “Another sop to farmers by old-school socialists”
Don’t blame the farmers; they didn’t ask to have their fundamental property rights abrogated.
When Big Gov becomes involved in any endeavor, you are quickly shown that little incidentals like property rights and due process are no match for a government’s determination to be a champion for the ‘Greater Good of Society’.
Vancouver is a great staging area for the Chinese slave trade to farm out everything for cheap domestic labor, to restaurant and sex workers for Canada’s limousine Progressive establishment.
Never think the Liberals will kill the golden goose.
Vancouver lies in the middle of the pack for world’s most expensive cities, as one might expect.
It is the land pricing, combined with pressure for building trades and goods driving the market more than anything. Vancouver Island is experiencing some pressure as well, as baby boomer’s arrive and compete for housing. In the Island’s second largest city, a five acre ocean view property with TWO very nice homes just sold for slightly more than $1M, which MIGHT get you an old fixer-upper in a lousy neighbourhood in Vancouver.
But for some reason Vancouver is the magnet for people. I’ve seen Vancouver grow from 400K to more than 2M in the GVRD and while all of them really want a yard and a white picket fence, they’re having to expect living in a ninth floor condo with a murphy bed.