How Vancouver Became a Money Laundering Paradise [audio]
canadalandshow.com
canadalandshow.com
I can't imagine it can get more blatant than that
On other hand, this is such a double standard. In China, I couldn't even get a credit card because I don't have a Chinese ID number even though I had a job for 9 years + lots of money in their bank.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable position to take - don’t give loans to people who don’t qualify for them.
That is until there's a recession and all house prices tank with banks selling at same time. But those previous employees? Made redundant in downturn.
Who's fault is it for causing these losses?
> The only other option is not to give them loans at all even if they put up a high down payment.
Yeah, I don't see the problem with this.
You can get a loan with no credit score if you have the assets.
However -- I do fail to see the point on why you would put up cash as collateral for a loan. Just to retain liquidity?
I get why you would want to put up securities to get a loan, that is a no brainer.
From a micro perspective, yes. But a giant book of business relying on this model can easily expose unintended overleveraging in a sector that can hurt valuations regionally, such as China-US relations, more attractive offers elsewhere, etc. It isn't that simple.
Canada doesn't really have a specialized national police force - the RCMP's primary function is to be beat cops in rural areas of the country - and it has no equivalent of the SEC (the Supreme Court ruled the federal government doesn't have the authority to set one up). So the highly specialized capabilities needed to investigate trans-national white-collar crime just isn't there. It's hard to take an agency that primarily writes traffic tickets in Yellowknife and task it with tracing sophisticated international money laundering.
(I used to be chief compliance officer and "ultimate designated person" of a registered dealer.)
That's an excellent position to take.
Canada also has a problem with undeclared foreign income.
Paper work isn't even standardized, you aren't getting a W2, it will just be random stuff you collect to prove your income. And even then, the IRS still doesn't care where your money actually came from, just that it is all reported.
This is exactly what happens - it's not easy to get a mortgage without a permanent status (that 0% of foreign students would have). A crazy downpayment would be requested upfront.
I don't get it when people point out double standards when living in different countries as if they should be equivalent in both places.
Just because X country offers Y to Z people, why is it normal to expect another country to offer the same thing? Different country, different laws for different people right?
I do like that China at least tries to reciprocate on some things, like 10 year visa durations.
When I moved to the US from Canada, the banks couldn't access my credit file in Canada -- even though they use the same fucking credit bureaus in both countries! I had to give AT&T $500 cash just to get a cell phone account, and another $500 cash so my wife could have an account too... even though we had already bought our iPhones in cash -- we had no debt with AT&T. They literally needed a $500 deposit in case we ran up some crazy bill with long distance calling (text and data were unlimited).
With a lot of work, we were finally able to get a mortgage even though we were putting about 45% down. The bank issued us kind of trail credit card that they issue all immigrants. I ran into another consultant at a client site and we had lunch together. He was fresh off the boat from India and when he pulled out his credit card we laughed because I held up the same immigrant Visa card. Easier than China, ya... but it's pretty silly here too. How equifax here can't get my stellar credit history from equifax Canada blows my mind.
China would likely prefer that it be as hard for expat Chinese to get financial access given the sheer amount of capital illicitly flowing out.
However, the Vancouvers of the world want that money much like London wants Russian money. So they follow a no questions asked policy.
Of course, that says nothing about where the money came from in the first place.
I left Vancouver because this isn't going to end well - too much infrastructure depends on the laundering to continue, but the laundering is making it unreasonably expensive to live there.
Oh, and no I don't blame any particular other country. I strongly suspect a lot of it is income displacement to avoid taxes ... a move only particularly wealthy can do. It's not hard to find some arbitrary person who needs it somewhere, pay them to hide the trail and have them represent - or one of their agents - fronting as a student or the like. Much easier if they're not from the same country who this scam is being done to, or from, I'd think. (but that's pure conjecture on my part. See CBC radio documentary "Sold!" though for a much better precis).
This was during the era when all kinds of academics were being followed, threatened and censored and climate research was de-funded and censored. Harper was also publicly threatening CBC funding.
It's not just the poor areas of America that are suffering from opioid abuse. [0]
[0]: https://www.nj.com/data/2018/04/nj_on_record_shattering_pace...
Like drugs prohibition doesn't seem to work. It pushes these activities further into the shadows and generates deeper and less obvious forms of corruption. It also seems to drive socially harmful manifestations like the use of residential property as a money dump.
Maybe we could have regulated unregulated financial arenas with appropriate disclaimers and some degree of KYC to prevent the absolute worst use cases?
This isnt about homeless drug addicts with few choices in life, people that need protection. Money laundering, by definition, is done by people with money, by people with every choise in the world.
Another huge category is flight capital from authoritarian countries.
Finally there is a tie in with drugs here. A harm reduction approach with drugs would drastically reduce the amount of black money looking for a way to be laundered.
NO. Harm reduction in Vacouver at INSITE has basically done nothing. The area around the clinic is a thriving cesspool, worse than it ever was.
The data used to validate 'harm reduction' doesn't even help them: they talk about 'avoided deaths form overdose' as though someone od'ing in an alley would have died fro their od and not had access to ambulances.
It's not really that much more dangerous to shoot up 'in an alley' than in a clinic, surprisingly - you'll eventually have access to an ambulance either way and most OD's are not 'instant death' anyhow.
It's the practice/behaviour that kills, the OD is the instance.
The most obvious benefit is that users can get access to clean up programs etc. but there doesn't seem to be evidence that is materially working.
Vancouver has an entire industry of drug related 'harm reduction' approaches - and yet, the problems continue to thrive. It would seem those policies haven't made a dent, and there might be better ways to spend that money to solve the problem.
Expecting one program at one location to stop the entire problem is expecting a lot. The real question that needs to be answered is: Is it better to have the program or not? Other than space and a few staff, it can't be expensive to operate, especially when scaled out.
> The most obvious benefit is that users can get access to clean up programs etc. but there doesn't seem to be evidence that is materially working.
Indeed, the OnSite program is available in the same location. What better place to reach users than a program they'll come to everyday.
There's plenty of evidence that opiate dependence treatment works, and is cost-effective: reduced HIV infections (it's not necessarily the opiates themselves that kill you), reduced property crime, reduced deaths from overdose.
> Vancouver has an entire industry of drug related 'harm reduction' approaches - and yet, the problems continue to thrive. It would seem those policies haven't made a dent, and there might be better ways to spend that money to solve the problem.
But would the problem be worse without the current programs?
"We've spent all this money on health care and people are still dying, shutdown the hospitals!"
Anyways, I'd argue any worsening is triggered by the new availability of potent and cheap opioids that people can't dilute properly.
Nobody is expecting insite to 'solve the problem'.
But - it has to provide some material result - and it does not.
Moreover, there are a flurry of such programs in the neighbourhood, and entire 'self harm industry' of services etc. - and they don't seem to be working.
"There's plenty of evidence that opiate dependence treatment works"
Not arguing with that. The point is, 'insite' doesn't seem to be effectively doing that given the costs - and the negative attribute of supporting/normalizing drug activity.
"But would the problem be worse without the current programs?"
Time for a different approach.
The absolute worst part of the 'soft on drugs' approach is that police aren't willing to do go after people doing bad stuff right in the open.
That part of Vancouver is an open-air drug bazar and it has to stop.
While it may be rational to decriminalize drugs - it's equally rational to implement the actual law in meaningful ways.
It would be rational to have police walking up and down that street all day, making sure nothing illegal is happening - taking a fairly heavy hand.
'Breaking up the critical mass' of bad behaviour, breaking up social networks - this should be the first thing the police should do.
So many people get involved (or get re-involved) because it's easy to score, it's easy to hook up with the community.
Not allowing geographic critical masses or social critical masses to form should be #1 on the agenda.
Of course, drugs will 'always be available' but it's a game of Supply and Demand - and if you can put pressure on the supply so social and economic costs raise - then you can get less people involved in the game.
If anyone is caught in public, high on a hard drug - they should immediately have their name in a DB - and if caught twice, they should basically have mandatory counselling or they should go off to a clinic.
It's absurd that Canadians have to pay the massive price for easy and free hospital care for people who chose (and it is a choice in the end) to do self destructive things.
This way, there's no fear of jail or whatever for hardcore druggies, and frankly 'those who can handle their drugs' and be functional or whatever, probably won't face scrutiny - they can have loved one's and family members intervene. But many will be priced out, and many will get caught up into clinics which is a better investment.
'Harm Reduction' is far too close to 'turn a blind eye and hope that some will come into programs' and it's just not working.
That area of Vancouver could be cleaned up in a heartbeat if the city actually wanted to. The bazar would be dispersed and minimized even if only because of that.
Edit: 'harm reduction' policies are actually the opposite of 'harm reduction' - it's basically 'harm enablement' - it's just the stupid opposite of 'arbitrary tough on drugs i.e. 0 strikes - you go to jail forever'.
Also - it's widely known that organized crime have control of import shipping docs, it's absurd there isn't a hugely heavy hand on that, with tons of real law enforcement inspections. That this could knowingly exist implies a total failure of law enforcement.
That has failed miserably. By controlling supply of heroin, suppliers moved to more potent agents that are cheaper to produce and easier to import.
This is largely what has driven the thriving of the problem that you have observed.
Don’t underestimate the innovation and ingenuity of suppliers.
The inefficacy and harmful unintended consequences of prohibition have nothing to do with whether the culprits "need protection" or not.
If Opium were for sale in every corner store (even if it was safely packaged, measured etc) we would have a healthcare epidemic that would shatter society. About 10% of society would be addicted very quickly, another 20% would have some fallout pretty quick, and that's enough to take everything down.
Opiates are extremely addictive, to the point that doctors now give you the 'minimum number of pills' you need after surgery, not the whole bottle.
The #1 cause opiate problem is addiction to legal pain killers and it's not a 'street problem' it's a 'suburbs problem'.
So if the most conscientious, bill paying, regular folk in society can't even handle access to their regular pain killers, there's no hope for us otherwise.
And now with fentanyl which is wiping people out - the discussion becomes moot because it's just so powerful it's not even a debate.
Most hard drugs should be prohibited and that's just the world we live in. We give up small rights, like the ability to smoke heroin, because society at large can't deal with it, and that statistically probably includes you and I anyhow.
So maybe soften punishment or whatever, decriminalize, fine.
But I don't even think most 'harm reduction' works - in 20 years of 'insite' in Vancouver, that disgusting, drug ridden area is thriving in it's ability to keep people addicts and screwed up.
As for money laundering, it's easier than we think to stop, but the BC government is soft, inept, and everyone is addicted to the money anyhow. Specific requirements and transactional requirements for mortgages, registration of accounts, limits and controls at casinos (you cash out more than $!K you provide an ID etc.)
Corrupt money from Asia is Canada's economic heroin.
This is false. It is not trivial to get hard drugs. Most people have no idea how, and if they go that route it's risky.
If drugs were allowed to be in the corners store, you'd see a 100x increase in their use.
Drug prohibition keeps drugs in relatively small terms. Without it, it'd be as common as beer or wine.
Smoking has been decreasing for 60 years, despite being legal, and that's due to anti-smoking campaigns and growing social rejection of smoking. And nicotine doesn't kill a significant proportion of its users within five years the way heroin does.
Drug-use would be heavily discouraged if it were legal. Reducing use through social pressure seems to me to be far more effective than reducing it through legal punishment of those that buy, sell and possess it.
>>The #1 cause opiate problem is addiction to legal pain killers and it's not a 'street problem' it's a 'suburbs problem'.
So the problem could be that medical professionals are recommending people to use it, not that it's available on the street.
Legalizing it would eliminate the entire illicit drug market, and would significantly reduce the crime committed by drug addicts to support their habit.
The whole point is that it creates two money types - clean and dirty with extra steps involved and desire to spend their ill gotten gains which results in filtering processes which can drive other problems starting with it driving takeovers and inflating bubbles. It is perfectly possible that despite the harm this is still way preferable than treating all income as clean and tax admissions completely private for sake of right against self incrimination. Again not saying money laundering is right but that it may shockingly prove be better off for everybody if there is say a 25% tax dirty money conversion service. It is like the death penalty in heinous cases - it may be that a serial torture murderer really deserves to die but that the death penalty does more harm than good.