A problem that bothers me is high prices of real-estate on the west-coast of Canada due to money laundering, tax avoidance, and governmental complacency. How can I address this using tech?
If you have a hammer and can't find any nails, looking around for other things to hit is unlikely to be a productive activity.
You've identified a serious, complex issue and you care about improving the situation. That's an excellent beginning. Go to your local library and find a book on systems thinking/analysis such as Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. Start to understand how all the pieces fit together and what sort of changes will help and what will make the problem worse (you will be surprised!). Your tech experience will be extremely helpful here.
You should be looking for something significantly smaller in scope, too.
You've distilled the problem down to "money laundering, tax avoidance, and governmental complacency" but do other issues like zoning, foreign investment, lack of suitable space, etc contribute?
While it's possible to solve problems in fields that you don't work in, it's less common. If you want to affect real-estate prices on the West coast of Canada, you should dive into the real estate industry and most likely some obvious inefficiencies will pop out that can be solved.
sudo ./join_a_party.sh && sudo ./get_elected.rb && sudo ./change_law.sh