Calls for a public inquiry on money laundering are mounting in British Columbia following the release of two reports that revealed the extent of the problem in the province \u2013 but a former B.C. attorney general is urging officials to set clear goals and a fixed timeline before an inquiry is launched.<\/p>\n
The reports revealed that more than $7 billion was laundered in B.C. in 2018, causing the cost of buying a home to increase about 5%. \u201cOur housing market should be used for housing people, not for laundering the proceeds of crime,\u201d said Carole James, minister of finance of B.C.<\/p>\n
Read more: <\/p>\n
\u201cThe amount of money being laundered in B.C. and through real estate is much more than anyone predicted. Our government is tackling the housing crisis head-on and taking action to combat the money laundering that has been allowed to drive up housing costs for British Columbians for far too long.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, former B.C. attorney general Wally Oppal said that officials should establish set goals before launching an inquiry to avoid a prolonged investigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of good things can come of them, but before governments establish inquiries, they should first of all ask themselves: What questions need to be answered? Did something go wrong? And what are the powers that we\u2019re going to give to an inquiry commissioner?\u201d Oppal told the National Post<\/em>. \u201cThe other thing is you have to have a definite end line, otherwise it can go on forever.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Calls for a public inquiry on money laundering are mounting in British Columbia following the release of two reports that revealed the extent of the problem in the province \u2013 but a former B.C. attorney general is urging officials to set clear goals and a fixed timeline before an inquiry is launched. The reports revealed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":20806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21898,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8330\/revisions\/21898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}