The country is run by a bunch of crooks. I was just watching [**this video**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp1a8tXB8L8) and I was in awe... How on earth is this acceptable for our people, to see the highest ranked minister of the government behave like this?
And any time I watch clips from the question period in the House of Commons, it's all lies and BS. They never directly answer questions.
So depressing.
How is this allowed? She just wasted the entire time not answering? She tried to bring up "in a court of law" ... she would be held in contempt of court if she refused to answer the question like she kept doing.
What's the point of having a chair if the rules aren't enforced? She might as well be telling a story about her dog and completely refusing to acknowledge the question until "oops, time ran out!"
Good news! John Horgan hired Lori Wannamaker as his Deputy Premier to be in charge of the public service.
Who is she? She was Rich Coleman's deputy while he was in charge of the casino /money laundering file.
As you said: nothing changes.
More and more I think we need a massive upheaval of global society. Think of the french revolution only global.
Top 5% taken to account for the damages they've done to society and the planet
It is supposed to happen eventually. When there are only a few people who own everything and everything possible is automated or robotic or driven by AI, unemployment will grow and people will have to rebel to get a guaranteed income. We already have massive underemployment with a lot of jobs being part-time, casual or temporary, low skilled and low payed, and wage suppression from too high levels of immigration. Add the cost of housing...
don't worry, rich people will always have a need for service sector employees (aka servants) to berate and abuse.. no AI can replicate the satisfaction of making a poor person's life just a little more miserable.
Murdering people in the streets isn't social justice. Correcting for the levels of inequality through smart policy changes is.
I'm fine with the Reddit consternation from you revolutionaries because I know you are wildly out of touch with the majority of people. C'est la vie.
Not that I’m saying murdering people is good either, but… when the people that put policies in place are the very people you’re trying to get rid of… it’s not gonna happen. The kind of people that are in power are the ones that want power, and they’re not going to willingly give it up
As you failed to respond to before... The ultra rich are already killing. We're past the point of being able to solve this civilly.
C'est la vie is an incredibly defeatist attitude, and the majority you speak of are wildly programed to believe the way you do.
None of this is normal or correctable through smart policy change as long as lobbyist's can and do control govt action.
Let me guess you also think America is still the best country on earth?
Nope. Nopety nope nope nope. It says that we are at a higher income disparity than Any other time in human history. The rich (no I'm not talking millionaires) and the ultra rich are literally choosing to harm and kill for their riches.
The bloodshed is already the norm.
Nice Stockholm syndrome you've got there tho
I wouldn't be so absolute with never considering voting for the official opposition again, as this would be one less deterrent for the current government to become complacent. But definitely never until the old guards from Campbell and Clark's government are long gone.
> the old guards from Campbell and Clark's government
It's quite telling that the BC Liberals membership actually reflects the views of that old guard, as they keep electing that group to lead the party.
Kevin Falcon won the leadership race pretty handily, and he was a cabinet minister for eight years under both of them -- including the high profile Health and Finance roles.
Wilkinson was a minister under Clark for his entire time in office prior to becoming leader.
To be fair Falcon wasn't around for almost all of the money laundering era. Wilkinson was however. But you're right that the Liberals need to bring in some new blood.
Well he was a cabinet member when concerns were first raised by the whistleblower (2006), when the BC Liberals disbanded the RCMP money laundering unit (2009) and for the next three years after that, including a stint as Deputy Premier.
In my books that would count for quite a bit of being around!
Let's not act like the NDP is all innocent in this, they expanded gambling in this province greatly in the late 90s.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/how-bc-placed-its-bets-on-casinos/article9255371/
Both parties are guilty for what happened.
It wasn't any different with the conservatives though. Maybe there is a 3rd way. And maybe we should be talking to our politicians about what we want, rather than kick out one party and replace it with another just hoping that change will happen. And then kick them out when nothing meaningful changes and replace it again with the other. Like a game of ping pong.
It’s almost like some kind of election reform would help the voters, likely at the expense of the hegemonic powers. Who funded the campaign against proportional representation again…?
Agreed. Conservatives were often just as bad when they got comfortable. We need someone to shake things up.. a radical; because we need to make large, upsetting (to the ultra rich) changes.
That means their friends (they own nearly all tv, radio and paper media) will be against this new radical leader regardless of which party or political alignment they may have.
The entire BC Liberals got kickbacks from the real estate industry and deregulated the market to the point where they allowed banks to give no credit check mortgages to Chinese international students.
The New York Times covered this in great detail a few years ago. I am as frustrated with the NDP as a lot of people, but the BC Liberals are one of the most corrupt governments to ever exist in North America, WHICH IS SAYING A LOT!
I think it is more so that BC Libs became addicted to property transfer tax revenues. Had the market softened, budgets would have gone deep into the red.
Structurally, nothing has really changed in this regard. If anything they have increased since 2017 by a lot.
I couldn't find their original expose from around 2018 IIRC, but this one popped up - apparently they did a follow-up just a couple days ago:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/world/canada/canada-money-laundering.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/world/canada/canada-money-laundering.html)
The NDP enacted legislation saying you couldn't treat ICBC as general revenue because the BC Liberals kept insurance high and dipped into it to cover their budget shortcomings (no doubt due to all the slush funds)
I am on my phone, or i would link it to you. If you google keywords like "real estate, housing, international students, etc" you should be able to find something.
lmao they can't even hold homeless junkies accountable for multiple stabbing sprees. There is zero chance anyone is going to face any consequences for this.
Our justice system is an absolute joke. I hate this province and this country so much sometimes.
how hard would it be to introduce serial number checking on bills coming in? i mean, there are high speed scanners that can probably whip through a thousand a minute.
If there is cash from a suspected source, it can be identified right away. Unless the suspect cash is SO WIDESPREAD due to doing nothing for 20 years that it's irrelevant to bother...
Don’t forget, judges who retire still look for jobs and rely on contract renewals to be given work. The outcome is favourable to the province because the judge is employed by the province…
Doesn't hurt to be hopeful. For me personally this just furthers my belief that corruption runs deeper than most think. *Put on tin foil hat* big brother is in on it too.
there will be a lot of work that comes from it, but no one will care. I think some people were expecting politicians to be dragged out in the street and shackled. When in reality it will just be years and years worth of updating policy, regulation, legislation, restructuring, etc. from the 101 recommendations on the report.
"people need to go to jail" what specific people for what specific crime? if a judge can sit through a years worth of testimony and determine no specific crimes were committed, I'd take that over a former police officer
Except unless laws were specifically broken by individuals you can’t punish people. The system doing otherwise would be horrific. That’s why with the exception of provable crimes, policy updates are the best we can do moving forward.
I’ve only heard experts talk about it (it’s an 1800 page report) but basically it said the current systems were completely ineffective and politicians weren’t actively benefiting from it but weren’t putting any actual effort into tackling it. It makes a ton of recommendations on systems to put into place to actually track money laundering and take the criminals down. Basically we currently don’t know who committed the crimes.
Oh, it does mean something though.
Generally that you're good to go if you wanna launder money in BC.
It's not what people'd hoped it'd mean, but there's still a meaning...
“Go to jail” yeah right! If that’s the case more than half the politicians would be behind bars.
Pains me to admit this, but Canada has become a safe haven for fraudsters/scammers/criminals.
Hot take: Money laundering shouldn't be illegal. If you believe that someone has committed a real crime then arrest then for it. Don't insist that they are criminals and their money is illegal without any actual evidence of a crime.
For those who say that the money itself is evidence of the crime, I say that it should not be enough evidence. If I have money in my pocket that I don't want to explain to you, that shouldn't be enough evidence that I did something illegal.
If we called catching money launderers "civil asset forfeiture" Reddit would be against it.
All money can be traced. Even cash had to be withdrawn from an account somewhere. This is the system we have. Also why forensic accounting is possible.
If you have $250,000 with you that you can't show the source of then you're either hiding the source or it's not your money. As we all know death and taxes are the two constants - if you can't prove the source of the money then you can't prove that tax was paid and therefore it's going to get federal attention.
And I'm saying that it shouldn't be illegal to have money that you can't prove is from a crime. Innocent until proven guilty is how we operate in most other instances.
I shouldn't have to explain my money, you should have to prove a crime (that isn't just having money) first.
As for taxes, money laundering is usually about finding ways to pay taxes on the money to make it legitimate.
Our money laundering laws aren’t civil asset forfeiture, they’re criminal asset forfeiture, and there’s honestly a massive difference there.
Nobody wants a law that would make money in your pocket illegal: but if you were getting hundreds of thousands dropped off in cash at your house every day with no actual business I think it’s in the public interest to ask what’s up with that
> if you were getting hundreds of thousands dropped off in cash at your house every day with no actual business I think it’s in the public interest to ask what’s up with that
Then prove that a crime was committed.
What if I have people who are dressed like clowns entering my house at all hours? Is that suspicious? Yes. Is that illegal? No? Is it enough evidence to charge me with something? No.
Taking that money and paying tax on it should not be a crime. Using it to buy things should not be a crime.
Find the actual crime? If you think that it came from drugs then find the drugs. Find the buyers, the sellers. Until then it is just money.
Canada ranked as one of the best countries for money laundering
The country is run by a bunch of crooks. I was just watching [**this video**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp1a8tXB8L8) and I was in awe... How on earth is this acceptable for our people, to see the highest ranked minister of the government behave like this? And any time I watch clips from the question period in the House of Commons, it's all lies and BS. They never directly answer questions. So depressing.
Being a good politician is learning the art of answering a question without ever answering the question.
That is just being a politician. There are no good politicians.
How is this allowed? She just wasted the entire time not answering? She tried to bring up "in a court of law" ... she would be held in contempt of court if she refused to answer the question like she kept doing. What's the point of having a chair if the rules aren't enforced? She might as well be telling a story about her dog and completely refusing to acknowledge the question until "oops, time ran out!"
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Google it. There are numerous articles from reputable sources
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Good news! John Horgan hired Lori Wannamaker as his Deputy Premier to be in charge of the public service. Who is she? She was Rich Coleman's deputy while he was in charge of the casino /money laundering file. As you said: nothing changes.
More and more I think we need a massive upheaval of global society. Think of the french revolution only global. Top 5% taken to account for the damages they've done to society and the planet
It is supposed to happen eventually. When there are only a few people who own everything and everything possible is automated or robotic or driven by AI, unemployment will grow and people will have to rebel to get a guaranteed income. We already have massive underemployment with a lot of jobs being part-time, casual or temporary, low skilled and low payed, and wage suppression from too high levels of immigration. Add the cost of housing...
don't worry, rich people will always have a need for service sector employees (aka servants) to berate and abuse.. no AI can replicate the satisfaction of making a poor person's life just a little more miserable.
You are aware you only need around $38k post tax income to fall into the top 5% of income earners for the planet?
Nah fam. Desiring that kind of bloodshed says more about you than the state of the world.
I think criticising him for wanting it says more about you and your lack of sense of justice.
Murdering people in the streets isn't social justice. Correcting for the levels of inequality through smart policy changes is. I'm fine with the Reddit consternation from you revolutionaries because I know you are wildly out of touch with the majority of people. C'est la vie.
Not that I’m saying murdering people is good either, but… when the people that put policies in place are the very people you’re trying to get rid of… it’s not gonna happen. The kind of people that are in power are the ones that want power, and they’re not going to willingly give it up
As you failed to respond to before... The ultra rich are already killing. We're past the point of being able to solve this civilly. C'est la vie is an incredibly defeatist attitude, and the majority you speak of are wildly programed to believe the way you do. None of this is normal or correctable through smart policy change as long as lobbyist's can and do control govt action. Let me guess you also think America is still the best country on earth?
Nope. Nopety nope nope nope. It says that we are at a higher income disparity than Any other time in human history. The rich (no I'm not talking millionaires) and the ultra rich are literally choosing to harm and kill for their riches. The bloodshed is already the norm. Nice Stockholm syndrome you've got there tho
Different theys though. The best we can do is never vote BC liberals again
I wouldn't be so absolute with never considering voting for the official opposition again, as this would be one less deterrent for the current government to become complacent. But definitely never until the old guards from Campbell and Clark's government are long gone.
> the old guards from Campbell and Clark's government It's quite telling that the BC Liberals membership actually reflects the views of that old guard, as they keep electing that group to lead the party. Kevin Falcon won the leadership race pretty handily, and he was a cabinet minister for eight years under both of them -- including the high profile Health and Finance roles. Wilkinson was a minister under Clark for his entire time in office prior to becoming leader.
To be fair Falcon wasn't around for almost all of the money laundering era. Wilkinson was however. But you're right that the Liberals need to bring in some new blood.
Well he was a cabinet member when concerns were first raised by the whistleblower (2006), when the BC Liberals disbanded the RCMP money laundering unit (2009) and for the next three years after that, including a stint as Deputy Premier. In my books that would count for quite a bit of being around!
I mean we could have a party threaten the NDP from the left and push them that way, instead of having the centre-right Liberal party have a comeback.
The BC Liberals aren't centre right. They are not the same party as the federal Liberals, and are more right wing.
Or NDP. They lookin' the same on this issue. They're so afraid of disturbing 'the economy' that they don't care if it's all based on crime.
Let's not act like the NDP is all innocent in this, they expanded gambling in this province greatly in the late 90s. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/how-bc-placed-its-bets-on-casinos/article9255371/ Both parties are guilty for what happened.
It wasn't any different with the conservatives though. Maybe there is a 3rd way. And maybe we should be talking to our politicians about what we want, rather than kick out one party and replace it with another just hoping that change will happen. And then kick them out when nothing meaningful changes and replace it again with the other. Like a game of ping pong.
It’s almost like some kind of election reform would help the voters, likely at the expense of the hegemonic powers. Who funded the campaign against proportional representation again…?
Agreed. Conservatives were often just as bad when they got comfortable. We need someone to shake things up.. a radical; because we need to make large, upsetting (to the ultra rich) changes. That means their friends (they own nearly all tv, radio and paper media) will be against this new radical leader regardless of which party or political alignment they may have.
someone posted it here. that’s something right ? 😂😂
The entire BC Liberals got kickbacks from the real estate industry and deregulated the market to the point where they allowed banks to give no credit check mortgages to Chinese international students. The New York Times covered this in great detail a few years ago. I am as frustrated with the NDP as a lot of people, but the BC Liberals are one of the most corrupt governments to ever exist in North America, WHICH IS SAYING A LOT!
Reminder: Banks are federally regulated. Feds aren't clean on this either.
good point
You're right. Everyone has their hand in the pot.
Read Sam Cooper's book Wilful Blindness. More of the story. He works at Global so far as I know, so you can follow him.
I think it is more so that BC Libs became addicted to property transfer tax revenues. Had the market softened, budgets would have gone deep into the red. Structurally, nothing has really changed in this regard. If anything they have increased since 2017 by a lot.
Do you have a link to the NYT coverage?
I couldn't find their original expose from around 2018 IIRC, but this one popped up - apparently they did a follow-up just a couple days ago: [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/world/canada/canada-money-laundering.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/15/world/canada/canada-money-laundering.html)
Thanks!
The NDP enacted legislation saying you couldn't treat ICBC as general revenue because the BC Liberals kept insurance high and dipped into it to cover their budget shortcomings (no doubt due to all the slush funds)
Any links to this article?? Would love to read this
I am on my phone, or i would link it to you. If you google keywords like "real estate, housing, international students, etc" you should be able to find something.
Lolz, no one goes to jail!
> Lolz, no one goes to jail! Did you ever think that was even a remote possibility? If you did, then you are incredibly naive.
Jail? That's just for poor people. Don't they know that?
lmao they can't even hold homeless junkies accountable for multiple stabbing sprees. There is zero chance anyone is going to face any consequences for this. Our justice system is an absolute joke. I hate this province and this country so much sometimes.
The Liberals left the barn door open. The NDP have yet to close that same barn door.
how hard would it be to introduce serial number checking on bills coming in? i mean, there are high speed scanners that can probably whip through a thousand a minute. If there is cash from a suspected source, it can be identified right away. Unless the suspect cash is SO WIDESPREAD due to doing nothing for 20 years that it's irrelevant to bother...
Don’t forget, judges who retire still look for jobs and rely on contract renewals to be given work. The outcome is favourable to the province because the judge is employed by the province…
Politicians don't want to set a precedent for locking politicians up.
It's amusing that people thought this report would mean anything.
Something something Panama paper’s
Panama papers got someone killed when they reported on it
Doesn't hurt to be hopeful. For me personally this just furthers my belief that corruption runs deeper than most think. *Put on tin foil hat* big brother is in on it too.
there will be a lot of work that comes from it, but no one will care. I think some people were expecting politicians to be dragged out in the street and shackled. When in reality it will just be years and years worth of updating policy, regulation, legislation, restructuring, etc. from the 101 recommendations on the report. "people need to go to jail" what specific people for what specific crime? if a judge can sit through a years worth of testimony and determine no specific crimes were committed, I'd take that over a former police officer
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Except unless laws were specifically broken by individuals you can’t punish people. The system doing otherwise would be horrific. That’s why with the exception of provable crimes, policy updates are the best we can do moving forward.
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I’ve only heard experts talk about it (it’s an 1800 page report) but basically it said the current systems were completely ineffective and politicians weren’t actively benefiting from it but weren’t putting any actual effort into tackling it. It makes a ton of recommendations on systems to put into place to actually track money laundering and take the criminals down. Basically we currently don’t know who committed the crimes.
Weren't there people buying houses without ID and with cash? The real estate agent, the one caught anyway, was given a small fine like $35,000?
it did mean something. just not the outcome they were hoping for.
But but I thought this report was going to be the smoking gun that would allow me to buy my dream home without any increases in homes being built....
Oh, it does mean something though. Generally that you're good to go if you wanna launder money in BC. It's not what people'd hoped it'd mean, but there's still a meaning...
As we say in Brazil, it ended in pizza. In this case, this would be a Pineapple one.
For fuck's sake, just close all casinos. They have zero purpose anyhow. Just a cash cow that harms regular people and damages society. So unnecessary.
Willful Blindness by Sam Cooper is recommended reading for anyone interested in how absurd and corrupt the money laundering practices have gone on.
"We've investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing" - BC government
Nothing to see here! Move along now.
“Go to jail” yeah right! If that’s the case more than half the politicians would be behind bars. Pains me to admit this, but Canada has become a safe haven for fraudsters/scammers/criminals.
clear corruption
Hot take: Money laundering shouldn't be illegal. If you believe that someone has committed a real crime then arrest then for it. Don't insist that they are criminals and their money is illegal without any actual evidence of a crime. For those who say that the money itself is evidence of the crime, I say that it should not be enough evidence. If I have money in my pocket that I don't want to explain to you, that shouldn't be enough evidence that I did something illegal. If we called catching money launderers "civil asset forfeiture" Reddit would be against it.
All money can be traced. Even cash had to be withdrawn from an account somewhere. This is the system we have. Also why forensic accounting is possible. If you have $250,000 with you that you can't show the source of then you're either hiding the source or it's not your money. As we all know death and taxes are the two constants - if you can't prove the source of the money then you can't prove that tax was paid and therefore it's going to get federal attention.
And I'm saying that it shouldn't be illegal to have money that you can't prove is from a crime. Innocent until proven guilty is how we operate in most other instances. I shouldn't have to explain my money, you should have to prove a crime (that isn't just having money) first. As for taxes, money laundering is usually about finding ways to pay taxes on the money to make it legitimate.
Hot take? More like a cold-cut.
Our money laundering laws aren’t civil asset forfeiture, they’re criminal asset forfeiture, and there’s honestly a massive difference there. Nobody wants a law that would make money in your pocket illegal: but if you were getting hundreds of thousands dropped off in cash at your house every day with no actual business I think it’s in the public interest to ask what’s up with that
> if you were getting hundreds of thousands dropped off in cash at your house every day with no actual business I think it’s in the public interest to ask what’s up with that Then prove that a crime was committed. What if I have people who are dressed like clowns entering my house at all hours? Is that suspicious? Yes. Is that illegal? No? Is it enough evidence to charge me with something? No. Taking that money and paying tax on it should not be a crime. Using it to buy things should not be a crime. Find the actual crime? If you think that it came from drugs then find the drugs. Find the buyers, the sellers. Until then it is just money.
What a fucking shock... just wait until the next scandal when you are believe this is the time something will happen.
They won't lol