A report from the Globe and Mail in Canada. "Rohana Rezel is on a mission to shine light on Vancouver’s hidden real-estate market. Mr. Rezel, a senior software architect, is also one of a small group of citizen researchers who’ve taken on the task of unearthing the numbers and names behind the city’s housing affordability crisis. His personal mission has unearthed realtors who own 20 or 30 properties, as well as other people who have flipped properties in the past year and made substantial profits."

"British Columbia’s Land Owner Transparency Act requires that every person who has an interest in a corporation, trust or partnership with real-estate holdings must file a transparency report. The registry is one of several measures taken by the provincial government to address hidden property ownership linked to money laundering. A 2016 report by Transparency International showed that half of Vancouver’s top 100 most expensive homes were purchased by shell companies, or other forms of ownership that hid the owners’ identities."

"But Mr. Rezel says he has become increasingly frustrated with the registry’s lack of true transparency – as well as the fact that people have to pay for it. He’s called the registry a 'pressure relief valve' that only gives the illusion of transparency to appease angry residents. 'There will be riots if people see just how much of the wealth – and land – is concentrated in the hands of a privileged few,' he recently tweeted. 'So [the registry] hides that information.'"

"'There is an information asymmetry,' he says. 'Realtors have access to a ton of information that they deliberately try to keep people away from. Even sold prices; until recently you couldn’t see them. The realtors fought tooth and nail to keep that information secret. I’m lucky I’ve got access to a lot of that information, and that’s part of the reason that the real-estate industry hates me. They’ve tried to shut me down, and they threatened me with lawsuits, a few years ago. Even today, a realtor was asking me why I was sharing this new information. But the name of it is the ‘Transparency Registry.’ If the purpose isn’t transparency, I’m not sure what it is.'"

"Real-estate lawyer Ron Usher represents the Society of Notaries Public of B.C. as part of the Cullen Commission inquiry into money laundering. He says citizen researchers play a valuable role, but it shouldn’t be lost that access to information doesn’t always paint a complete picture. It is very complicated to figure out who really holds control over a property, he says, and even then, there’s no guarantee there’ll be accountability."

"'How many people have gone to jail as a result of the Panama Papers? How’s that working so far?' he asks, referring to the nearly five-year-old leak of millions of documents that revealed tax evasion through shell companies by the rich and powerful."

"Enforcement is another matter, he says. 'It’s laughable to suggest the bad guys are going to comply anyway. My personal frustration, and what I found out from the Cullen Commission, is we have not got the adequate resources to investigate crimes that we know about – let alone crimes found looking at possible clues.'"

The Epoch Times. "In Canada, transnational criminals are exploiting government casinos to import deadly narcotics into Canada. And they’re laundering billions of dollars into real estate in Vancouver, the most expensive housing market in all of North America. Behind all this crime are hidden links to China’s Communist Party. This is detailed in a new book by investigative journalist Sam Cooper, titled 'Wilful Blindness: How a Criminal Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP Agents Infiltrated the West.' It is the result of ten years of research and reporting."

"Jan Jekielek: Sam Cooper, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. 'I knew for years that high-level Western intelligence reports alleged there was this unbelievable connection between state actors in China from the party, some of the most powerful people in the world, and how they interrelate with crime bosses. Especially for people born in a country such as Canada, it’s hard to believe. This is intelligence reporting that gets leaked in Canada, and still many people can’t believe it.'"

"'But my journey of discovery was really getting into this story through strange real estate happenings in Vancouver. Drug trafficking organizations around the world have a problem. It’s not really a problem for them to make money. It’s a problem to move money. So when they sell fentanyl,cocaine, methamphetamines, or ecstasy on the street, they get $20 bills. They’re often soiled. We know that because of deaths in cities like Vancouver from fentanyl heroin overdoses. But they create a huge volume, literally warehouses of $20 bills. They’re useless for the drug trafficking organizations unless they can get the volume down.'"

"'The VIP gamblers go to the casino cash cage. They get their chips, which have values of up to $5,000. They gamble and they can receive, if they win and if they’re lucky, they can get a casino check. The money laundering can flow from that. You can see how quickly you can get a down payment if you have a check for $500,000 to buy a home. Or, simply, the $20 bills are exchanged for clean $100 bills wrapped to Canadian banking standards.'"

"'I’m not the only reporter that was onto this story. But when I jumped onto it, there was such a level of proof that I obtained through leaked confidential documents that showed this is the scandal here. BC’s government knew these transactions were occurring. They knew the loan sharks were drug traffickers. They knew of all the crime connected—the human trafficking, the prostitution, murders, extortion, and they didn’t stop it. That’s the scandal.'"

An opinion piece by Vaughn Palmer. "Michael Lee, the B.C. Liberal MLA and leadership candidate, launched a personal attack on Attorney-General David Eby this week, accusing him of contributing to anti-Asian racism in B.C. 'The attorney general, during his years as Opposition housing critic, directly and indirectly contributed to encouraging anti-Asian sentiment in our province,' charged Lee, citing Eby’s actions during the housing crisis under the last B.C. Liberal government."

"'B.C. was grappling with a hot housing market and there was a complex set of circumstances that was driving it,' said the Liberal MLA. 'However, to score cheap political points, the NDP decided to fearmonger using foreign buyers as a scapegoat for all that ailed the housing market.'"

"Lee singled out Eby’s supporting role in a 2015 survey that found people with non-anglicized Chinese first names were responsible for 66 per cent of the housing purchases in three neighbourhoods on the west side of Vancouver. Eby later apologized for providing the documentation for the survey."

"Lee: 'When money laundering first started gaining media attention in B.C., the NDP wasted no time in tying it to the same foreign influence, and quickly, largely because of the purposeful narrative spun by the attorney general, Chinese money became synonymous with crime in our province and served to further fuel racist narratives about B.C.’s housing market.'"

"'The NDP capitalized on an ugly sentiment that, unfortunately, was still held by some in B.C., and the NDP did so for their own political gain. They made it socially acceptable to complain about a group of people simply because of their country of origin. Using this kind of racially charged language, especially as elected representatives, is reckless and has real-world impacts that are playing out in front of us in the worst possible way.'"

"Richmond MLA Teresa Wat: 'When I first learned about the past actions of the member (Eby), I was absolutely shocked and heartbroken because the member was so fixated on achieving a personal political objective, so determined to weave this dark narrative about our housing market being destroyed by dirty, foreign, Asian money.'"

"'I absolutely accept responsibility for failing to adequately understand how the study would be used, reported on in the media and have apologized for that,' Eby explained. 'I thought, mistakenly, that the study was interesting and that it dispelled a number of myths around how people were purchasing homes. There were a lot of rumours at the time. But obviously, my naiveté about believing that I could influence the perspective of the media led me to insufficiently, I think, set the context for it.'"

"Eby did not name the news organizations whose coverage of the Yan report disappointed him, perhaps not wanting to invite a push back from that quarter. But having covered Eby through his eight years and counting in provincial politics, 'naive' is the last word I would use to describe his calculating, self-serving relationship with the news media."

From CTV News. "Let's start with the part you already know: real estate has gone completely bonkers. In many parts of Canada, this spring has brought unprecedented levels of appreciation for those who already own homes, along with unprecedented levels of unaffordability for those who hope to one day join that class. There has been a slight pullback from those eye-popping numbers, but the trend is still clear in communities from the Maritimes to oil country to Sudbury, Ont. – homes aren't just more valuable than ever, they're gaining in value in a way they never have before."

"Nathanael Lauster, a sociology professor at the University of British Columbia who studies issues related to housing, describes it as a 'perfect storm' brought on by the combination of low interest rates and the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing would-be homebuyers to save more money than usual. 'We're seeing a lot of similar issues, all across the country … really boosting real estate prices,' he told CTVNews."

"One of the more publicized attempts to increase housing supply without building new housing occurred in 2016, when B.C. implemented a so-called foreign buyers tax, which requires non-residents to pay more to purchase or hold onto residential real estate in certain parts of the province. In Lauster's view, whatever effect the foreign buyers' tax had on housing prices is secondary to the effect it had on anti-foreigner sentiment in general and anti-Chinese sentiment specifically."

"'It was really attached to this narrative that it was all about people from China buying up all the properties,' he said. 'It's a very easy target to demonize, because effectively they're not voting, but there are really not that many [foreign buyers] to begin with.'"