Straight Talk

Vancouver politician Christine Boyle plans to seek council's support for public inquiry into money laundering

by Charlie Smith on February 12th, 2019 at 9:04 AM
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      It's the issue that just won't go away.

      This week, pressure could increase once again on the provincial government to order a public inquiry into money laundering in B.C.

      That's because OneCity Vancouver councillor Christine Boyle has prepared a motion on notice on this matter, which is on the agenda of today's Vancouver city council meeting.

      It cites an as-yet unreleased RCMP report alleging that more than $1 billion was laundered through the Vancouver residential real-estate market in 2016.

      After Global News covered this last year, B.C. attorney general David Eby subsequently revealed that he and his money-laundering expert, former deputy RCMP commissioner Peter German, only learned of this through the media.

      Boyle, like Eby before her, links money laundering to high Vancouver housing prices and overdose deaths.

      Coun. Christine Boyle has added her voice to the chorus calling for a public inquiry into money laundering.
      OneCity Vancouver

      Her motion calls on council to "endorse a call for the Provincial Government to launch a Public Inquiry into money laundering in B.C. similar to the Charbonneau Inquiry in Quebec, to begin after Peter German's review of money-laundering in B.C. real estate, due in March".

      The B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union, which represents casino workers, has already called for a public inquiry into money laundering. More than 90 percent of respondents, as of this writing, supported this in a nonscientific online survey on Straight.com.

      But a former NDP candidate in Vancouver Kingsway, Victor Wong, has questioned over Twitter whether a public inquiry is the best use of government resources.

      Previous inquiries demonstrated mixed results

      According to the Toronto Star's Chantal Hébert, the Charbonneau public inquiry into corruption in the Quebec construction industry "did not formally blame a single elected or non-elected individual for the corruption and collusion that has run rampant in the province's governance system".

      It cost $45 million and lasted four years.

      "Justice France Charbonneau and her co-commissioner former Quebec auditor general Renaud Lachance, could not even agree that an indirect link between illicit industry donations to the province’s political parties and the awarding of public works contracts had been established," Hébert wrote in 2015.

      Another high-profile public probe, the Gomery Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities, cost $14 million and took two years to complete.

      The Federal Court of Canada later overturned its 2006 finding that former prime minister Jean Chrétien and his chief of staff, Jean Pelletier, shared blame for mismanagement of the program.

      Former Jean Chrétien waged a successful legal battle against a key finding of the Gomery commision into the sponsorship scandal.
      GOPMTL1

      Chrétien's lawyers argued that the man in charge, Justice John Gomery, held a bias against him when he referred to the former prime minister as "small-town cheap" and described management of the program as "catastrophically bad".

      The federal government ended up covering Chrétien's legal costs when the Federal Court of Canada ruling upheld the former prime minister's claim.

      However, a central figure in the scandal, former Liberal party organizer Jacques Corriveau, was convicted of fraud, forgery, and laundering the proceeds of crime.

      Advertising executives Jean Brault and Paul Coffin and the man in charge of the program at Public Works Canada, Chuck Guité, were also convicted and sentenced to jail.

      The last major public inquiry in B.C.—the Braidwood Inquiry into the Use of Conducted Energy Weapons in B.C.—cost $3.7 million.

      A B.C. Supreme Court ruling upheld a major finding of a provincial inquiry into police use of stun guns.

      According to the Canadian Press, the federal government spent more than a half million dollars on lawyers defending four officers involved in the use of a Taser against Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski, who died in a confrontation with the RCMP at Vancouver International Airport in 2007.

      One of the inquiry's findings, that stun guns can kill, was upheld in B.C. Supreme Court following a legal challenge by Taser International.

      Two officers, Monty Robinson and Kwesi Millington, were convicted of perjury in connection with their testimony at the inquiry.

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