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Article content A Vancouver realtor’s online advice on “how to avoid the foreign-buyers tax” is a sign of how difficult it is to track foreign ownership. Realtor Andrew Szalontai’s website offers foreign nationals a wide variety of strategies for circumventing B.C.’s 20 per cent foreign-buyers tax on residential dwellings. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. Try refreshing your browser, or Douglas Todd: Vancouver realtor s advice on how to avoid foreign-buyers tax points to larger problem Back to video Some of his suggestions for avoiding “the frustration” of the tax are straightforward, while others are dubious, according to Ron Usher, general counsel for the Society of Notaries Public of B.C. ....
Article content The Big Brother need for more surveillance, less privacy and a more robust apparatus to combat dirty money has become a major theme at B.C.’s inquiry into money laundering. To serve and protect has become to surveil and predict, as one report put it, and no more so than among those battling money laundering. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. Try refreshing your browser, or Ian Mulgrew: Orwellian solution offered to combat dirty money in B.C. Back to video No one so far, however, has presented credible evidence about whether the scope of the problem justifies the exorbitant cost for specialized software, training, analysts, investigators, enforcement, adjudication, or the heavy-handed trampling of privacy and other rights. ....
The future looks brighter for the long-neglected SRO hotels. Calls mount to expose their grim legacy. Jen St. Denis is The Tyee’s Downtown Eastside reporter. Find her on Twitter @JenStDen. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative. SHARES Gunargie O’Sullivan, whose mother died at the Balmoral Hotel in 1972, wants a full accounting of what happened at it and the Regent Hotel. Photo by Christopher Cheung. When Gunargie O’Sullivan looks at the Balmoral Hotel, she thinks about her mother, screaming in pain while in labour. She died inside the hotel during the birth of her third child in 1972. ....