Vancouver is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2021 census recorded 662,248 people in the city, up from 631,486 in 2016. The Greater Vancouver area had a population of 2.6 million in 2021, making it the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada. Greater Vancouver, along with the Fraser Valley, comprises the Lower Mainland with a regional population of over 3 million. Vancouver has the highest population density in Canada, with over 5,700 people per square kilometre, and fourth highest in North America.
Nathan Cullen is a Canadian politician. A member of the New Democratic Party (NDP), he is the Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Stikine in British Columbia. He has served in the Executive Council of British Columbia since 2020, currently as Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship and Minister Responsible for Fisheries.
In domestic and international commercial law, a beneficial owner is a natural person or persons who ultimately owns or controls an interest in a legal entity or arrangement, such as a company, a trust, or a foundation. Legal owners, commonly described as the "registered owners", may hold those interests as beneficial owners or for the benefit of someone else, in which case they may be described as a "nominee".
Richard Thomas Coleman is a Canadian politician and former police officer, who served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly in British Columbia from 1996 to 2020, and is a former interim leader of the British Columbia Liberal Party. He was first elected in 1996 and re-elected in 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013 and 2017. Coleman represented the riding of Langley East.
The British Columbia Lottery Corporation is a Canadian Crown corporation offering a range of gambling products including lottery tickets, casinos and legal online gambling. It is based in Kamloops, with a secondary office in Vancouver. It consists of three business units, Lottery, Casino and eGaming; and five support divisions, Human Resources, Information Technology, Compliance & Security, Finance, and Communications. Its annual revenues exceed CDN $3.1 billion. It has 890 direct employees. Its service providers, who run casinos on its behalf under contract, have an additional 8,300 employees.
Vancouverism is an urban planning and architectural phenomenon in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is characterized by a large residential population living in the city centre with mixed-use developments, typically with a medium-height, commercial base and narrow, high-rise residential towers, significant reliance on mass public transit, creation and maintenance of green park spaces, and preserving view corridors. The architect Bing Thom described Vancouverism this way:
It's a spirit about public space. I think Vancouverites are very, very proud that we built a city that really has a tremendous amount of space on the waterfront for people to recreate and to enjoy. At the same time, False Creek and Coal Harbour were previously industrial lands that were very polluted and desecrated. We've refreshed all of this with new development, and people have access to the water and the views. So, to me, it's this idea of having a lot people living very close together, mixing the uses. So, we have apartments on top of stores. In Surrey we have a university on top of a shopping centre. This mixing of uses reflects Vancouver in terms of our culture and how we live together.
Corruption represents an increasing issue across Canada. On Transparency International's 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, Canada scored 74 on a scale from 0 to 100. This score continues a slow decline from Canada's 2012 score of 84. For comparison, the global average score in 2021 was 43. When ranked by score, Canada ranked number 13 among the 180 countries in the 2021 Index, where the country ranked number 1 is perceived to have the most honest public sector. Conflicts of interest within government, tax evasion, and the ease in which you can launder money are among some of the leading factors of corruption in Canada.
Corruption is perceived as a significant problem in Russia, impacting various aspects of life, including the economy, business, public administration, law enforcement, healthcare, and education. The phenomenon of corruption is strongly established in the historical model of public governance, and attributed to general weakness of rule of law in the country. Transparency International stated in 2022, "Corruption is endemic in Russia" and assigned it the lowest score of any European country in their Corruption Perceptions Index for 2021. It has, under the regime of Vladimir Putin, been variously characterized as a kleptocracy, an oligarchy, and a plutocracy; owing to its crony capitalism economic system.
David Robert Patrick Eby is a Canadian politician and lawyer who has been serving as the 37th and current premier of British Columbia since November 18, 2022, and has been serving as the leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party (NDP) since October 21, 2022. A member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, Eby has represented the riding of Vancouver-Point Grey since 2013. From 2017 to 2022, he served in the John Horgan cabinet as Attorney General.
Reputation laundering occurs when a person or an organization conceals unethical, corrupt, or criminal behavior by performing highly-visible positive actions with the intent to improve their reputation and obscure their history.
Generation Squeeze is a Canadian, non-partisan, non-profit organization that advocates on behalf of young adults. The organization claims to have modeled itself after CARP, an organization that advocates for Canadians 45 and older. Generation Squeeze stated purpose is to provide a voice for younger Canadians in the world of politics and the marketplace.
Bill 28, the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, 2016, came into force on August 2, 2016. The law was introduced after calls urging the British Columbia provincial government to intervene in the housing market and curb foreign investment that was seen as a major contributor to the rapid rise in home prices.
Transparency International Canada is the Canadian division of Transparency International, a global anti-corruption non-government coalition. It looks at global corruption and offers legal reforms to fight it. It claims that compared to other advanced countries, Canada's transparency laws are weak.
The 2022 Canadian property crash refers to a significant rise in Canadian real estate prices from 2002 to present which some observers have called a real estate bubble. From 2003 to 2018, Canada saw an increase in home and property prices of up to 337% in some cities. By 2018, home-owning costs were above 1990 levels when Canada saw its last housing bubble burst. Bloomberg Economics ranks Canada as the second largest housing bubble across the OECD in 2019 and 2021. Starting in February 2022, prices started to decline rapidly as the Bank of Canada hiked interest rates culminating in detached prices to decline by $400,000 in the Greater Toronto Area by September of 2022.
Taleeb Farouk Noormohamed is a Canadian politician and technology executive who has been the member of Parliament (MP) for Vancouver Granville since 2021, sitting as a Liberal.
The Cullen Commission is a money laundering inquiry established by the Canadian province of British Columbia. Currently all evidence has been presented, and the Commission was given an extension until May 20, 2022, to deliver its findings. The findings were delivered to the BC attorney general on June 2, 2022, and require a review from the Attorney general of British Columbia before they can be released. The findings were expected to be released on June 15, 2022.
Project Sidewinder is a declassified study conducted by a Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) joint task force. It controversially argues Chinese intelligence and Triads have been working together on intelligence operations in Canada.
Dirty Money is a formerly confidential report commissioned by the Government of British Columbia into the state of money laundering in the province. It was released to the public in two parts in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
Peter German is a Canadian legal academic and anti-money laundering expert. He is best known as the author of the Dirty Money reports, as well as serving as the former deputy commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Money laundering in Canada is a problem described by professionals in 2019 as a "national crisis," and which has attracted international attention. Money laundering has become such a significant part of Canada's domestic economy that anti-money laundering experts have associated two distinct types of laundering with the country. As of July 2022, a public inquiry is currently being held to gauge the extent of the problem.
