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Meanwhile, the Business Council of British Columbia (BCBC) estimated in 2016 about one-third of the province’s economic growth was tied to what it described as the residential real estate industrial complex: home building, home renovation, real estate sales, mortgage underwriting, home appraisals and other linked activities.
So what would happen, in theory, to the B.C. economy if money laundering were to instantly evaporate?
“The true answer is we don’t know,” BCBC chief policy officer Jock Finlayson said.
“The difficulty is that [real estate prices] are already going down in the major urban markets, and they’ve been going down by a lot more than 5% before the Maloney report ever saw the light of day.”
