VANCOUVER—“There’s more rocks to turn over” on just how far organized crime has infiltrated British Columbia’s economy, Premier John Horgan said in an interview looking at the year ahead.

But authorities’ failure to prosecute a ring of alleged money launderers in 2018 forced Horgan and his attorney general to “take stock” of their options as the year came to a close.

“We need to stamp it out,” the premier told StarMetro in an earlier sit-down interview in his Vancouver offices. “I believe the best way to do that is to have consequences quickly.

“We won’t necessarily get that now through prosecution. So we’re going to have to take stock of the best way to give the public confidence that we’re on this.”

For transparency watchdogs and lawyers expert on transnational crime, their resounding answer is to call a public commission of inquiry modelled after Quebec’s — where a string of media exposés and scandals uncovered corruption in the province’s influential construction industry.

By the end of the commission’s explosive hearings, several high-ranking Quebec politicians had resigned or been forced from office, and powerful business figures were implicated in criminal activities far more broad than one industry or level of government.

Read more:

How the laundering of ‘dirty money’ in B.C. casinos was exposed

B.C. Liberals accuse NDP of ‘games’ over money laundering files request

Quebec-style inquiry on B.C. realty money laundering only way to get truth: lawyer

B.C. experts add that taking the criminals to court doesn’t have to stand at odds with such an inquiry. But if the government wants to “turn over” rocks, critics say an inquiry could turn over a lot more than a trial — and potentially expose how deep and broad B.C.’s problem actually lies.

Already the attorney general’s commissioned report, researched by Peter German, the RCMP’s former regional deputy commissioner, has alleged tens of millions of drug cash funneled through Lower Mainland casinos over a decade that saw the previous B.C. Liberal government cut funding for casino investigators. German is now writing a second report scrutinizing ways that organized crime has laundered money in housing, luxury cars and horse racing markets, and finance minister Carole James has commissioned her own report on money laundering’s impacts.

Horgan cautioned those pushing for a single set of public hearings with subpoena powers not to get their hopes up in 2019.

“I appreciate that people want a quick solution to this. So do I,” he said.

He admitted to an ongoing thought about an inquiry, as new revelations of laundering activity through casinos, real estate, illicit drug and potentially other sectors surface.

“‘What would an inquiry accomplish?’ is the question that I keep asking myself, and David (Eby), the attorney general, does as well,” he said.

Horgan says his hesitation in launching a years-long, costly, heavily lawyered commission won’t spark the sorts of “consequences” he thinks will most quickly crack down on organized crime and its deadly ripple effects.

“It’s not just about the money laundering. It’s about fentanyl, gang violence in Surrey, the opioid crisis, it all comes back to illicit activity in our economy,” he said. “Many people think this is white-collar crime and it’s victimless. Far from it.

“The core of our opioid crisis is a result of illegal money that’s brought fentanyl into our country.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The drug overdose epidemic killed at least 1,485 British Columbians over the 12 months to the end of November, the latest data available from the B.C. Coroner’s Service. That’s slightly more than four people dying every day on average, showing the epidemic is as fatal as it was a year ago.

Integrity B.C. executive director Dermod Travis — who previously worked in Montreal in the lead-up to the Charbonneau Commission and watched its proceedings “quite closely” — has long advocated such a public vetting of all the evidence in B.C., and not just on laundering but more broadly allegations about how government mega-contracts are tendered to the private sector, and government’s influence by lobbyists and corporations.

“At a certain point, an issue moves past political considerations to institutional questions,” Travis said in a phone interview Thursday. “The need for a public inquiry is the result from the fact we now have institutional problems that need an outside perspective.

“We have somehow allowed the corporate gambling world to take over the administration of casinos in the province, and we need to understand how exactly that happened. That’s not going to be the result of prosecutions, and after two stays of prosecution on major cases related to money laundering in B.C., the public won’t have much confidence leaving it to prosecutors.”

Christine Duhaime, a Vancouver- and Toronto-based lawyer who is one of Canada’s experts on transnational money laundering, has urged B.C. down such an inquiry’s path, saying it would offer a full fact-finding opportunity in public view — with nothing left off the table.

It’s what she called “a cleansing in public, with sworn evidence” aimed at ultimately restoring “public confidence for investment” in B.C.’s real estate, gaming, regulatory and other sectors.

“We should just have a public inquiry, public hearings where people who have material knowledge are compelled to come testify, and you also get a number of experts to come in and provide their knowledge of what the problems are,” she told StarMetro in an interview in mid-November. “You can pull people in from Australia or other countries, and you need lawyers to come in because at the end of the day this is a legal failing.

“We need to address how the law needs to change.”

Travis said that, since the Charbonneau commission of inquiry, the province has seen “dramatic” changes — and not just the immediate reduction in the price of some construction materials. Quebec now has strong whistleblower protections, corruption teams of investigators, and contractor auditors “to ensure everything is above board,” he said. “That did not exist before and it still doesn’t exist in B.C.”

But the BC Liberals have demanded to know why, if their government was so negligent or permissive of nefarious activities under their watch, why there have been so few criminal charges and convictions, and suggested Horgan is playing politics for partisan points at their expense.

“Our attorney general has sensationalized the issue, so we’re asking … where are the arrests?” asked BC Liberal MLA Jas Johal after the attorney general’s scathing casino report last June. “The attorney general was hoping to play politics with this but what he really should be doing is focusing on the recommendations of this report.”

Asked whether Horgan is afraid of holding an inquiry because he could be accused of politicizing it to go after his BC Liberal predecessors’ 16 years in office, he replied:

“I don’t think you can overstate the indifference of the former government that literally looked the other way because it was all about revenue; they didn’t care where it came from,” he said.

“There’s no fear on my part … But do I feel we need to pin this tail on the BC Liberal donkey? I don’t care about that and I don’t think the public does either. They’re more interested in consequences so we can stop it.”

Read more about: