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The 12-page FINTRAC brief also notes the “minimal” filing of suspicious transaction reports in Canadian real estate, with 127 reports filed on five million sales over 10 years.

“Canadian Mortgage and Housing (CMHC) statistics indicate that in a 10-year period, over $9 trillion of mortgage credits were negotiated and up to approximately 5 million sales took place through Multiple Listing Services (MLS),” the brief says. “In contrast, FINTRAC received, during approximately the same 10-year period (2003 to 2013), 127 suspicious transaction reports nationally by real estate brokers, agents or developers.

“Minimal filings of suspicious transaction reports regarding real estate transactions indicate a clear need for operational guidance to all relevant reporting entities,” the brief says. “FINTRAC, through its compliance examinations, has observed deficiencies in most aspects of the real estate sector’s compliance programs that render it more vulnerable of being used by criminals to launder illicit funds.”

Under FINTRAC’s risk assessment model, the watchdog increased examinations in the real estate sector by 33 per cent across Canada in 2015-16, FINTRAC spokeswoman Renée Bercier said in an e-mail.

In B.C., the increase was even more dramatic: FINTRAC almost quadrupled the number of real estate examinations over the last 12 months, finding more than triple the number of “significant” deficiencies over the previous year, Bercier said.