OPINION: Luxury retailers complaining about a money-laundering crackdown is like cancer doctors complaining about a crackdown on tobacco marketing, Eby argues.

When David Eby spotted a magazine article about how his crackdown on criminal money laundering could hurt the B.C. economy, he found it funny at first.

Then he started thinking about it, and a different emotion welled up in him.

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“I started out kind of laughing at it,” the crusading attorney general told me Monday. “Now I’m just kind of pissed off, frankly. The audacity of people to actually come out and say, ‘We want to build British Columbia’s economy on dirty money. We want to have boutique services for thugs and criminals selling fentanyl and killing people.’ ”

The Business in Vancouver article described “how slow retail sales would hurt the economy if B.C. reins in money laundering” and quotes a business consultant saying Eby’s move could be “catastrophic” for high-end retailers of luxury goods like designer fashions and accessories.

“The whole province could suffer financially if the B.C. government is successful at cutting the flow of dirty money,” the article says.

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Eby took to Twitter to mock the analysis, saying it’s the equivalent of cancer doctors complaining about lost business from a government crackdown on tobacco marketing.

Photo by CHAD HIPOLITO / THE CANADIAN PRESS

But I asked Eby if he’s ignoring an inconvenient truth that taking dirty money out of the economy will indeed inflict damage in some sectors.

He admitted the government’s crackdown on large, suspicious cash transactions in casinos resulted in a projected drop in casino profits. And a reduction in runaway real estate prices from the crackdown could also reduce the government’s take in property-transfer taxes.

So isn’t it also true that the crackdown could hurt retailers of James Bond-class sports cars and gold-accented handbags?

“Yes …, but it startles me that people would be openly questioning whether it’s a good idea to crack down on it,” Eby said, pointing out the economy could experience a net benefit as money laundering is rooted out.

That’s because many sectors of the economy — including high-tech, film, tourism and post-secondary education — have been damaged by the sky-high real estate prices driven by dirty money in the market, he said.

“They can’t find staff to come and work because they can’t afford to live in Metro Vancouver anymore. We have built up one frankly malignant area of our economy and it is sucking all the life out of other areas of the economy.”

If real estate prices moderate as money laundering is reined in, the result could be an overall economic gain, he argued.

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In the meantime, I suspect Eby secretly likes hearing his critics make the case that money laundering is good for the economy, since the argument largely proves his original point.

“For a long time people said, ‘There’s no issue. We don’t know what Eby’s talking about.’ Now it’s like, ‘OK, there is money laundering. We’re making a lot of money selling luxury handbags to criminals and their associates, so we’d prefer if you didn’t stop it,’ ” Eby said.

“I welcome the honesty about what’s been going on.”

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