Thank you.
I have some questions that come to me based on the lengthy career I had in the mortgage business. Through many seminars, for years and years, and including course material when I was a prelicensing instructor, it comes from a general assumption in that industry that there is a tremendous amount of money that is laundered through real estate transactions. I'd like both PWGSC and the CRA to comment on this.
We know that large, complicated, international money-laundering schemes gather a lot of attention. Government agencies are right to be concerned about these broad, complicated schemes, but what about the simpler, ground-level transactions that seem to occur every day? What about the lower-level criminal who deposits money in smaller transactions that don't meet the FINTRAC threshold, and eventually buys property where they launder more cash in the form of exaggerated rental incomes? With these kinds of things happening every day, how do our institutions catch this type of criminal activity?
I'll maybe ask PWGSC to comment first, and then CRA.