Opinion: B.C.’s dirty money problem hasn’t gone away. It’s time to act

Now that the dust has settled on B.C.’s provincial election, the focus is on fast-tracking projects, attracting new investment, and creating jobs. However, an alarming trend points to a crisis that successive B.C. governments have been too slow to address: secret companies, dirty money, and the foreign influence behind them.

Let’s go back in time a bit.

In 2019, the B.C. Cullen Commission highlighted the largely unchecked flow of dirty money into the province, which experts estimated anywhere between $5 billion and $7 billion a year. The commission urged B.C. to adopt a critical tool to fight back: a publicly accessible, searchable corporate registry that identifies beneficial owners, the natural people behind the company, so dirty money has nowhere to hide.

In 2023, B.C. passed legislation for a public registry; however, the province still hasn’t delivered on it. Currently, B.C. companies store beneficial ownership records at their offices. It is slow and cumbersome for law enforcement and regulators to inspect this information, and this lack of access hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Just last month, the global Financial Action Task Force singled out B.C. in its once-in-a-decade evaluation of Canada. The highly influential global standard-setter on money laundering pulled no punches, noting the absence of a publicly accessible corporate beneficial ownership registry in the province. The lack of a registry was characterized as a deficiency and contributed to Canada’s overall partly compliant score.

B.C. is a great place to invest largely because it has the resources companies need: land, water, forests, critical minerals, and a modern electrical grid. To fast-track projects, provincial and federal regulators need to know whether a prospective supplier is who they say they are. Moreover, businesses need access to a free registry that can help them screen for risk and meet know-your-client obligations. The province will be unable to deliver on its growth plans if it remains unaware of who might be behind a company.

This isn’t about adding extra burden to business or limiting foreign investment in the province. It is about warding off foreign influence, criminals, and dirty money.

Consider B.C.’s commercial fishing industry. In 2023, expert witnesses told the House of Commons Fisheries and Oceans Committee that shell companies were acquiring significant stakes in B.C. fishing licenses, with no reliable way to identify their ultimate owners. Fishing licences and quotas can be worth millions, making them valuable vehicles to launder money or to transfer wealth out of public view. Despite reform efforts, opaque numbered companies — including foreign entities — still own such assets.

Numerous clusters of shell companies in Metro Vancouver have been linked to international fraud schemes. In September, authorities linked Maple Digital Financial Solutions, an online banking platform based in Vancouver, to a major international money-laundering ring that served drug cartels and Russian organized crime.

In 2025, estimates show that Canadians incurred $700-plus million in financial losses from fraud schemes.