Wilful Blindness The book that will change government policy on China
B.C. government casinos became a tool for global criminals to import deadly narcotics into Canada and launder billions of drug cash into Vancouver real estate. And it didn’t happen by accident. A cast of accomplices – government officials hungry for revenue, casino and real estate companies with ties to shady offshore wealth, professional facilitators including lawyers and bankers, an aimless RCMP that gave organized crime room to grow – all combined to cause this tragedy. There was greed, folly, corruption, conspiracy, and wilful blindness.
Decades of bad policy allowed drug cartels, first and foremost the Big Circle Boys. - powerful transnational narco-kingpins with ties to corrupt Chinese officials, real estate tycoons, and industrialists – to gain influence over significant portions of B.C.’s economy but it spread across the nation.
For years it seemed to be a victimless crime. Many looked the other way while B.C.’s number one industry, real estate, ballooned with dirty cash. But the unintended social consequences of this negligence and corruption are now clear: a fentanyl overdose crisis raging in Vancouver, life spans falling for the first time in modern Canada, and a runaway housing market that has put nails in the coffin of middle-class dreams in B.C. And now, the rot has rapidly spreading to Toronto and other Canadian cities.
But the story takes a real twist as Sam Cooper uncovered more evidence that Vancouver had become the headquarters for corporate and industrial espionage by the Chinese Government (CCP). Their beachhead to North America was a place they could call home.
As the RCMP, CSIS, government officials and politicians in Canada turned a blind eye, these ruthless entrepreneurs exported their success in “The Vancouver Model”, to other countries around the world including Australia and New Zealand. Billionaire criminals operating and funded by the West now seem untouchable in their quest to control and dominate global IT infrastructure and world trade. The arrest of Huawei’s CFO is one small anecdote in this bigger and more compelling narrative on Beijing’s master plan. Recently the RCMP arrested Cameron Ortis for attempting to pass sensitive Australian intelligence to a foreign entity or group. Ortis also had oversight and directed Fintrac investigations and reports on Money Laundering in Canada!