Thread by @ianjamesyoung70

After taking 5 YEARS (!!) to answer my freedom-of-info request, @CanRevAgency has released a secret study confirming millionaire migrants made 90% of lux home purchases in two Metro Vancouver municipalities while declaring refugee-level incomes 2/ scmp.com/news/china/dip…

A whistleblower auditor said the study was covered up in 1996. CRA refused to acknowledge it existed. But it did, and today @SCMPNews publishes the results on the anniversary of my August 30 2016 ATIP request 3/

The released docs incl spreadsheets listing dozens of new immigrant buyers and their absurdly low incomes. It suggests systematic tax cheating. Eg: Here’s one rich newcomer, who bought a Burnaby home for C$2.88m. That year he/she declared total global income of C$174. 4/

The anonymized spreadsheets list all 46 purchases of C$800K+ homes in Burnaby in a 2mth period. 37 could be identified by auditors. 33 were recent immigrants. These declared avg global income of C$16,430. 5/

By comparison, the four long-term resident buyers declared avg income of C$263,701. And for comparison, REFUGEES declare on avg C$17,500 income one year after arriving in Canada (see solid red line). 6/

Similar data was found in Coquitlam. It was an “obvious large discrepancy”, and likely that the newcomer buyers were hiding global income, the top investigator, Dino Altoe, told his boss. No kidding. 7/

Of the 243 buyers of C$600K-C$800K homes in Burnaby, 4 were long-term residents of Canada, said a data summary. Yes. FOUR. Avg home price in Bby was C$230K at time. 8/

You’d think this would result in a crackdown. Wrong. The implicated govt millionaire migration schemes, the IIP & QIIP, were allowed to become the world’s biggest wealth migration vehicles, pumping 200K millionaires+family into Canada. Vancouver got most, abt 120K 9/

For two decades it continued. Vancouver became one of the world’s most unaffordable cities. Eventually, the IIP was shut for SAME debacle identified by the auditors long ago: chronically low income decs (among other things). Look at the red dotted line. QIIP is now frozen. 10/

The ATIP results also reveal the findings of the study were being re-circulated in the CRA in early 2016. And the CRA director-general at time, Susan Betts, personally dealt with my requests for the study. Her thoughts? REDACTED. Next day, she had a meeting with Altoe abt it. 11/

So, what is the cost? Might the story of our basket-case unaffordability in Vancouver have turned out differently if this study had been released and acted upon in 1996? Or in 2016? 12/

I don’t know. But in the 5yrs since my ATIP request, we had two BC elex, one fed elex and we’re in middle of another campaign. All fought in YVR to a great degree on housing affordability. I know this: the delay stinks. And Canada’s ATIP system is broken scmp.com/news/china/dip…

PS: If you want to see the entire 85-page ATIP response, you can download it here. The preview is corrupted for some reason, but you still should be able to download the PDF (also, if anyone knows how to get that dodgy preview fixed lemme know) scribd.com/document/52186…

PPS: The five-year anniversary present is "wood" @CanRevAgency , just saying

Fresh link with uncorrupted preview and cover letter here scribd.com/document/52254…