Canadian Lawyer

58 www.canadianlawyermag.com LEGAL REPORT REAL ESTATE trusts and partnerships. Wilson notes that the advantage of laun- dering money in B.C. through real estate was that one would make a profit — buy a prop- erty for $1 million sell it for $2 million — and the government cooling the housing market has likely helped address money laundering as financial criminals might seek new vehicles to wash the dirty money. Wilson says that, over the last several years as it became higher profile, lawyers have become more live to the issue of money laun- dering and are engaging in "defensive prac- tice" — generally protecting themselves by brushing up on the existing rules and passing on any files that "don't pass the smell test." He hopes the regulations and policies, expected in the spring, refine a few areas of the legislation — a silent prayer on his part, he says. "There are certain areas we're concerned about. One of the interpretations is you have to have all the information about every lim- ited partner," Wilson says, noting that the firm has a number of clients that use limited part- nerships for their investment vehicles, such a bit of an experiment, he says, but if it works in B.C., he could see other provinces adopting a similar regime. Fraser MacFadyen, a partner at Stewart McKelvey in Nova Scotia, says there hasn't been any discussion in the province about going as far as a publicly searchable regis- try like LOTA provides, but he notes that there has been a general call for more "look- through" tools to combat money laundering. In March 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada in Canada (Attorney General) v. Federation of Law Societies of Canada struck down certain aspects of Canada's Proceeds "There are certain areas we're concerned about. One of the interpretations is you have to have all the information about every limited partner." Edward Wilson, Lawson Lundell LLP VANCOUVER HOUSING PRICE $1.2 million average sold price 2019 $2.3 million average sold price 2018 37 days average time on market (Jan. 2020) as developers, and a lot of them have limited partnerships where some of the owners of units are themselves limited partnerships. Another example is not knowing all the details one needs to provide about all share- holders, without which one can't file the transfer. When there is a transaction coming in and one can't file, what does one do? "That's going to cause a few heart attacks I'm sure. I don't think anybody has really come to grips with that yet," says Wilson. He says he "can certainly see, at some point, perfectly legitimate investors saying 'I just don't want all the hassle of my particulars disclosed, so I'm not going to do it.'" Because land titles are all provincially based, each province would have implement their own version of LOTA — and Wilson's guess is that "everybody's going to sit back and see what happens" because it's an expen- sive process nobody would take on lightly. It's

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