Saturday, July 31, 2021

Global Vax Certification [NWO Begins] by default we become like China, its "Credit Score System"

 Global Vax Certification [NWO Begins] by default we become like China, its "Credit Score System"  


Australian PM says COVID-19 vaccine certificates coming to Apple Wallets

The Australian government is also working to get its vaccine certificates recognised in other countries.

Credit: Services Australia

Australia's COVID-19 vaccine certificates will soon be available on Apple Wallets. In Wednesday's press conference, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he expects the country's vaccine certificates to come into the wallet app "this month". 

He also said that later in the year, or around October, the COVID-19 digital vaccine certificates will be recognised internationally, enabling travels to and from the country.

Australian citizens who have completed their Pfizer or AstraZeneca jabs will automatically get their digital certificates via their accounts in the Express Plus Medicare app. The certificate can also be accessed in their MyGov account's immunisation history once they can link it to Medicare. Another way to get their certificates is by requesting an immunisation history statement from their vaccine provider or through the Australian Immunisation Register.

THE LARGER TREND

The federal government is currently seeking a developer for its smartphone app project that can store COVID-19 vaccine certificates and test results. 

A tender was recently issued by the Australian Digital Health Agency for a digital health app that must be connected to the government's My Health Record system. A critical requirement of the mobile app is its ability to tap into external systems, facilitating the recognition of overseas-issued vaccination certificates. 

The app is targeted to be launched on both iOS and Android devices by December. 

ON THE RECORD

"We already have vaccine certificates. They already exist. And, those vaccine certificates, this month, we expect to be in a form that can be dropped into Apple Wallets, things of that nature. And, later in the year, about October we estimate, we'll have a vaccination certificate that will be able to be used, internationally recognised, to facilitate when people are moving out of the country and into the country, being able to recognise others’ certificates," Prime Minister Morrison said

Douglas Todd: Vancouver still suffering fallout from 'students' buying mansions

Douglas Todd: Vancouver still suffering fallout from 'students' buying mansions

Opinion: 'The most important thing to understand about foreign capital is it never goes back. It just sloshes around' in Canadian real estate.

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One of the more shocking examples was the University of B.C. “student” who bought a $31-million house a few years ago in Vancouver.

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There were also the nine different international students who snagged $57 million in mortgage money from Canadian banks to buy posh dwellings across Metro Vancouver.

This is not to mention the countless other proxies who somehow obtained gigantic mortgages from Canadian banks without having to provide evidence they earned an actual income.

How can this happen even as ordinary Canadians find it a challenge to prove to banks they earn enough to secure a mortgage? Understanding how people serve as proxies for the real (or beneficial) owners of properties is a key to unravelling why Canadian house prices have spun out of control.

At least two questions stand out about this inflationary phenomenon.

Are such proxies still able to get whopping mortgages from Canadian banks?

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And what have been the long-lasting real-estate repercussions of this practice, especially for sought-after markets like Vancouver and Toronto?

Before answering these questions, let’s look at just how unregulated things were in real estate and banking six to 10 years ago, when hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign capital were pouring into the country.

How proxies easily snagged big mortgages

In evidence before the Cullen Commission into money laundering in B.C., a UBC geography professor emeritus laid out how offshore capital has streamed into Canadian real estate.

Up to 2016 “banks in Vancouver were giving preferential loan terms to foreign home-purchasers without full disclosure, effectively practising deregulation for non-Canadian clients,” said David Ley, author of Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines.

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“At one bank, international students who could put down cash for 35 to 50 per cent of a house price needed to provide no further financial evidence to qualify for an uninsured loan. Such easy credit access facilitated real estate investment and speculation.”

Bankers turned a blind eye by failing to report such questionable transactions, Ley says, noting Vancouver, Richmond and West Vancouver contained disproportionate numbers of addresses included in the Panama Papers’ database of offshore tax haven accounts.

Canadian banks earned big profits through such “dubious activities” as “providing generous mortgage terms to foreign students and other local proxies fronting for investors wishing to conceal their status as beneficial owners,” Ley said. “In each instance the consequence was to liberate more frothy capital for use in real-estate investment.”

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Stephen Punwasi, a Toronto-based real estate analyst, has also shown how Canadian banks were eager to give loans to foreign students with no jobs. He even published a photo of a bank branch poster, complete with a dragon-like Pokeman figure, telling international students to sign up for mortgages with “no income verification!”

A Canadian bank branch promised international students several years ago they would be granted a mortgage with “no income verification!” (Photo courtesy of Better Dwelling)
A Canadian bank branch promised international students several years ago they would be granted a mortgage with “no income verification!” 

The phenomenon of using proxies to buy property contributed to some of Vancouver’s newly minted mansion owners declaring poverty-level incomes, Punwasi said, citing Postmedia stories about tax avoidance. “The reason is widely believed to be that those earning income overseas just aren’t declaring their incomes locally.”

North Vancouver-raised Ron Butler, who now heads one of Canada’s largest independent mortgage brokerages, says Metro Vancouver has “shown the most insanity in the mortgage business.”

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Going back to the 1980s, when wealthy Hong Kongers fearing the return of their enclave to China first began looking for an offshore haven, international students and homemakers could buy mansions with large down payments from unverified sources, said the head of Butler Mortgages.

And then, Butler said, the foreign investors or their proxies would often secure the multi-million mortgages by buying large amounts of mutual funds with the same bank, in a process known as “hypothecation.” The banks loved it.

China, Iran, the Middle East and, in the past, Russia, have probably been the biggest source countries for such investment in Canadian housing, says Butler. But the money has flowed in from almost anywhere.

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“It’s the whole concept of ‘outpost families,’” said the mortgage broker, in which the family breadwinner stays in the homeland earning money while using proxies to invest in housing in a more stable nation.

The somewhat good news about proxies

The somewhat good news is that the trade in absurdly easy-to-obtain Canadian mortgages was cut back around 2016.

Canada’s superintendent of financial institutions quietly brought in new regulations, known as B20 and B21, that made it much harder for proxies with no incomes to get multi-million mortgages in Canada.

The changes have been helpful. But the damage, Butler suggested, has already largely been done. Canadian house prices have now been inflated by the unregulated money.

“The real key to understanding the billions that have come here already is this: They never go back. The most important thing to understand about foreign capital is it never goes back. It just sloshes around.”

Butler estimates roughly one-quarter of a trillion dollars — or $250 billion — has poured into Canada in recent decades through offshore investors, many of whom have used proxies.

That’s distorted higher local prices, which are now being exacerbated by “ridiculously” low interest rates inspired by the pandemic. “If I was to emphasize anything,” Butler said, “it would be that, since the money never goes back, it has created a long continuum.”

Housing investments by so-called marginal players also pushes values higher, Butler says, because many wealthy investors don’t care about getting the best price. They’re mostly looking for a long-term haven. Locals, especially young people, can’t compete in bidding.

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MORE ON THIS TOPIC

  1. B.C. Attorney General David Eby, who has had housing added to his bailiwick, at home in Vancouver last year. In acknowledging the province’s speculation and vacancy tax needs ongoing evaluation, he says ‘this phenomenon of Vancouver being an international city and people being resident here but not earning their income here is one that our tax system is still working to come to terms with.’

    Douglas Todd: Hidden foreign ownership helps explain Metro Vancouver’s ‘decoupling’ of house prices, incomes

  2. None

    Douglas Todd: Thousands of Metro Vancouver mansion owners avoiding taxes

  3. UBC architecture prof. Matthew Soules's book  illustrates the housing distortions that occur when a city becomes a key destination for the global rich. Developers in downtown Vancouver, around Georgia, are attracting investor capital by designing iconic condominium towers.

    Douglas Todd: Global wealth has skewed the look and feel of Vancouver, Toronto

While the superintendent of financial institutions clamped down against the most egregious mortgages, in part to combat money laundering and international terrorist financing, Butler said many schemes still exist for foreign investors to transfer large amounts of money into Canadian dwellings.

Ottawa, for instance, still allows 15 per cent of a bank mortgage security to come from what it calls “nonconforming” sources, Butler said, explaining how a person from Cyprus who invests $40 million in Canadian real estate thus doesn’t have to explain the origins of $6 million of it.

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Another widely used technique for pumping huge amounts of speculative money into Canadian housing, Butler said, is by putting down payments on five to 10 presale condo units at the same time, typically in towers that are five years away from being constructed.

The trick, the broker said, is to sell the condos to someone else by so-called “assignment” just before a mortgage is required. By then the speculator, offshore or domestic, has already made a handy profit in Canada’s growing market.

“I could spin this stuff all day,” Butler said, explaining the numerous ways global capital has skewed housing affordability

Thursday, July 29, 2021

Sydney GP charging hundreds for COVID vaccine slammed Luke Costin, Hannah Ryan and Andi Yu

 

Sydney GP charging hundreds for COVID vaccine slammed Luke Costin, Hannah Ryan 

and Andi Yu

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Sydney GPs charging hundreds for vaccine consultation appointments                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Charging residents in southwestern Sydney hundreds of dollars to receive the Pfizer vaccine is “plain bad behaviour”, Health Minister Greg Hunt says.

Blessed Health Care in coronavirus-affected Campsie has been charging patients between $80 and $250 for consultations and registration before administering the vaccine.

Watch the video above

A GP at the clinic said he was serving a marginalised community.

“We are not the villain, we are the helper,” Dr Ben Ang said.

“That $235 is not the immunisation fees, it’s for consultation,” he told 7NEWS.

Told of the reports on Thursday, the federal health minister said it was “plain bad behaviour”.

He said the $10 billion the government had set aside for the vaccine rollout was to cover vaccines and the GP consultations.


A sign outside Blessed Health Care clinic in Campsie, that says the clinic is charging $225 for an appointment to receive Pfizer vaccine, and $80 for the second dose appointment.
A sign outside Blessed Health Care clinic in Campsie, that says the clinic is charging $225 for an appointment to receive Pfizer vaccine, and $80 for the second dose appointment. Credit: SUPPLIED/PR IMAGE

“If we can have the details, we will chase up the GP,” he said.

“If that story is accurate we will throw the book at them.

“The vaccine is free. The consultations for the vaccine are paid to be bulk-billed.”

Campsie has recorded 36 COVID-19 cases since July 19 and is in the Canterbury-Bankstown local government area - a major focus of Sydney’s lockdown restrictions.

‘Not fair’

One woman who forked out $250 to receive the Pfizer jab on Saturday said she did not want to wait months to get the jab, given the high rates of virus transmission where she lives.

“I wanted to get it quickly, to be safer, so I paid the money,” she told AAP in Mandarin.

Her colleagues, also Malaysian citizens on temporary visas, had been vaccinated in the same way, she said.

“It’s not fair, it should be free,” she said.

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt
Greg Hunt says authorities will investigate the reports. Credit: AAP

Cumberland councillor Kun Huang said the issue had been raised in at least three different groups on the Chinese-language app WeChat, with workers from Auburn and Lidcombe contemplating going to Campsie to get the jab.

He has been sent invoices from people who received the Pfizer vaccine at Blessed Health, which show they were charged $225 between July 24 and 26.

The item description is either a “new patient registration fee” or a “Level C Surgery” - a Medicare item for a long consultation.

The COVID-19 vaccine is free for everyone, a federal health department spokesperson told AAP. That includes people who do not have a Medicare card and applies regardless of visa status.

“Clinics cannot charge a patient any cost associated with the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine, including booking fees,” the spokesperson said.

‘The vaccine is free. The consultations for the vaccine are paid to be bulk-billed.’

“The Department of Health has made the requirements under the program clear with GPs and the overwhelming majority are doing the right thing.”

The department’s web page states that the consult appointment for patients to receive the vaccination is free.

A Blessed Care nurse said the practice could not give the vaccine to new patients without first taking a medical history, and didn’t provide for bulk billing.

Dr Ang, one of the clinic’s doctors, said the clinic was not charging for the actual vaccine.

Chinese-speaking construction workers were crying out for help after struggling to book into vaccine hubs through English-language websites and believing the COVID shot was necessary for their work, he said.

The federal government said it was expanding its communication to culturally and linguistically diverse people.