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LOTUSLAND

Documentary - Completed 2024

Inexorably inflated rising cost of living and unaffordable housing across Metro Vancouver result from dirty money and system manipulation to benefit the greedy few, transforming the city from LOTUSLAND to LUXURYLAND.

- Year of production
- 2024
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- CANADA
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Duration
- 80 mn
- Synopsis
- Inexorably inflated rising cost of living and unaffordable housing across Metro Vancouver result from dirty money and system manipulation to benefit the greedy few, transforming the city from LOTUSLAND to LUXURYLAND.
  
  LOTUSLAND SYNOPSIS
  Metro Vancouver has transformed from a quaint waterfront port city to an international cosmopolitan haven for the rich and greedy. With its mark on the Pacific Rim as the 'boat hole' for criminals, shady investors and money launders, those wanting to hide ill-gotten funds from their nation's authorities, Vancouver became their destination of choice.
  
  JOHN NICOL, a long-time Vancouver resident and writer, interviews key stakeholders who discuss recent massive changes they have witnessed impacting the city and its residents. John investigates local elements of this global story. He explores diverse social and economic factors that have sparked a whole new lived reality in Vancouver.
  
  We take a trip back in time to Expo86 in Vancouver when living was easy in Lotusland. Space was available. Industry was more diversified. Good-paying job prospects were more plentiful and sufficient to cover the cost of living. Businessman and philanthropist, Jimmy Pattison, CEO of Expo86 sets the stage in an interview for the events, the story and the drama to come. He describes Vancouver as it was.
  
  Fast forward to the present. Luxuryland. A wealthy business class is inflating property values in safe global asset havens around the Pacific Rim. What has happened? Money. Lots of it. Buying property. Pushing up prices. Speculation. Money laundering. Government inaction. Corruption. Immigration. Emigration. The changes. Cultural and economic. The Attorney General of BC, David Eby, describes in an interview actions taken by his current government to eliminate the problems endemic in Luxuryland.
  
  In the process, there has been a lot of collateral damage. Human. Buildings. Heritage. Longtime residents have been dispossessed and live in tiny spaces, pop-up homes, vans, tents and on the street or are forced to move away. Ballooning housing and rental prices, property speculation, money laundering and homelessness have prompted widespread protests and forced government intervention.
  
  The stress of living in the city and dealing with a reduction in the quality of life for the young and seniors and the loss of neighbourhood, is telling. As density and prices increase so does general anxiety about living conditions. We talk to the newcomers. Oldtimers. Developers. Preservationists. Architects. Politicians. The street. The dispossessed.
  
  Is Vancouver unique? Not entirely. Other key cities on the Pacific Rim and around the world have also been targeted as hot beds for funneling illicit activities - San Francisco, Hong Kong and Sydney. Focusing on Vancouver in detail as our profiled sample city, the story focuses on issues and outcomes experienced across all these cities.