44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 19, 2023 11:00AM
- Jun/19/23 7:00:25 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.
My colleague spoke with a great deal of knowledge on this point. I can see he represents his constituents well for a relatively young MP, compared with people in mid-life like me; I am at the tender age of almost 45 now. I said I was 44 the other day, and I heard about it.
Money laundering has had both a pervasive and a significant impact. I will ask my colleague this: Could he comment on how his riding of Battle River—Crowfoot has perhaps been, maybe not directly impacted, but impacted generally by these types of things?
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.
It seems as though we were supposed to be debating Bill C-18, which is legislation that deals with online news. It is interesting that, in this House, Liberals have accused Conservatives of playing partisan games, then half an hour before the debate on that bill begins they tell us we will be debating Bill C-42, so clearly these games are going both ways, but they probably do not want to admit that.
Before I begin, I want to acknowledge the life of Ms. Kathleen Beauchamp from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. She was my grade 5 teacher who later went on to become the principal at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Elementary School where I went to school. I ran into her a couple of years ago as I was getting into politics and I remember she gave me a really big hug. It was nice to see somebody with so much life, exuberance and vitality. She was volunteering into her nineties. I found out about her passing recently and I want to recognize her life because it was a life well lived. She was a model for the people of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. May perpetual light shine upon her and may she rest in peace.
I also want to recognize the life of Jared Larkin, the brother of a constituent and friend Sean Larkin. May perpetual light shine upon him and may he rest in peace.
Today, we are debating Bill C-42, an act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts. It is always nice to get up to learn about areas that might not be one's area of expertise. Despite being a lawyer and having some corporate law background, the Canada Business Corporations Act is far from being my area of expertise. However, I know a bit about some of the areas, particularly when we talk about money laundering and how that has impacted corporate crime and the Canadian economy.
I recall being a young criminology student, about 20 years old, and having a professor who told us to put down the sports section and pick up the business section. It was then I realized that corporate crime costs society much more than street-level crime. The problem with corporate crime is we do not always see it. It happens through things like price fixing and illegal influencing. We do not always see these types of things and sometimes, because it almost always happens behind closed doors, it is really hard to detect.
As a former prosecutor I can say that part of what the police authorities have to do is connect the dots and sometimes build what is called a circumstantial case, which is when they take facts from here and there and paint a picture. Each piece of evidence is like a piece of the puzzle. This is obviously an important aspect when we talk about a registry under the Canada Business Corporations Act. It is something law enforcement is asking for and really does need.
Again, as has been said repeatedly in this House, this bill is required, but it could have gone further. I was speaking with our shadow minister, the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, and I believe he spoke about this in the House this morning. He said that there were witnesses at committee and within minutes of hearing from them the committee went into a clause-by-clause analysis. In other words, the testimony of those witnesses who had information to give that was directly germane to the bill at hand was not fully incorporated into this legislation, because the government seems to have been in a rush to deal with this.
I believe four speakers were put up at report stage and then the government moved closure. It is a government that has repeatedly moved closure to stymie debate by saying it needs to get legislation through. I understand that there is a legislative objective, everybody understands that, but it should not push legislation through this way; rather, it should be done co-operatively.
This is a government, as I understand it, that said it would not use closure and time allocation. I am sure it was highly critical of Stephen Harper when he did it. We now see the Liberals and the party that is supposed to be the conscience of Parliament, the NDP, backing them up at every step of the way. I cannot remember a bill, controversial or not, for which we have not seen some sort of time allocation or closure invoked by the Liberals; their coalition partners, the NDP, just go along with it. What happened to being the conscience of Parliament and to hearing debate?
Yes, the government wants things to go through quickly. Here we are at the end of June. It is not Canadians' problem. It is not everybody in the House's problem that the government did not manage its time effectively and has not been conciliatory in terms of addressing things that would be of mutual interest. The Liberals say they want to work together. I am just not seeing that when we see these types of actions.
I will move on to some of the elements of this bill and the necessity for it. For me, as a British Columbian, the necessity comes when I review the Cullen commission. The Cullen commission was authored by Austin Cullen, from British Columbia; I believe he was associate chief justice at the time. He found that money laundering had risen to an unacceptable level in British Columbia. The province and law enforcement not only were not keeping up with it, but enforcement and shining a light on these types of issues had also become secondary.
This is a timely issue to be dealing with. The Cullen commission report, I believe, came out in the past couple of years. However, we have to remember that we should not be rushing these types of things in order to simply get them through, when more things could be done.
One thing that stood out to me was that the threshold for share ownership for being listed in the registry is at 25%. That is actually a high threshold. When we look at other corporate legislation, if memory serves me from when I was studying, there is a threshold of 10%. When somebody owns 10% of shares, that is enough to trigger a warning system.
Therefore, 25% of shares seems inordinately high. I would suggest that we perhaps move back to 10% of shares. As I understand it, the RCMP was supportive of this. Its view is that 10% would get more names into this registry, and the more names, the better. With more names on the registry, more dots can be connected for the police. Moreover, the police will have more tools to combat money laundering.
Before I go any further, I just want to highlight a couple more things from the Cullen commission, because I think they are really important to this discussion. There are unexplained wealth orders. I believe they would probably be an issue for the provinces, but while we are talking about commercial crime and Canada as a whole being a safe haven for money laundering, the provinces should really explore this issue in conjunction with the federal government as we enact this legislation. They could be used in conjunction with civil forfeiture and things of that nature.
The Cullen commission made a number of recommendations and really came up with things that the government should be doing. It looked at how money laundering was occurring in British Columbia. For instance, it was occurring by laundering money through casinos; the commission looked at how this impacted the real estate market.
Before I end, I want to recognize a news anchor, Bill O'Donovan, who received the RTDNA career excellence award in broadcasting. I am the godfather to his granddaughter. Bill is a great human being and a great broadcaster. Congratulations to him.
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- Jun/19/23 8:15:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I understand where the member is coming from. I also understand where the RCMP is coming from; they are expected to do more with less, each and every day. When it comes to fraud, there are limited resources. We are finding there are limited resources for the RCMP, period. The Liberal government is running a $60-billion deficit, yet when it comes to the enforcement of crime, whether it be in fraud, as my colleague referred to; in things like simply proving a firearm is a firearm; or in the area I used to prosecute in mostly, Internet offences against children, it takes 12 months to 18 months to analyze a hard drive. The RCMP needs more resources.
It is puzzling to me how the government could rack up $60 billion in deficit and still have a national police force that does not have the resources to deal with these extremely salient issues of the day. To me, that is unacceptable; I agree with my colleague. These things, and commercial crime, fraud and money laundering, impact each and every one of us. We do not always see the impact of them, but they do impact us.
I would like to see the government focus its spending and divert some of the funds that, in my view, are being recklessly spent, to matters of significance like the one the member raised.
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- Jun/19/23 8:17:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is not something I turned my mind to when I was preparing this speech, so I appreciate the fact that the member raised it.
This is another piece of the puzzle. When we talk about connecting the dots for proving an offence, it would seem that we would have to connect dots in order to prove who owns what when it comes to sanctions. Perhaps that would be another by-product of this legislation. There is an illegal invasion of Ukraine, and there are also other people around the world who have committed all sorts of atrocities, and those people should not be using Canada as a safe haven for their money. I fully support using this registry and every tool available to find their assets and seize them.
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- Jun/19/23 8:19:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member raises an excellent point. Why are we rushing this through? This is important legislation. Everybody around here says that this is important legislation, and when legislation is important, so is debate. We should not be settling for an okay bill or a good bill; we should be pursuing excellence for the people of Canada.
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