- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Rivière-du-Nord
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $105,330.31
- Government Page
- Sep/19/23 9:10:29 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I will be brief and tell my colleague that we will never form government. Unfortunately, I cannot tell her how to go about that. She is a member of the Liberal Party. I suggest she discuss it with her Prime Minister, party officials and cabinet. That is where the answer is. They are the ones in charge.
She and I are condemning the same events. However, all I can do is speak out against them and condemn them. I hope that she is in a position to intervene. I also have a great deal of respect for her, especially for the work we did together on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. I trust her.
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- Sep/19/23 9:08:18 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I thank my Green Party colleague, who always does excellent work and who is remarkably sensitive and diplomatic.
I understand her questions. I am asking myself the same things. Why were authorities unable to keep Mr. Nijjar safe? If I understood correctly, he was given information at one point, but that does not seem like much in terms of ensuring his safety. Over the past few years, incidents have occurred on the Hill that have led us to question what we need to do to keep parliamentarians safe.
People are also wondering how to keep cultural communities across Canada safe. I think that some serious work needs to be done. I have been here for eight years, and we have been talking about the problems with the justice system for eight years. We talked about it again recently. The government has been unable to appoint judges, so trials get dropped because the judges who are there do not have time to conduct them. We are not keeping the public safe. As I said before, unfortunately, I think things are looking pretty grim in Canada.
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- Sep/19/23 9:06:23 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I hope that what I am about to say will not surprise my esteemed colleague, for whom I have a great deal of respect. No, Mr. Harper did not call me.
I understand his questions. I have the same questions. As I said earlier, this raises a number of questions. Who governs this country? I tell my constituents that if they want reassurance, they have to make sure they have Bloc Québécois members in Ottawa. Without us, no one can say that everything is fine.
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- Sep/19/23 9:00:02 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, it will come as no surprise when I say that I, too, offer my deepest condolences to the family of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. They have been in mourning since last spring, and we are reigniting that grief with our debates in the House this week. They have my deepest sympathy.
I do not want to turn an emotional debate into a partisan one, but I feel it must be said: Canada is in a bit of a mess. I am looking at what is happening right now. On Monday, the Prime Minister announced something that he said he had known for a few weeks. When we asked why he did not mention it before, we were told that the investigation is ongoing so it cannot be discussed. It is almost as if he told us that there is a fire, but he will not tell us where. That does not strike me as particularly nice, and I am not sure that it is helpful. That said, as my colleague from Trois-Rivières mentioned earlier, it is clear that other governments are in no hurry to support the Prime Minister in his statement and his demands.
What does that mean? Is it because the information was not reliable? If so, the Prime Minister's statement yesterday was premature. If it was indeed premature, he may have caused more harm by making the statement too soon than he would have caused by waiting, even though he might have been criticized for waiting too long.
I have never governed a state, and I may never do so, unless Quebec chooses independence, and even then I doubt I will be in charge. Still, when governing a country, one should make sure one knows what one is talking about before stirring up a hornet's nest. Is that what happened here? I do not know, but I am astounded that more detailed information is not available.
Is there a connection between the potentially unclear information the Prime Minister got, the weeks of waiting before he made his statement and other governments' silence? We do not know.
I think that the first thing we should do is offer support to the diaspora of all these communities living in Canada. As I said at the beginning of my speech, when we look at what is happening, we are in a bit of a mess. There is foreign interference and we have to name a commissioner to look into it. Justice Hogue is going to do excellent work, I am sure of it, but we have a long way to go. We are not there yet.
In the meantime, Chinese communities in Vancouver and Toronto seem to be struggling with clandestine Chinese police stations. The government does not seem to have reacted to this situation other than to condemn it. Nothing was done to stop it.
Now there is the murder of Mr. Nijjar last spring which is alleged to be tied to the Indian government. The government is reacting several months later and does not want to tell us what is happening. They are talking about another inquiry that we know nothing about and over which we have no control.
How do we reassure the Indian diaspora here in Canada? How do we reassure the Chinese diaspora here in Canada? How do we reassure all the other cultural communities living here? I get the impression that the government has quit. When we ask questions, they do not want to provide answers.
Here we are halfway through the government's mandate. Two years have gone by; we have two left, unless everything blows up before the end of this four-year cycle. If we look at the other options, what are they? Where is the official opposition that should be here vigorously condemning the situation and maybe sharing some pain and suffering, putting forward its ideas and its point of view? It is not here. Between the “we do not know, so we cannot talk about it” silence and “we are not there, and we do not want to talk about it” silence, Quebec is in an uncomfortable position within the Canadian federation.
I would like to reiterate my deepest condolences to Mr. Nijjar's family. I hope we can find a way to provide reassurance and support to all these communities, a way that is more than just lip service, motions of support and new national days of this, that or the other, a way to really be there when people need us.
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- Sep/19/23 8:23:33 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague from Trois‑Rivières for his speech, which, as always, was informative, sensitive and reasonable. I would say that it was an ethical speech.
That being said, he raised the issue of the lack of support from other governments. He also talked about how long the Prime Minister waited to make his statement in the House after he received the information. It is possible that this delay was just fine.
It may be just fine that no other country has supported the Prime Minister's position so far. That does not mean that the other countries do not agree. Maybe we will find that out later. It may also be just fine that our Conservative friends are silent on the issue.
Nonetheless, this leaves me with a lot of questions. I am not sure if my colleague from Trois‑Rivières can elaborate. In his view, is there a connection between those delays? Is it possible that the information obtained is not as reliable as we would like to believe? Perhaps it is reliable and I am asking completely useless questions.
I would like my colleague to say a bit more on this aspect of the issue.
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- Sep/19/23 7:55:25 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, from the beginning of this debate, we in the Bloc and the other parties have deplored the events that have taken place. My colleague opposite is from the region where the crime in question took place.
I would like to hear her thoughts on our concerns. While we sympathize with everyone affected, and despite our desire to learn more, does my colleague have any idea why the Prime Minister waited until Monday to make the statement?
Also, is she aware of any discussions the Prime Minister may be holding with leaders of other countries to find out why we did not receive the support of other countries in this matter initiated by the Prime Minister yesterday?
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- Sep/19/23 6:56:42 p.m.
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Madam Chair, I was listening to my colleague's speech and it made me realize that I am going to get some mileage out of the speeches made by my Bloc Québécois colleagues. They took turns asking questions that seem important, at least to me, yet I have not heard any answers.
First, my colleague from Montarville asked how it is possible that the Prime Minister, who has known about this for some time, waited until yesterday before announcing it in the House. There may be a good reason, but I would like to hear it.
The other question is the one from my colleague from Trois-Rivières. Perhaps the previous speaker can answer. Why are other governments not supporting our Prime Minister's statement and his request to get to the bottom of this matter? I am curious and trying to understand the dynamic.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise this evening to speak to Bill C‑289, which was introduced by the Conservative member for Simcoe North.
I will start by saying that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of Bill C‑289, which will amend the Criminal Code to make it an offence to give false or misleading information to a financial institution requesting that information in accordance with the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act.
Right now, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act asks financial institutions to verify their clients' true identity and the source of funds under certain circumstances. Financial institutions must also report transactions they deem suspicious to the government, so the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC, can carry out the necessary verifications, prevent laundering of the proceeds of illegal activities and prevent such funds from being used to finance illegal activities, such as terrorism.
The problem is that we know from experience that there is a serious lack of rigour and very little vigilance, at all levels, in the tracking of dirty money. If a bank's client makes a false statement, it is very likely that they will get away with it. There is minimal verification. Since the act of intentionally making a false or incomplete statement is not criminally sanctioned at present, this client has every chance of falling through the cracks. This leaves FINTRAC with incomplete information, and its work becomes less effective. This is how the chain of negligence results in dirty money being laundered in the real economy.
This is a flaw that Bill C-289 will correct. It will not fix everything, of course, but it is another step in the right direction to better uncover money laundering activities.
In May 2022, the Consulate General of Italy in Montreal organized an event to mark the 30th anniversary of “operation clean hands”, a vast anti-mafia and anti-money laundering operation during which, let us not forget, two judges were murdered. Retired Italian judge Roberto Scarpinato came to Montreal to give us a warning. He told us that Canada had become a paradise for the mafia and money laundering and that we as a society had to do something. He encouraged us to develop what he called “antibodies”, to stop being naive, to be more vigilant and not be afraid to enforce our laws to the fullest extent, because money laundering is a scourge in Canada and in Quebec.
According to Transparency International, the amount of money laundered annually in Canada could be between $43 billion and $113 billion. This means that up to $113 billion a year in proceeds of crime, from both here and abroad, is being reintroduced into our economy, allowing criminals to reap the benefits of their crime with impunity and causing economic distortions, such as skyrocketing real estate prices.
British Columbia launched a commission of inquiry into money laundering, the Cullen commission. The Cullen commission may be the most comprehensive effort ever made to understand the phenomenon of money laundering in Canada, its effects, its causes and the best ways to prevent it in future. It submitted its report in June after more than two years of work and hundreds of witness testimonies. The report points the finger at the RCMP and FINTRAC for not taking money laundering seriously enough. It excoriates the banks for looking the other way. In fact, it accuses pretty much everyone of negligence. It also provides examples of what money laundering looks like.
Take the case of Runkai Chen, a Chinese immigrant who arrived in Vancouver in 2006. While reporting an income of about $40,000 a year, he built a real estate empire worth tens of millions of dollars. Mr. Chen was a front man tasked with laundering in Canada the proceeds of corruption in China. He regularly received large transfers from foreign numbered bank accounts and reinvested the money in Canadian real estate.
He made false statements to financial institutions here that, unfortunately, were no longer asking the questions they were supposed to ask. Not one major Canadian bank raised a red flag, not RBC, not CIBC, not the Bank of Montreal. In the end, it was a foreign financial institution that alerted FINTRAC and led to his downfall. That is the type of across-the-board negligence that Judge Scarpinato was referring to when he spoke about the need to develop “antibodies”.
We actually already have a lot of the legal arsenal needed to deal with this problem. The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act is a powerful tool. Banks are required to verify the identity of their clients and where the money is coming from. They have the power to freeze funds they deem to be suspicious. They are required to report suspicious transactions, large cash deposits, and international transfers if they have difficulty determining where the money actually came from. All of these requirements exist, but unfortunately, most of them rely heavily on the client acting in good faith and the financial institution being vigilance.
When the government decided to invoke the Emergencies Act in what we believe, need I repeat, was an unjust manner, the Standing Committee on Finance held hearings on the financial aspect of the orders that were made following the emergency proclamation. At these hearings, representatives of the Department of Finance could not say whether the funds frozen by the financial institution had been frozen under the Emergencies Act or under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act, the law that we are discussing today and that Bill C-289 seeks to strengthen.
From the moment the occupation of downtown Ottawa was declared illegal, the financial transfers used to fund it fell within the scope of these laws. All that was required was vigilance. There was no need to invoke the Emergencies Act. It would have been sufficient to enforce the existing laws, namely the Criminal Code and the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act.
By forcing clients to make true and complete statements to the banks or face criminal penalties, Bill C‑289 addresses the first step, which is to verify the identity of the client and the source of the funds. This could start off a virtuous cycle rather than a vicious one, as the financial institutions themselves would be more diligent about checking. Government organizations would be better informed and more likely to co‑operate with their counterparts abroad. In short, it would help us begin to develop the antibodies needed to seriously address the scourge of money laundering.
That is why I am pleased to reiterate that we will support Bill C‑289.
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