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Member of Parliament

Rhéal Éloi Fortin

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Bloc Québécois
  • Rivière-du-Nord
  • Quebec
  • Voting Attendance: 68%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $105,330.31

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 113 - Oct/19/22
Mr. Rhéal Fortin (Rivière-du-Nord, BQ)
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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