- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Abbotsford
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 66%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $146,571.88
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I am thankful for the opportunity to engage in this debate.
The reason I find this so important is that I am from the beautiful province of British Columbia and from the city of Abbotsford, which is nestled between majestic Mount Baker, at 10,500 feet high, and, on the other side, the mighty Fraser River. We live in a wonderful community in a wonderful region of the country. However, one of the challenges we have had over the years is that Canada, and more specifically British Columbia, has become the locus, the very heart, of money laundering in our country.
Just so Canadians understand what money laundering is, I will note that it is not benign activity engaged in by Canadians who want to avoid taxes or something like that. Money laundering is about taking the proceeds of crime, channelling them into what appears to be a legitimate business or a legitimate asset and trying to make those proceeds seem legitimate. It is a great way for criminals to hide the proceeds of crime. The last thing I believe Canadians want to do is aid and abet criminals to commit their crimes in our country, yet that is what has been happening for many years.
This legislation is not the be-all and end-all. Bill C-42 is simply a part of the solution. What it would do is establish a beneficial registry, an ownership registry, that would allow Canadians to see who actually owns the companies into which money might be directed from the proceeds of crime. This is not going to solve the whole problem of money laundering. Our police have their hands full in trying to track these criminals down, trying to identify the proceeds of crime and trying to get convictions.
Here is another problem. Money laundering has contributed significantly to the inflationary impacts on prices of land, real estate and homes that Canadians want to buy. These criminals know that if they can get money channelled into a house, it will be less likely for the police to identify that asset as being a proceed of crime. They also channel these proceeds of crime into legitimate businesses, like small and medium-sized enterprises. They channel this money into hard assets. They may be boats or expensive cars. At the end of the day, this costs Canadians big time.
There is another reason this is important to British Columbians. It was in British Columbia that the Cullen commission was established to investigate this very challenging problem to our criminal justice laws and to the broader issue of how much money laundering costs the average Canadian.
The Cullen commission made a long list of recommendations, most of which implicated the provincial government. It called upon the provincial government to act. However, there was one recommendation that stood out, which was that the federal government establish a pan-Canadian beneficial ownership registry for corporations. I believe Justice Cullen really intended for this to cover all companies in Canada. The problem is that the criminal justice law is federal law, so we as a Parliament have jurisdiction over it. Here is the problem: The large majority of Canadian companies are incorporated not at the federal level but at the provincial level, implicating every one of our 10 provinces and our territories.
How do we cobble together a pan-Canadian foreign ownership registry program with all of these different players at the table? The bill would, at least in the immediate term, establish a corporate beneficial ownership registry for federally incorporated companies, which is a good start. However, I believe the Cullen commission's intent was for the Liberal government to engage the provinces and territories to expand this to include the provincial regimes in federal legislation so that we can go after the money launderers in every corner of our country.
There is a reason this has come to our attention as lawmakers. Back in 2016, the Panama papers exposed how vulnerable Canada was to money laundering. Those papers made it clear that Canada was a laggard on the international stage when it came to addressing money laundering and interdicting the criminals who were taking proceeds of crime, filtering that money through legitimate enterprises and assets and then getting away with their crimes.
In 2017, it was the Liberal government's finance minister, Bill Morneau, who said we needed a beneficial registry to help combat money laundering in our market to determine the true source of funds and ownership in the acquisition of firms. He was right at that time, and that was 2017.
What happened in the intervening years? Nothing. From 2016 to 2023, we had eight years of inaction on the part of the Liberal government. This is pretty shocking, since the government, through its finance minister, at the very least had become aware that this was a very important issue for Canadians and nothing was done.
I will say that I am pleased that at least this has now come before us as Bill C-42, and it looks like we will see a beneficial ownership registry passed and implemented in our country. However, as the bill goes through committee review and comes back to the House, we are going to be asking a lot of questions. For example, how will this registry protect Canadians' privacy rights? We want to interdict criminals as they try to undertake their criminal enterprises, but we also want to make sure that the privacy of Canadians is protected.
I do not have great confidence that the government will actually protect our privacy, and here is why. We recently debated Bill C-27 in the House, which is all about privacy rights. We have been asking the government to actually include privacy as a fundamental right in Canada that Canadians can depend on. Sadly, Bill C-27 did not include that, so we have a right to be concerned.
We also want to ask who will have access to the information in the beneficial registry. Is it the police? Is it the ordinary citizen? It is business people? None of that is clarified in this legislation. We need to know that. Will the bill give law enforcement the necessary tools to combat money laundering and terrorist financing?
To conclude, I believe there is all-party agreement, so I am asking for unanimous consent to request a recorded vote on Bill C-42.
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Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to engage in this debate and to support this bill from my colleague, the member for Simcoe North. My colleague suggested that he is a rookie, but I think a lot of us know that he is one of the rising stars here on the Conservative side. He has brought forward a bill that is perhaps the first step in addressing the issue of money laundering. For me as a British Columbian and a member of Parliament from the west coast, it is especially important, because this is an issue that has now been thoroughly canvassed by the Cullen commission. I will get into that in a moment.
Money laundering is a very serious problem that deserves our serious attention. The amount of money that is laundered is in the many billions of dollars. Perhaps $100 billion a year is being laundered through casinos and real estate. It has a huge impact on Canadians. It has a huge impact on our prosperity and our lifestyles.
Money laundering is, at its very core, criminal. It is an activity firmly rooted in greed that has a complete disregard for the interests of others. Money laundering is deeply destructive to our communities and our families, and is thoroughly implicated in things like gun smuggling, drug trafficking and human trafficking. It goes on and on. Who suffers the most from money laundering? It is our communities and the most vulnerable members of our society, particularly those with addictions, mental health challenges and gambling addictions.
Money laundering is also implicated in much of the gun and gang violence we see across the country, including in my community of Abbotsford. It is an affront to every law-abiding citizen who earns their money honestly, pays their taxes and invests in their communities. It is essential that all of us, whether it is government, law enforcement or regulators, take strong and decisive action to fight this problem.
I mentioned that money laundering is an expensive business for Canadians. Billions of dollars are not being declared and are not being taxed, but are going into criminal activity. There is very little that has been done to address this problem so far.
A significant amount of money that is laundered ends up in our real estate market. I do not know if members understand that, or if Canadians understand that money laundering plays a significant role in the skyrocketing cost of real estate. It is not the only factor but it is one significant factor.
What happens is that these laundered funds end up in real estate and distort real estate prices, especially real estate prices close to major urban markets. Residents then have to seek lower housing costs by moving away from larger cities to communities such as Abbotsford, which in turn strains local real estate markets. Laundering money in Canada is therefore not a benign activity.
What are we supposed to do about it? So far, money laundering has not been addressed in a comprehensive way. The Cullen commission in British Columbia led to a damning report that concluded that billions of dollars per year were being laundered, and that was just in the province of B.C. alone. It called for sweeping changes. The commission found that this dirty money has been laundered through real estate, casinos and the purchase of luxury goods, for example, and Mr. Cullen made 101 recommendations.
To answer my colleague from the NDP, the soft-on-crime NDP, who said this bill is too narrow and too minor to support, I have never heard that argument made in the House before. I have never heard that a significant, narrow Criminal Code amendment could be too minor to support. Had my colleague from Simcoe North broadened this legislation, the NDP would not have supported it; we know that. The NDP is soft on crime. Canadians understand that.
The other thing is that we here on the Conservative side are the official opposition. We are not government. We are not the ones who are supposed to be bringing forward big bills to address the rising crime rate in Canada, especially when it comes to money laundering. That is the role of the Liberal government, which is being propped up by the NDP, who will not bring forward this kind of law or anything close to substantially addressing the issue of money laundering in Canada.
Let us talk about the recommendations the Cullen Commission made. Most of these recommendations are actually directed at the Province of British Columbia. When my NDP colleague says there are all these recommendations and this is not one of them, I can say that my colleague from Simcoe North did his research and his homework.
The bill before us, where individuals who lie to reporting authorities and organizations can go to jail for up to 10 years and can be fined a million dollars, is a big step. It is not a minor step. It is not a narrow step. It is a big step in the right direction. When I said, at the beginning of my remarks, that this is a step, someone has to take the first step. It is usually up to Conservatives to do that and that is what we are doing.
I am really saddened to see that the NDP has decided not to support the legislation. It is not about its merits. It is because it is too narrow. The NDP thinks it is too insignificant so it is going to push it aside and vote no. Canadians have to understand the perspective that the NDP comes from when it comes to addressing crime in Canada.
What are these recommendations that Justice Cullen made? There was a suggestion that there should be a dedicated provincial money laundering intelligence and investigation unit. It said the government should develop anti-money laundering guidance for financial institutions and the money service businesses that are often implicated in money laundering.
He recommended that a corporate beneficial ownership registry should be established, and we see that the Liberal government has now included that beneficial ownership registry in its budget. Has it been implemented, this public beneficial ownership registry? No. In fact, it said it will get it done by the end of 2023. Quite frankly, we could have an election by then. We all know that. By the end of 2023, we could have an election because the marriage between the NDP and the Liberals will likely break up before then. We will be in the middle of divorce proceedings between the two.
Another recommendation is that cryptocurrencies should be regulated because this is the next frontier in which money laundering will take place, if it is not taking place already. There was a recommendation that the threshold for requiring proof of the source of funds for casino transactions conducted in cash should be reduced. There is the suggestion that all cash transactions for the purchase and sale of luxury goods over $10,000 should be reported. There was also a suggestion that professional bodies like lawyers and accountants should be regulated more strictly.
These 101 recommendations, many of which were directed at the Province of British Columbia, provide us with a lot of fodder, a lot of support. At the end of the day, actually having some penalties, like prison time or massive fines, for those who lie to reporting authorities is a good step forward.
I thank my colleague from Simcoe North for bringing forward this very important bill.
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