Thank you for the question. I would say two things.
Not to repeat myself, but on the beneficial ownership registry, I'd agree with Senator Downe. If we can get it before 2025, that would be excellent. We're coming to halfway through 2021. There need to be discussions with the provinces and territories, so there is time required, but let's see if we can be optimistic and get it done more quickly and to the best standard possible, with ID verification and proactive investigations and a tip line.
The second point would be to echo our colleagues from the public service union and talk about reintegrating expertise into the right areas and looking at how the dissolution of specified units affected the capacity of the CRA to look at overseas tax avoidance. Without knowing the specifics of that case and CRA, I've definitely heard anecdotally from a number of investigators across Canada about the lack of specialized units in issues of corruption, and more specifically in money laundering. There's a trend to have a specialized unit and then dissipate it across other units, and then that expertise gets wound up in other cases as opposed to putting a priority on anti-money laundering, on tax evasion and on corruption.
I know we've been hearing a lot about complexity. People don't want to hear that as an excuse, but between mutual legal assistance with sometimes unco-operative jurisdictions and the sheer terabytes of data that are involved in some complex white-collar crime cases, these specialized units are required.
I recommend getting the beneficial ownership registry on track and doing it to the highest quality possible, and looking into the ability to reorganize the capacity of specialized units across authorities in Canada.