Evidence of meeting #27 for Finance in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was rcmp.
A video is available from Parliament.
3:30 p.m.
General Counsel and Vice-President, Canadian Bankers Association
I'm sorry. It's not a court process. I believe when the sanctions are invoked, it is a government process.
3:30 p.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
It's a separate process from that. Thank you.
The next question I would ask is, in the usual process, when the courts limit it, it gives you a bit more comfort when your clients have to move forward.
Do they have an obligation to tell the client of the bank that their assets have been frozen under an order?
3:30 p.m.
General Counsel and Vice-President, Canadian Bankers Association
Not necessarily. Orders may not provide it at all.
First of all, in some cases, orders may not specifically address notice. In other cases, orders are required to be kept confidential. It really does depend on the specific order.
3:35 p.m.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC
I have no further questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Fonseca
Thank you, MP Albas.
We are moving to the Liberals and MP Maloney for five minutes.
March 7th, 2022 / 3:35 p.m.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity and letting me participate today.
Thank you, Ms. Mason. This has been very informative.
Let's go back to what you said at the beginning. You said you would act on information from the RCMP and then you would clarify it through the bank records. A moment ago in response to Mr. Albas, you had a discussion about the validation component to this.
Can you take us through the validation aspect of this? That's obviously very important to the discussion.
3:35 p.m.
General Counsel and Vice-President, Canadian Bankers Association
It would depend on each particular institution and what was in their records. Let's say, for example, that they said this individual has been funding events in Ottawa, and then you can see....
Again, it's because we were asked to look at these specific individuals that we then looked specifically into their transactions or accounts. We could then validate that, yes, those transactions were occurring and they're of the nature that was described to us. This was very different and separate from how we were managing people who weren't on the list.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you.
Am I accurate, then, in saying that every request you received from the RCMP was subject to this validation process?
3:35 p.m.
General Counsel and Vice-President, Canadian Bankers Association
That's correct.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you.
What would the turnaround time typically have been during that week or nine days?
To be clear, the request was coming from the RCMP, not from the government, right?
3:35 p.m.
General Counsel and Vice-President, Canadian Bankers Association
That's right. The lists came from the RCMP.
My understanding is that the government did not have a line of sight into those lists, but, obviously, the guidance on how to implement was coming from the government.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you.
Once you received a request from the RCMP, take us through how long it would take to implement the freeze.
3:35 p.m.
General Counsel and Vice-President, Canadian Bankers Association
We were implementing quite quickly. We had staff ready. It would have been within 24 hours.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Built into that request time was some back and forth with the RCMP, if you had any questions or there was any uncertainty.
3:35 p.m.
General Counsel and Vice-President, Canadian Bankers Association
That's correct.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
The RCMP didn't come into the situation the day the Emergencies Act was invoked. They, in fact, had been dealing with these actors out in Ottawa who were involved in this for some time prior to that. So they came to this with much more background. This wasn't something new to them. Is that fair to say?
3:35 p.m.
General Counsel and Vice-President, Canadian Bankers Association
That's correct, which is why I say we primarily relied upon them. They were coming to us with a rather limited but definitive list.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you.
Through your experience and from talking to your member organizations, would you agree that the RCMP was willing to work with feedback received from financial institutions to make sure the requests were implemented properly?
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Thank you.
I think you said earlier that 180 accounts were frozen through the banks. Is that correct?
3:35 p.m.
General Counsel and Vice-President, Canadian Bankers Association
That's correct.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
Do you have data on how many of those accounts were corporate or businesses as opposed to individuals?
3:35 p.m.
General Counsel and Vice-President, Canadian Bankers Association
I could get a breakdown of it, but there were at least a couple of corporate. I'm working from memory now.
3:35 p.m.
Liberal
James Maloney Liberal Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON
But most of them, I would suspect, would have been businesses, corporations or larger entities, that were involved in the protest. Is that fair to say?
3:35 p.m.
General Counsel and Vice-President, Canadian Bankers Association
No, I would say there was a balance. There were a number of individuals.