Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues, and I want to take a moment congratulate all of the young folks. In fact, everyone is taking the opportunity to thank everyone else because of the short time we have left in the House of Commons. I would like to take a minute to thank and congratulate all of the young people who found a summer job in all of the ridings, mine in particular. These young people are contributing to the regional economy of our communities and embracing work. As I see it, work is an extremely important value to instill in young people to help them rise to the challenges of the future and gain experience through summer employment.
I am very pleased to rise in the House this evening to speak to Bill C-42, an act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts. This bill is one phase of the government's plan to create a national registry of individuals with significant control over corporations in Canada pursuant to the Canada Business Corporations Act, or CBCA. Of course, we are talking about federally regulated companies.
The purpose of this bill is to require Corporations Canada to make public some of the information collected under the 2022 amendments to the CBCA. The bill also introduces whistle-blower protections, introduces exemptions for certain individuals, adds new offences and gives Corporations Canada additional powers with respect to inquiries, data validation and information sharing. For one thing, these powers allow Corporations Canada to share information with provincial authorities. We know that Quebec already has a registry. Since I am an entrepreneur myself, my name is on this registry, as are the names of my company's shareholders. I think it is important for the public to have access to this information.
According to what the government is saying, this bill basically seeks to protect Canadians from money laundering and terrorist financing, deter tax evasion and tax avoidance, and make sure Canada is an attractive place to conduct business. I completely agree up to that point. It is a worthwhile initiative. Money laundering and terrorist financing do a lot of harm.
Unfortunately, Canada has a poor record when it comes to fighting these modern scourges. Canada is known as an easy target for criminal groups and as an epicentre of money laundering and tax evasion. According to a 2020 investigative report published by Criminal Intelligence Service Canada on money laundering and fraud in Canada, the estimated extent of money laundered in Canada is between $45 billion and $113 billion. That is a huge amount of money, and it is good that the government is doing something about that.
The Conservative Party has agreed to vote in favour of Bill C‑42, but not because it is perfect, far from it. The review process in committee was rushed. There were only two meetings. I am a member of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, and I would say that everything happened quick as a flash, leaving members and stakeholders little time to develop and debate amendments to improve this bill. We also proposed amendments that were unfortunately rejected, and that is what I want to focus on.
The first amendment we proposed that was rejected had to do with share acquisition thresholds. We proposed: “(a) any number of shares that carry 10% or more of the voting rights attached to all of the corporation's outstanding voting shares; or (b) any number of shares that is equal to 10% or more of all of the corporation's outstanding shares measured by fair market value.”
This amendment would have added a new clause to the bill, amending the parts of the CBCA that define significant control to lower the threshold from 25% to 10%. We know that there are several categories of shares in a business. In this case, we are talking about voting shares, those with decision-making authority.
James Cohen, the executive director of Transparency International, made the following comment regarding our proposal, and I quote:
I don't think...lowering the threshold from 25% to 10% and a risk-based approach are mutually exclusive. I think they actually go hand in hand. I would note that the 25% isn't so much a standard as it was an initial global recommendation that everyone just kind of grabbed on to. There is room to go down to 10% and provide more information for the RCMP.
The amendment that we proposed would have enabled the RCMP to cast a much wider net in terms of tax avoidance in particular, and also money laundering.
We also moved an amendment to make it easier for law enforcement to access information during investigations. This amendment would have added specific wording to the bill to ensure that law enforcement and other investigative bodies such as the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC, could access information from the director rather than having to approach companies individually. It would also have removed the reference to prescribed circumstances with regard to exceptions, ensuring that only minors are automatically exempt from having their information disclosed and that everyone else must apply for an exemption to prove that it is necessary. Once again, this amendment was rejected. This bill could have been improved, but the NDP-Liberal coalition said no.
Not only were our amendments rejected, but, as I said earlier, the bill was rushed, to put it mildly, through the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, on which I sit. In fact, we had just one meeting to hear from departmental officials, and we heard from justice experts on the same day that the clause-by-clause process took place.
Briefs from interested organizations such as the anti-money laundering campaign and the Canadian Bar Association were received the day after amendments were submitted. There were several amendments, and several of these briefs were received after the presentation of certain amendments. It is strange because we received some very interesting briefs from law firms, which had some significant reservations about this bill.
It is truly unfortunate, but that is how this government operates. It waits to take action and then, at the last minute, it acts hastily and imposes time allocation, which is what we have been experiencing for practically two months in the House of Commons. Time allocation is introduced time and time again. I will take this opportunity to point out that the NDP has now adopted almost 55 time allocation motions, which it never, or almost never, did before. This demonstrates the extent of the government's hold over that political party.
As I was saying, by colluding with the NDP, the government is getting its way with obviously shoddy results. Canadians expect the federal government to combat money laundering and the proceeds of crime in a way that aligns with our economic and security partners around the world. Canada must shed its reputation as a haven for dirty money. A future Conservative government will make it happen.
In 2021, the Conservative Party committed to establishing a federal registry of beneficial owners for residential properties and implementing comprehensive changes to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act to give FINTRAC, law enforcement and prosecutors the tools they need to identify, arrest and prosecute money launderers and, ultimately, stop illicit funds from making their way into the real estate market. This is the kind of policy our government will bring in to really tackle the problem of money laundering and tax evasion. Particularly in the Vancouver area where my colleague lives, absolutely huge sums of money are being invested by outside entities that launder money directly through real estate acquisitions.
The provincial and federal registries must be harmonized. In Canada, about 15% of corporations are in federal registries, while 85% are in provincial registries. The two types of registries therefore need to be harmonized so that the provinces and the federal government can work together. As I was saying, Quebec has a great registry that works very well, but it was recently amended. The federal registry could have been even better had the time been taken to study it.
