Evidence of meeting #6 for Declaration of Emergency in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A video is available from Parliament.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Financial Sector Policy Branch, Department of Finance
I didn't receive a charter breach analysis, but opinions were provided by the Department of Justice.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Okay. Thank you.
Again, I'm going to go back to what I think our guiding principle is as a committee, which is to be able to provide recommendations based on the special orders and how they were enacted given the current contemporary context.
Would you consider providing, given the discussions and the obvious confusion of very learned parliamentarians around the role of your department, a review within your department to help guide recommendations that might come out of a committee like this?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Financial Sector Policy Branch, Department of Finance
That the Department of Finance would do a review that would guide...?
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Future contemplation of the Emergencies Act using economic measures, yes.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Financial Sector Policy Branch, Department of Finance
Well, I mean, it's certainly something that could be considered—
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Do you not find it strange, given the rarity of this invocation, that this isn't something that's already been put into play by the minister?
It just seems to be to be an abrogation of leadership, given the seriousness of this, and by the way, I'm somebody who supported it, just for the record. We have a responsibility to report back to the public how, why, where, when and what we did, given the severity of the Emergencies Act, would you not agree?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Financial Sector Policy Branch, Department of Finance
I understand the role of the committee and that this is information you would like to provide.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I would like to ask you this. If you were at this committee and you had recommendations to this committee, given the experience you have—the two days' notice, the lack of real briefings in terms of where you were going with it—what recommendations would you provide this committee to, hopefully, help to improve future processes for your successors, perhaps, in future instances of an emergency?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Financial Sector Policy Branch, Department of Finance
This is something I would have to give due consideration to. It's not an answer I can provide here during this testimony.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Financial Sector Policy Branch, Department of Finance
It's broader than—
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Yes, it is very broad, as were the measures. I would like to ask you to please consider doing that.
In fact, just as an administrative piece, for all members looking to table, I have a reminder to table through the clerk so that it can be translated and distributed accordingly.
That's it. Thank you.
Liberal
Rachel Bendayan Liberal Outremont, QC
I have a point of order.
Madam Chair, I would just like to ask if it is relevant to ask an official who is not an elected member of Parliament or a legislature what their recommendations are, given they are a public servant.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
On that point of order, I find that an interesting proposition.
Of course it's relevant. Of course we want to ask expert testimony to provide recommendations to this committee. It's something that occurs in every committee—at least that I've sat on—and I have a hard time finding how the honourable member would not see this as being relevant, given that we are, hopefully, going to be providing a fulsome report.
I'll go further on that point of order, Madam Chair, to state that I am still very concerned with the lack of systems and principles in place at the highest levels of management within government to provide adequate and clear answers to this committee, quite frankly, so I would argue that this is very relevant.
Liberal
Rachel Bendayan Liberal Outremont, QC
Madam Chair, if I could, I'll explain my point of order further if I was unclear. The beginning of the question was requesting that a member of the public service imagine themselves as an MP sitting in this committee. That is the nature of the inappropriateness, but I understand my colleague's response and his interest.
We are all interested in making recommendations that will be useful in this committee. That is our committee's work.
Liberal
Arif Virani Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
If I could just point this out, I think it's an interesting point Mr. Green is raising, but where I might draw a qualitative difference is in the testimony of a departmental civil servant as compared to some of the other witnesses we're going to hear at this committee.
Certainly, external stakeholder groups on whatever side of the political spectrum are going to have views about this legislation, but asking a federal civil servant whose raison d'être is to provide neutral advice at all times to government and not to opine upon legislative reform I think that might be crossing a line.
I think that question would be onside vis-à-vis the Canadian Civil Liberties Association—picking something hypothetically—but not for a federal civil servant.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Madam Chair, on this interesting contradiction of principles here, we did ask a member from the Department of Finance to provide legal definitions when we had the Department of Justice here that could have done the same.
I would hope that we would be provided with latitude within this committee, Madam Chair. I do appreciate you being the chair in this particularly awkward moment.
Thank you.
The Joint Chair Hon. Gwen Boniface
Thank you.
Perhaps what we can do, as the witness has the request and the finance minister will be appearing, is that we can make a similar request through the Minister of Finance to get the material.
NDP
The Joint Chair NDP Matthew Green
We will now return.
Senator Boniface, you have the floor for five minutes.
Gwen Boniface
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
For your benefit, I may not take the full five minutes.
I'd like a little more clarity—I'm sorry I don't recall who responded—on the issues of cryptocurrency. How has that changed or may it change in the future? I'm thinking more about the future, not this incident particularly.
How might it change some of the considerations from a finance perspective, and how does the law sit with that?
I think it was led by Mr. Fortin's question.
Perhaps we can go to FINTRAC.
Director General, Financial Crimes and Security Division, Financial Sector Policy Branch, Department of Finance
Yes. My colleague at FINTRAC can speak to the specifics of their oversight, and we can speak to the higher level crypto policy going forward.
Deputy Director, Chief Compliance Officer, Compliance Sector, Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada
Monitoring virtual currencies is part of what we do in the compliance function and ensuring that we have oversight. It's relatively new. It came into force in June 2020, so we are conducting some examinations to take a look at how reporting entities comply and how they report on crypto and virtual currencies.
Director General, Financial Crimes and Security Division, Financial Sector Policy Branch, Department of Finance
I'll add briefly, in terms of policy going forward, you might have noted in budget 2022 that the government announced it would be undertaking a financial sector policy review. Part of that policy review is going to be targeted at the future of money and looking at crypto, specifically, what the policy issues are that could arise in the context of crypto and what position the Government of Canada should take in that regard.