Declaration of Emergency Committee on May 3rd, 2022

[Isabelle Jacques]

Yes. As you will have seen from my testimony, we received no specific information. There were dispositions in the order that allowed sharing of information between law enforcement and the financial institutions, but not otherwise, so we have not been privy to any specific information—just aggregate amounts, as I've reported.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

We'll now move on to Monsieur Fortin.

Mr. Fortin, you have the floor for five minutes.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions will be for Mr. MacKillop.

Mr. MacKillop, You said earlier in your testimony that you were regularly receiving about 9,000 suspicious transaction reports a week.

I further understood that it stayed at the same level during the eight days of the order. Is that right?

[Barry MacKillop]

Thank you for your question.

Yes, that's right. It was happening regularly, and we received around 9,000 during the week of the order.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Okay.

Am I to understand that these reports come from financial institutions?

[Barry MacKillop]

Partly, yes. Several sectors report to us.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

When you receive these reports, are they checked to ensure that they really were suspicious transactions?

I would imagine that these reports are not necessarily all substantial or serious. Or are they all serious?

[Barry MacKillop]

They are all suspicious transaction reports that entities believe might be related to money laundering or financing terrorism.

But before disclosing the information to the police, the reports need to meet the reasonable doubt criteria that we apply before concluding that it really is money laundering or financing terrorism.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

So if I have understood correctly, your office checks every single one of the 9,000 reports you receive each week. Is that right?

[Barry MacKillop]

Yes. Staff members check the reports, but we also use technology. It's difficult to verify everything physically, so we use technology for assistance. We begin by searching on keywords.

Before disclosing information based on a suspicious activity report, we also check our database to see if other transactions might corroborate our suspicions or broaden the network to identify other people involved in a scheme.

That's how we proceed before preparing and establishing a disclosure process that we then transmit to the police, or to national or international security agencies.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Could you give us an approximate percentage of the transactions you determine to have actually been suspicious after completing your review process?

Just give us an order of magnitude.

[Barry MacKillop]

That's very hard to say, but this year, there were over 2,000 disclosures to the police.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Out of a total of how many?

[Barry MacKillop]

That number is for the disclosures. But each disclosure might consist of anything from a single suspicious activity report to an amalgam of 1,000 or 2,000 reports that we have put together.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

I'm sorry, I don't want to rush you Mr. MacKillop, but we're getting a little short of time.

You're telling me that there are approximately 9,000 a week. I haven't done the calculations by multiplying that number by 52 weeks, but that's clearly a large number.

Of these, I understand that you identified 2,000 as being serious. Is that right?

[Barry MacKillop]

No. No, that's not it at all.

These are 2,000 disclosures to our police forces, like the RCMP. Not just the RCMP of course, but all the police forces in Canada. But each disclosure may contain thousands of reports.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Right.

I have only a few seconds left.

Over the eight days when the order was in effect, were there more or fewer than usual?

[Barry MacKillop]

About the same as usual.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Thank you.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

Thank you.

I will now pass the chair over to Senator Boniface for my five-minute round.

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

Mr. Green, you have five minutes.

Please proceed.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

Through you, Madam Chair, to Ms. Jacques, you've heard in my earlier lines of questioning that I feel a bit dismayed about what I would consider to be the lack of seriousness around the preparation, briefing and direction of both FINTRAC and the department. You provided in your testimony that you were made aware two days prior of the Emergencies Act.

Was there any activity that would have happened in your department, anticipating, recognizing that this might have been a possibility, that would have been preparing policy briefings for senior management and the minister?

[Isabelle Jacques]

There is no doubt that looking at the events unfolding, being the assistant deputy minister responsible for the financial policy sector, that we looked at those events and certainly started thinking what could be done if it needed to be done. I found out that the Emergencies Act would be invoked solely that weekend.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

So in the lead-up—