I think there are, first and foremost, a number of advantages to having a well-functioning Egmont Group. Egmont Group has been around for about 12 years now. It complements the work of the international Financial Action Task Force, which focuses more on the policy- and standards-setting level. The Egmont Group focuses on operational cooperation among agencies like ours.
When I say “operational”, I point to two or three key areas. The first is facilitating the exchange of information--the information on cases, the intelligence that we produce--and putting in place the frameworks and the technology. A key cost for the Egmont Group is a secure IT system that allows for the exchange of cases in a very secure manner. That's one key attribute of the organization.
The other is promoting joint work on training. As we evolve as organizations, as we deal with increasingly sophisticated criminals and terrorists, financiers, we need to improve our training. We need to do work on typologies and methods--the research we do--and share information about what we're learning about the vulnerabilities of our systems and how to strengthen them.
So there are a number of areas like this. As well, it ensures that there is a strong global network of agencies like ours. We contribute to technical assistance. We help these other agencies develop. Canada has one of the leading such agencies in the world. We've learned a great deal in the six years we've been in existence, so we contribute through technical assistance to the development of other FIUs in other jurisdictions. As you can appreciate, the system is really as strong as some of its weakest links. The goal is to have a very robust system worldwide. Egmont certainly contributes to that.