Finance Committee on March 3rd, 2008

[Margaret Baxter]

Clearly there should be a better way, but given all the processes, ensuring that the appropriate people get to review and have a voice is what takes so long. The MC was, I believe, approved in February 2007, and then the Treasury Board submission was in September, and here we are, so....

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Okay, I appreciate that.

I'll share my time, whatever is left.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Go ahead, Mr. Menzies.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you.

I guess we've all surmised that there's not going to be any push back from this committee about that extra funding. But I do want to ask a question about the Egmont Group, an international group that selected Toronto for its headquarters. Do you assume that's a reflection of our increased strength as a country in clamping down on these sorts of drug laundering issues? Are you familiar with the Egmont?

[Janet DiFrancesco]

Yes. I would say it's a reflection of Canada's commitment to be a leader in this particular file, and the commitment that the Canadian government has made to fund the Egmont secretariat is a significant one. The Egmont Group is a group of international financial intelligence units, and it currently has over a hundred members. So I do think that it is reflective of Canada's leadership role in this particular field.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Can you explain a little bit about what the Egmont Group does? I understand we give $5 million to support the group.

[Janet DiFrancesco]

Yes. The Egmont Group is an organization of financial intelligence units around the world. The pillars of the organization are to share information, to provide training and technical assistance to other countries who are attempting to put in place anti-money-laundering units and anti-terrorist-financing units, and to facilitate international cooperation and collaboration on these kinds of issues.

The importance of the secretariat is that, as the organization has grown past 100 members, it becomes harder and harder--without some kind of focused support--to put forward positions to provide training to its members and to put in place a collaborative network to make an impact in terms of other countries who are trying to establish financial intelligence units. So the secretariat provides a lot of support to the workings of the Egmont Group, and I think it will be a very valuable contribution going forward.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Okay.

I have one final quick question. I know that you presented before the pre-budget review process and there was a contribution to FINTRAC in budget 2007. Were you happy with budget 2008?

[Janet DiFrancesco]

Yes.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

She may not agree with me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Answer if you want.

[Janet DiFrancesco]

Yes.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you.

We'll now move to Mr. Pacetti. The floor is yours.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to the witnesses for appearing. I missed your opening comments but I have them here in writing. It's not very deep, so I understand there's not going to be much of a problem for the $238,000.

My question is more towards the total budget of FINTRAC. I think you're almost at $50 million this year and it would have been maybe $10 million to $15 million four or five years ago.

[Margaret Baxter]

Yes. Initially the FINTRAC budget was in the neighbourhood of $17 million a year, and it has grown steadily, to $50 million this year.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

So it was about $17 million three years ago, correct?

[Margaret Baxter]

It was in 2001-2002.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

It continued in 2002-03, maybe even later.

[Margaret Baxter]

Yes.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I think it was 2002-03, if I recall. I'm doing this out of memory.

I think my colleague may have asked this, but how do we evaluate? We went through this whole thing with the illegal transactions, CRA versus FINTRAC, and the fact that there are problems between FINTRAC and CRA in terms of communicating, and even bringing criminals forward and trying them because of the exchange of information, and here we are throwing more money. But we're still not sure whether this money is properly spent. We're not sure if it's doing any good. I understand that we're hiring a lot of people, creating a lot of deductions at source, and benefits to some of the employees, but are we making a difference?

[Janet DiFrancesco]

Sure. And certainly to repeat some of what I said before, I think that FINTRAC's value, in terms of what we contribute in intelligence to law enforcement, is measured by the value that we provide to their investigations. We certainly do make disclosures to CRA, and we continue to work with them in terms of making sure that our intelligence product meets their needs and that they're able to provide us with the information that is helpful for us to understand what those needs are.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

But there are some barriers between CRA and FINTRAC, are there not?

[Janet DiFrancesco]

There are some limitations on what CRA can disclose, certainly, because of their legislative framework, but FINTRAC can disclose the same amount of information to CRA that it would disclose to any other law enforcement—

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

But has that not been a prohibitive step to CRA's taking more action?