Thank you.
I agree with the principle that access to money is a necessary ingredient of one's ability to conduct criminal and terrorist activity. Denying individuals such access will reduce the harm to society. Ongoing efforts to strengthen and modernize the legislation are necessary to address new technologies and financial practices.
I believe, however, that there is a significant weakness in the government's ability to match enforcement action to the quality of legislation that has been introduced and may, in fact, be introduced. The RCMP, as it is presently constituted, is a municipal, provincial, and federal police service. It has multiple demands placed upon it by a myriad of political masters. Approximately two-thirds of its police officers perform non-federal policing functions. This is the type of policing that is performed by tens of thousands of police officers throughout Canada and does not have to be performed by our federal police force.
The federal government assumes about 30% of the cost of the RCMP policing at the local levels. This commitment not only distracts the RCMP from its federal policing role, but it occasions the development of a recruitment and developmental model ill suited for a police force that is required to successfully investigate a new class of crime. This is the type of criminal activity which includes terrorism and is interprovincial, national, and international in scope. Such criminal actors employ the latest technology and are supported by lawyers and accountants.
Since 2000, the government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in an initiative to combat money laundering, proceeds of crime, and terrorist financing. How have we done? FINTRAC receives and analyzes 25 million transactional reports annually and provides disclosure of actionable financial intelligence to assist the investigation of money laundering, terrorist financing, and national security threats. Just between 2010 and 2014 it released 2,961 such actionable disclosure cases. Both CRA and CBSA, according to their annual reports to the Treasury Board, have either seized or collected in reassessed tax arrears tens of millions of dollars.
By contrast, the RCMP, but for action taken with respect to drug enforcement activities, which has been a core mandate for many decades, appears to have taken very little action with respect to terrorist financing or non-drug activity. I could find only two references to alleged terrorist investigations, one of which was attributable to undercover work.
The RCMP, as specified in the Security Offences Act, has the primary responsibility for the investigation of terrorist activity. The gap among the serious public harm occasioned by the financing of terrorism, the significant moneys invested by the government in the investigative program, the admirable efforts by FINTRAC, and the weak investigative follow-up by the RCMP should be a concern for all members.
Parliament will be able to give meaning to legislation such as the prevention of financing of terrorism by the RCMP only if the RCMP rededicates itself to its federal policing role and recruits individuals who possess, or trains active members to acquire, the skills essential to address the new type of criminal behaviour that threatens Canadian society. The government should reallocate the 30% federal subsidy in support of contract policing to the federal portion of the RCMP to allow it to better fulfill its federal policing role.
Thank you.