Thank you very much.
Indeed, it's an honour and a privilege to be appearing before this committee on this highly important and relevant topic. I might begin by saying that we have a sad experience in Canada of Canadian involvement in terrorism finance dating back to the troubles and conflicts in Sri Lanka, where Canada had become the world's largest single financer of Tamil Tiger terrorism in Sri Lanka and globally, which included the murder of two prime ministers, of India and of Sri Lanka. So I think it's absolutely appropriate that Parliament and this standing committee on finance examine the issues of terrorism financing in the contemporary period precisely to prevent any possible resurrection in Canada of what happened in the past.
I'd like to begin my remarks by saying that I will be focusing on four areas of, I think, relevance to the work of this committee. One will be the mobilization and transfer of funds from Canada to terrorist organizations globally. The second topic will be the import of funds from abroad for terrorist activities in Canada. My third topic will be emergent issues in terrorism financing, which involves Canadians and Canadian interests. Finally, if I may, I'll make some recommendations derived from the analysis that could, I hope, be of assistance to the committee in its procedures.
On the mobilisation and transfer of funds from Canada to terrorist organizations, I've identified seven areas of interest. I'll mention them here, and we can go into the details of case studies, if you wish, in the questions that follow.
There is, for example, the raising of donations and the transfer of donations to terrorist organizations through front organizations. Canadians donate money to front organizations, which transfer those funds to terrorist organizations like al Qaeda, the Islamic State, or Hezbollah.
Secondly, there's the diversion of charitable funds that are given by Canadians to charitable organizations, but those organizations are sometimes infiltrated by sympathizers of terrorist organizations, and the funds are diverted.
Thirdly, there are profits from contraband trade, where products are smuggled across state or provincial boundaries, tobacco for example, from low tax jurisdictions to higher tax jurisdictions, with the profits going to terrorist organizations.
Then there are the sales of mementoes, books, and other things that people buy, and the funds go to terrorist organizations.
There are trade-based transactions of high value, easily cashable merchandise. One example of this is the Islamic State acquiring petroleum from northern Iraq or northen Syria, exporting it through clandestine channels, and keeping the profits. And, by the way, there are examples of this in North America from Canada.
Then we have drug trafficking, sadly, and then we have financial fraud, the abuse of credit cards, for example.
On the import of funds from abroad for terrorist activities in Canada, we have a number of examples of areas of involvement. We have, for example, prepaid travel credit or debit cards that have financed Canadians to go abroad as foreign fighters or as other terrorist operatives.