Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Minister. Thank you for coming from B.C.
This week The Hill Times has run a piece on money laundering, obviously piggybacking off our committee's work, and I commend it for doing that. It's entitled “Feds float idea of beneficial ownership registry as House Finance Committee reviews anti-money laundering law”. I was reading it over earlier this afternoon, and it states that “The RCMP estimated in 2009 that [approximately] $15-billion was being money laundered in Canada each year.” I don't know if that's an exact number, but it's a pretty big number, and it may speak to some of the things you've seen in B.C.
A white paper that was issued by the Department of Finance just prior to the beginning of our study recommended expanding the types of entities that must report to FINTRAC to include mortgage insurers; land registry and title insurance companies; non-federally regulated mortgage lenders; dealers in high-value goods, such as auction houses and jewellers; and unregulated financial companies.
Would you care to comment on that?