They can. Basically, there's a process with the Bank of Canada. They need to validate that they are the owner of this account. They need to provide the information that the Bank of Canada will ask for.
That said, it takes a lot of time to make that validation, because the Bank of Canada doesn't have the social insurance number. They also don't have the date of birth of this individual. They need to rely on past transactions in the account. They need to rely also on this individual validating the last time they made a transaction in this account. It takes a lot of time to make the link between the owner and the person who is claiming this account.
The changes to the law that we're requesting in Bill C-30 would really expedite everything. They would force the financial institution to communicate the social insurance number to the Bank of Canada, as well as other information that will really help to make this transfer in the future.