Finance Committee on March 19th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

It is translated, yes. We do have it in both languages.

We will send that to the members.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

While we're doing that, I'll just make a few quick comments.

Ms. Hunt, when you were testifying in the last round with Mr. Chambers, at one point you said that you supposed Mr. Chambers knew the answer to his question better than you did. I will tell you something about Adam Chambers: He very rarely asks a question that he doesn't already know the answer to. Sometimes we're privileged enough that he will share the answer with us.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Sometimes he holds it back and sometimes he shares it. That's the first thing. That's good intuition on your part, I would say.

The second thing is that Mr. Chambers has put a motion on notice.

I know that we're not debating the motion—I'm just using the time that I have here—but that was quite a long list of witnesses, Mr. Chambers. I think you have more than half the cabinet in that motion. If we were to pass that motion, I think we'd have even more people in the room than we have today, and I think today was a record.

Mr. Chair, are we ready?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

MP Baker, everybody should have received it already. It's in their inbox.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'll just read it into the record, Chair:

That in accordance with its motion adopted on January 30th, 2024, the Chair be instructed to schedule meetings for the consideration of Bill C-59, upon the bill’s referral to committee; that clause-by-clause consideration of the bill start no later than April 30th, 2024, following a total of twenty hours of witness testimony;

For the purposes of this study, that the Chair be empowered to set up extended meetings and request additional House resources, if necessary.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Baker.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

How much time do I have, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

You have almost three minutes.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

On the issue of money laundering, for my constituents who are watching at home, I'd like to step back from the legislation for a second. There are a number of measures in the legislation that combat money laundering. What I would like to understand better, and what I'd like my constituents to understand better, is this: How does money laundering harm Canadians? What problem are we trying to solve?

[Erin Hunt]

Thank you very much for the question. That's an excellent question. I think we often think of money laundering as a victimless crime, but let me be clear and on the record: It is not a victimless crime.

What we're talking about when we talk about money laundering is how criminals try to take their proceeds of crime and make them seem legitimate. These are proceeds that are generated from such crimes as human trafficking and drug trafficking and environmental crimes, where they're deterring environmental protections for Canadians that can have real-life impacts on our health and safety. This is trade-based money laundering, so it's trying to hide the value of their crimes within the international trading system. This is generating, and helping them generate, more proceeds to be able to perpetuate even further crimes. These are things we need to stop.

Canada has a very involved and developed system to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. It involves 13 departments and agencies at the federal level, our provincial and territorial colleagues and nearly 30,000 reporting entities that are all involved in trying to identify suspicious transactions and suspicions and report them to our FINTRAC, our financial intelligence unit, to allow our enforcement agencies to better identify, deter and detect money laundering throughout our country.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

When you talk about the fact that money laundering allows some of these criminals to then fund and resource other criminal activities, for the folks I represent in Etobicoke, what kinds of criminal activities are we talking about that might impact my constituents?

[Erin Hunt]

Thank you very much for the question.

Money laundering infects all sorts of different criminal activities—both small criminals and large criminal organizations. This would be funding small criminal acts, which could be any variety of criminal acts.

It's the act of taking the criminal proceeds and trying to make them legitimate. In doing that, you are allowing the criminals to continue to perpetuate crimes.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Could those resources be used to perpetrate car thefts, for example?

[Erin Hunt]

I think the answer to that question is that criminal proceeds can be used to direct any type of other criminal acts within our country, including things like car theft.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I appreciate that each criminal entity and each criminal organization is different and perpetrates different types of crimes, but presumably there are some people who are using laundered money to fund and facilitate car thefts, break-ins and other forms of serious crimes that affect folks every day.

Is that a fair assumption?

[Erin Hunt]

If I could answer your question slightly differently, I think that car theft, for example, is a way to generate proceeds of crime. The way you would wash that money to try to make it clean is to launder your money. That's kind of the network and nexus in which we're working.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

By doing this, we can actually help limit car theft.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Answer quickly, please.

[Erin Hunt]

I think we all hope that we can limit car thefts.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you for that, MP Baker.

Now we're actually moving into our third round. We have MP Hallan up now.

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Can I call up the department of infrastructure, please?

Thanks, folks.

I just want to continue the questioning by my colleague, Mr. Lawrence.

I'll ask this one more time: For this legislation, Bill C-59, on the FES, is there any analysis on how many homes this legislation will build?

[Gerard Peets]

I really am conscious of the spirit of the question and also that my answers could be repetitive—

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Is the number zero?