Finance Committee on Dec. 8th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number four of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to the House of Commons order of reference adopted on December 2, 2021, the committee is meeting on Bill C-2, An Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. Just so that you are aware, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.

Today's meeting is also taking place in the webinar format. Webinars are for public committee meetings and are available only to members, their staff and witnesses. Members enter immediately as active participants. All functionalities for active participants remain the same. Staff will be non-active participants and can therefore only view the meeting in gallery view.

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind all participants of this meeting that taking screenshots or photos of your screen is not permitted.

Given the ongoing pandemic situation and in light of the recommendations from health authorities, as well as the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on October 19, 2021, to remain healthy and safe, all those attending the meeting in person are to maintain a two-metre physical distance. Everyone must wear a non-medical mask when circulating in the room. It is highly recommended that the mask be worn at all times, including when you are seated. You must maintain proper hand hygiene by using the provided hand sanitizer at the room entrance. As the chair, I will be enforcing these measures for the duration of the meeting, and I thank members in advance for their co-operation.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I'd like to outline a few rules to follow. Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of “floor”, “English” or “French”. If interpretation is lost, please inform me immediately. We will ensure that interpretation is properly restored before resuming the proceedings.

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With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do our very best to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members whether they are participating virtually or in person.

Witnesses and members, this is the tool I use so that you will know when your time is coming up. I'll give you a marker, this 30-second note, which everybody will have. It just keeps everybody on track.

Witnesses, you will have the opportunity to make your opening statements for five minutes.

Members, as we get into the questions, if you can pose your questions to whichever witness you would like to answer them, that may make things more efficient and help us through the meeting.

We have a number of witnesses before us today.

From Campaign 2000, we have Leila Sarangi, national director.

From the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, we have Mark Agnew, senior vice-president of policy and government relations, and Alla Drigola Birk, director of parliamentary affairs and small and medium enterprise policy.

From the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, we have Barry MacKillop, deputy director of intelligence, and Dan Lambert, assistant director, intelligence operations.

From the Fondation des artistes, we have Michel Laperrière, president.

Finally, from the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, we have Beth Potter, president of the association.

We will go in the order I followed in the list, starting with Campaign 2000's Leila Sarangi for five minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Leila Sarangi, National Director, Campaign 2000]

Good afternoon, members of the finance committee. Thank you for inviting me to present today.

As was mentioned, my name is Leila Sarangi. I am the national director of Campaign 2000, a pan-Canadian coalition of over 120 organizations working to end child and family poverty. We take our name from the unanimous federal resolution to end child poverty by the year 2000.

For 30 years we have been monitoring progress toward this promise and putting forward achievable recommendations. We have said for many years that poverty is not inevitable but that it is a choice that is made when policies that keep people poor are implemented.

Unfortunately, we believe that people in need will be left out of the emergency measures before you. Campaign 2000 has been hearing from member organizations as well as people living in poverty who have been impacted. We have been working with them to develop recommendations, which I am pleased to share with you today.

There are three recommendations that I will focus on, and they include CERB repayment amnesty, bolstering the Canada child benefit and making it more accessible, and providing an income benefit eligibility and distribution system for people who are outside of the personal income tax system.

We have many more urgent recommendations. We have outlined them in our national report card, which was released a couple of weeks ago, on November 24, and shared with all of your offices. They include addressing growing inequality; providing income support; creating a $0-to-$10-per-day child care model that meets the needs of low-income families and is secured in legislation; and creating decent work, housing and health care.

Before I get further into my recommendations, I'll quickly set the context as we know it.

We used the latest tax filer data available and found that despite federal promises, strategies and programs like the Canada child benefit, more than 1,313,000 children are living in poverty in Canada. That's 17.7% of all children, but those rates skyrocket for indigenous, racialized or immigrant children, children with disabilities, and children in lone-mother-led families because of the systemic barriers they face.

In our year-over-year analysis we found that only an additional 24,000 children were lifted out of poverty according to the low-income measure, and that at this rate it would take the federal government an additional 54 years to meet its goal to eradicate child poverty.

A riding-level analysis shows significant rates of child poverty in every single riding across the country. Children are also living in deeper poverty, with the average single mother's income being $13,000 away from the low-income measure, and the inequality gap is widening.

The top 10% of families own as great a share of the income as the bottom 50% do. It is these individuals and families who have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and the related economic fallout, and there is an opportunity before you to start closing the gaps in our support systems that these folks have been falling through.

Our first recommendation is a CERB repayment amnesty for all low-income people. For us this means the following: Immediately cease pursuing repayment for the CERB and ensure no repayment is sought for the CRB, the Canada recovery benefit, from low-income people.

The CRA is getting ready to send their letters out right now, as they did last December, and we believe this should not happen. Immediately cease treating CERB and recovery benefits as taxable income. This is why they have been interacting with other low-income benefits. Refund all clawed-back benefit amounts and enact legislation to ensure that there will be no future pandemic benefit-related clawbacks for income programs including social assistance, rent subsidies and federal benefits.

Your government has encouraged the provinces and territories not to claw back federal pandemic benefits, but it is doing essentially the same thing with GIS and CCB reductions. Immediately reinstate the CRB at the full amount of $500 weekly until employment insurance is reformed.

Second, the Canada child benefit is known to have substantial positive effects for children in poverty who can access it. Our recommendations there include investing in the base amount so that it reaches those families in deep poverty and extends the pandemic top-ups to all children under 18.

Repeal the section of the Income Tax Act that arbitrarily ties eligibility to caregivers' immigration status. They are considered residents by the Income Tax Act. They pay into the income tax system and often have Canadian-born children.

Remove bureaucratic barriers to prove eligibility for families that are in informal and kinship care arrangements.

Last, there are many people who don't file taxes. They are often low-income, precariously housed, underbanked or unbanked.

In other jurisdictions across the world, there are income security programs that are supported by governments and delivered through trusted charities in communities. There's a large one in South America called Bolsa Familia. These mechanisms are in place informally through our networks here across the country, and the federal government should look to formalizing and investing in them.

This kind of holistic approach that is aimed at closing gaps in our society in a time of emergency will make sure no one is left behind.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you very much, Ms. Sarangi.

Now we're moving to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. We have Mark Agnew and Alla Drigola Birk. Either of you can take the time, or you can split the time, but you have five minutes.

[Mark Agnew, Senior Vice-President, Policy and Government Relations, Canadian Chamber of Commerce]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We'll be splitting our time this afternoon.

Mr. Chair and honourable members, thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-2. It's great to be back at parliamentary committees, albeit still in a virtual form. I'd just say congratulations to this committee for being first out of the gate in terms of various committees with work under way on the House side.

Many of you will be familiar with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canada's largest business association. We look forward to working with all of you throughout this upcoming parliamentary session. My colleague Alla will speak in a moment about some of the specifics of Bill C-2.

However, at the top of the presentation —

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I'm sorry, but the bells are ringing. I think we need unanimous consent just to continue, which I'd be happy to give.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

How long have the bells been...? I'm sorry, but I didn't hear them go off.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

I think we have 24 minutes left, or something like that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Okay. We'll look for unanimous consent to keep going till we get to about five minutes before the vote time, and then we'll go up.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

It looks as though we have unanimous consent.

Mr. Agnew, you can continue.

[Mark Agnew]

Thank you.

At the top of our presentation I certainly want to urge passage of Bill C-2. I think it's important to say a brief word to situate how we see this bill in the context of the Canadian economy, particularly with the fall economic statement coming next week.

Businesses have repeatedly made clear to us that compounding additional uncertainty and burdens on their competitiveness is not an option. Just to name two of the challenges we've heard about in companies, there is the continuing application of the automatic escalator on excise taxes for alcohol products, as well as retroactively applied digital services taxes which would scope in Canadian companies and risk retaliation from the United States. There are many, many challenges I could go on about, but certainly, in a period of economic uncertainty, we are also seeing a very fragile recovery for our members.

Although the macroeconomic job numbers are positive, with employment at 186,000 jobs higher last month than it was pre-pandemic, there's certainly a lot of work to be done. Accommodation and food services employment is still at 16% below its pre-pandemic levels, or roughly 200,000 jobs, according to Statistics Canada's November labour force survey data.

The last piece of context that I think is particularly germane to the discussion about the hardest-hit sectors and the travel and hospitality industries is the public health restrictions that are still being imposed upon these businesses. Provincial rules continue to constrain the capacity of businesses to operate, and certainly no company opened with success predicated on operating at only half capacity. As for tourism, certainly no operator in any of your constituencies would have opened with an assumption for success based on not being able to access foreign tourists as part of their business model.

Canadians continue to face a fairly fluid landscape, it's fair to say, with respect to our travel restrictions. We, unfortunately, don't have clear data to outline how decisions are made. Certainly, while public health is always paramount, I think it's fair to say that the rules remain complex across different modes of transportation, country of departure and length of trip. The current rules do act as a disincentive to travel, which I think means that companies that are in the travel and hospitality space are operating with one hand behind their back.

In the most recent Canadian survey on business conditions, over 55% of the accommodation and food services businesses said that they expect their profitability to decrease in the next three months.

This isn't to go down a deep tangent on issues that aren't related to the question at hand with Bill C-2, but certainly I think it's quite important to help set the context for the discussion on the importance of this bill.

Now I'll turn to my colleague Alla to speak a little bit more to the specifics about the legislation.

[Alla Drigola Birk, Director, Parliamentary Affairs and Small and Medium Enterprises Policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce]

Thank you, Mark.

Good afternoon, committee members. It's great to be back.

Since early 2021, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce has been calling for a more sector-specific approach to the government's business support programs. While the pandemic has touched all of us in a number of ways, the fact remains that businesses in certain sectors have felt the impacts of COVID more acutely than others. That is why we are pleased to see the next iteration of business support programs include a suite of measures that allow businesses in different stages of recovery to access supports to see them through the pandemic.

With Canada's high vaccine uptake and the adoption of proof-of-vaccine credentials by provinces across the country, many COVID restrictions impeding the ability of businesses to operate at full steam over the last two years have either been removed or relaxed, but as Mark noted earlier, this is not uniform for all sectors.

Businesses are acutely aware that public health measures can be reintroduced at any time, and we need to make sure that they have adequate government support to get through these situations. Bill C-2 introduces business support measures that are comprehensive and that provide support for those businesses that continue to have operations restricted as well as for those that are seeing their revenues return.

The tourism and hospitality recovery program provides targeted support for the tourism, travel and hospitality, and arts and culture sectors, while the hardest-hit sectors recovery program provides some relief to businesses in other sectors that continue to see revenue declines of 50% or more. For businesses that do not fall into either of these categories because of revenue declines that are less severe, the Canada recovery hiring program is available to help cover wages if a business's wage bill is higher today than it was in March and April of 2021.

Bill C-2 also includes maximum wage and rent subsidy supports for businesses that are impacted by fresh lockdowns in the future, an important measure as uncertainty increases with the emergence of the omicron variant. Ultimately, the most important thing is to ensure uninterrupted support for those businesses that are still struggling. Therefore, we encourage all parliamentarians to pass this legislation without delay. This is also especially important in light of the upcoming holiday season and the previously mentioned uncertainty around the omicron variant.

Thank you for having us here today. We look forward to taking your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Ms. Drigola Birk.

Now we're going to move to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada. We have Barry MacKillop and Dan Lambert.

You have five minutes.

[Barry MacKillop, Deputy Director, Intelligence, Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting FINTRAC to participate in this panel as part of your review of Bill C-2.

As was mentioned, I am joined by Dan Lambert, my assistant director for intelligence. In respect of the time of the committee, I will do the opening comments this afternoon.

This afternoon, I would like to speak briefly about the intelligence mandate of the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC, and the valuable role the centre plays in supporting the investigations of money laundering and terrorist financing by Canadian police, law enforcement and national security agencies.

I will also discuss the strategic financial intelligence we produce that enables us to identify new patterns, trends and tactics used by criminals to launder money or fund terrorist activities.

As one of the 13 federal departments and agencies that make up Canada's anti‑money laundering and anti‑terrorist financing regime, FINTRAC is responsible for ensuring compliance with the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act by specific industry sectors, as well as for generating financial intelligence that will enable Canadian law enforcement and national security agencies to take appropriate action.

FINTRAC's financial intelligence has been more important than ever as criminals and terrorists have sought to take advantage of the global pandemic to enrich themselves and advance their illicit enterprises. Over the past year, the centre generated more than 320 disclosures of actionable financial intelligence related to the laundering of proceeds stemming from fraud, corruption and other financial crimes associated with the global pandemic. In total, throughout the 2020-2021 reporting period, FINTRAC provided 2,046 disclosures of actionable financial intelligence in support of investigations related to money laundering, terrorist activity financing and threats to the security of Canada.

Since becoming operational in 2001, the centre has provided more than 21,000 financial intelligence disclosures to Canada's police, law enforcement and national security agencies. Last year our financial intelligence contributed to over 376 major resource-intensive investigations and hundreds of other individual investigations at the municipal, provincial and federal levels across the country.

As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Chair, FINTRAC also produces strategic financial intelligence, the goal of which is to inform Canada's security and intelligence community, regime partners and policy decision-makers, Canadians and our international counterparts about the nature and extent of money laundering and terrorist financing activity in Canada and throughout the world. For example, FINTRAC prepared a classified financial intelligence brief early in the global pandemic to help inform law enforcement and national security agencies in select federal departments of the various types of fraudulent activity that was being directed at the Canada emergency response benefit and the Canada emergency business account. This financial intelligence brief was based on 395 suspicious transaction reports that FINTRAC received in relation to the Canada emergency response benefit and the Canadian emergency business account between January 1 and June 30, 2020.

It is important to note that our financial intelligence brief was based on information provided by businesses subject to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. It is not evidence of any wrongdoing.

For context, Mr. Chair, our financial intelligence brief also highlighted that as of August 2020, 8.5 million unique applicants had submitted 23.72 million applications for benefits under the Canada emergency response benefit program alone.

Following this classified brief, the centre also produced and published a special bulletin identifying increased money laundering risks associated with the global pandemic. These included the laundering of proceeds of crime by counterfeiters selling fake COVID-19 test kits and pharmaceuticals and cybercriminals employing COVID-19 versions of popular phishing and blackmail scams that directed victims to send virtual currency for donations and ransom payments. The bulletin was meant to assist businesses subject to the act in managing their money laundering and terrorism financing risks during the global pandemic.

Since the first lockdown in 2020, FINTRAC has continued to receive and analyze reports, including suspicious transaction reports, and provide actionable financial intelligence to police services, law enforcement and national security agencies in Canada. We are committed to working with Canadian businesses and our domestic and international partners to protect the safety of Canadians and the integrity of Canada's financial system.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. MacKillop. You're right on time.

Now we're moving to the Fondation des artistes. We have Michel Laperrière with us. He's the president. We'll hear from Michel now for five minutes.

[Michel Laperrière, President, Fondation des artistes]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Mr. Chair, hon. members, thank you for the invitation.

The Fondation des artistes has been in existence for over 35 years. Its mission is to provide one‑time financial assistance to local professional artists who are going through a precarious time. It supports all professional artists and artisans, regardless of their age or sector, including actors, singers, musicians, dancers, circus artists, multidisciplinary artists and many others. The support offered is impartial and takes the form of grants. The grants allow artists to meet their basic needs, such as housing, groceries, health care, and so on.

Since self‑employed artists don't have access to employment insurance, the foundation's support allows them to get through a difficult period, hold on to their art and pursue their careers.

As you know, the arts sector is a field where precariousness is omnipresent. The worldwide pandemic of COVID‑19 has, of course, exacerbated this sad reality and has had a strong impact on the cultural world.

While in 2018‑19 the foundation granted some $260,000 in assistance to artists, in 2020‑21 more than $2,750,000 was distributed in emergency assistance. The amounts donated have increased more than tenfold compared to previous years. This represents more than 1,975 donations in the last 12 months alone.

The growing number of artists supported and donations made by the foundation is due to the support of major industry players such as Netflix and WarnerMedia, private foundations, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and our Jean‑Duceppe fund, not to mention, of course, the establishment of the emergency fund for artists and cultural workers in the performing arts, financed by the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications. This fund was endowed with an initial amount of $2 million, which was quickly depleted in just a few months. Fortunately, it was replenished with $3 million in the summer of 2021.

It was based in part on the foundation's excellent reputation that the Government of Quebec supported it with confidence. The foundation's impeccable ethics, sound processes, and ongoing collaboration with government officials have been invaluable in helping artists through this difficult period. Full transparency of procedures has been established through regular reporting, as it should be.

Unfortunately, our funds, including the emergency fund from the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications, are now exhausted.

As you know, according to Statistics Canada, entertainment GDP fell by 66% in the first two quarters of 2020. Yet just over a year into the pandemic, it was still 64% of a full recovery. I think you understand that the situation is alarming.

I will be pleased to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Laperrière.

We are now going to move to the Tourism Industry Association of Canada and Ms. Beth Potter, who's the president.

Members, before Ms. Potter gets going for her five minutes, I will just say that as soon as she has concluded—and I think she'll have enough time since we have 12 minutes before our vote—we're going to suspend. We're going to go up and vote in the chamber and then come back down, and then we will start our first round of questions.

Ms. Potter, the floor is yours.

[Beth Potter, President and Chief Executive Officer, Tourism Industry Association of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I would like to thank you for inviting me to appear before you today.

My name is Beth Potter. I am the president and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada. I want to thank you for allowing me to appear before you today and for the opportunity to share with you just how important Bill C-2 is to businesses and employers in Canada's tourism industry.

TIAC is the national voice for tourism in Canada. We aim to improve its global competitiveness through leadership and advocacy. We represent a broad suite of tourism sectors, and our advocacy work at the national level involves promoting and supporting policies, programs and initiatives that will benefit the sector's growth and development.

Many of you will have heard me say this before, and I will say it until it is no longer true: When the pandemic struck, the tourism industry was the first hit and the hardest hit, and it will be the last to recover. TIAC's top priority is to work to recover what has been lost over the last 20 months because of COVID.

Before the pandemic, in 2019 total tourism spending in Canada hit an all-time high of $105 billion, and it had been growing for years. Fast-forward one year: Total tourism spending dropped by half, down to just over $53 billion in 2020. Fifty per cent of total tourism spending in Canada disappeared in just one year. Domestic spending dropped by 40%, and international spending got decimated by 87%. Total tourism GDP dropped by 50%, and as a result, our industry's contribution to Canada's total GDP dropped from 2% to 1%.

Employment in our industry also saw a significant decline. In 2019 we had 748,000 direct jobs and we supported almost two million in total. One in 10 workers in Canada had a job related to tourism. In 2020 that all changed. The number of direct jobs dropped by close to 30%, down to 533,000. The number of related jobs dropped to 1.6 million.

These stats are not just numbers on a piece of paper. Jobs are a sense of pride to many. It is how they pay their bills and support their families. Jobs in our industry make a mark on this country, our friends and our neighbours.

The pandemic impacted tourism more than any other sector. By December 2020, there were 10% fewer active tourism businesses than there were the previous year. This is more than three times lower than the contraction of the Canadian economy overall, at 3.1%. No sector was spared.

With the recent new variant and increasing testing requirements, as an industry we feel as though we are going backwards. Tourism businesses and the many thousands of workers they employ are still at serious risk today without continued federal support, especially over the winter months, until higher tourism levels are expected to return in the spring. This, of course, is assuming that new variants are kept under control and new infection cases continue to decrease.

Since the onset of the pandemic the industry has effectively lost two full seasons as borders were closed and other travel restrictions and lockdowns were in place. Businesses have faced crippling revenue losses and drained financial reserves and have taken on substantial debt. Without the financial support provided by Bill C-2, many companies simply will not survive the winter, and many more jobs will be lost. It is imperative that the support provided through Bill C-2 be made available to all eligible tourism businesses, including indigenous tourism businesses.

Before the pandemic, I would note, the growth of the indigenous tourism sector was outpacing that in the industry as a whole. I would also highlight that emergency support programs put in place at the onset of the pandemic did not respond to the realities of many indigenous businesses.

We appreciate the support Parliament has already put in place, but as the rest of the economy recovers, the tourism industry continues to deal with changing restrictions and capacity limits, and that is why we have advocated sector-specific support. That said, TIAC encourages the passing of Bill C-2 as quickly as possible. We also look forward to working expeditiously with all MPs during this parliamentary session towards the development and implementation of a number of strategies to address other critical issues related to the indigenous tourism sector and the significant labour shortage, and to rebuilding overall traveller confidence. I am confident that by working together over the months and years ahead, we will achieve our mutual goal of recovering Canada's travel economy and regaining our leading competitive position in the global tourism market.

In closing, I wish to express my deepest appreciation for the leadership each of you and your respective parties have demonstrated in support of helping to rebuild Canada's tourism industry. While I've delivered these remarks in English, I would be pleased to answer questions that you may have in either English or French.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Ms. Potter.

Members, we're going to suspend right now. We're going to go up and vote. We will be right back.

For the witnesses, the clerk will keep the witnesses informed in terms of timing and when we will be back. Let's hope for 15 to 20 minutes, but we'll see how this goes. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Members, we're going to get started again. We're back to order.

Right now, we have our first round of questions. There will be six minutes each for each of the parties. We're going to start with the Conservatives.

I believe it's Mr. Stewart first. You have six minutes, Mr. Stewart.

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also want to thank all the witnesses for being here today.

First, Mr. Chair, I have a question. Will this committee go longer today, or did we lose that time because of the time it took to go up and vote?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Yes, we would like to get the two hours in, so we will add on to our time.

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Through the chair, my question today is for FINTRAC.

Can you elaborate to the committee in what moment FINTRAC first believed that defrauding the original CERB and CEBA was inevitable or at least that there was that potential? I know you met with this committee, the Standing Committee on Finance, in July of 2020, and I know that you warned of the potential.

In your commentary earlier, you mentioned advising as early as January of 2020, but I'd like to get some clarification on when FINTRAC first realized the potential for the defrauding of the programs.

[Barry MacKillop]

Thank you for the question.

FINTRAC started to receive suspicious transaction reports from our reporting entities around the month of June. For the most part, it was really our large financial institutions that were reporting on CERB and a number of benefits that were coming in with certain clients. They would see clients receiving benefits under different names and so forth, so that really tweaked them to the fact that it may be odd and it may be suspicious.

They reported that, as they should, to FINTRAC, given that if it were in fact fraud, the proceeds of that I think would be related to money laundering. When we receive reports like that, we certainly examine them. We do our analysis. If we meet our threshold, we disclose that information to law enforcement, to either the RCMP or the police of jurisdiction or both.

It was around the month of June that several of the banks started noticing these types of deposits and suspicious deposits going into certain bank accounts.

[Jake Stewart, Conservative, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Thank you for the answer.

As a follow-up question, was FINTRAC consulted during the drafting of the original bill? We're here today to talk about Bill C-2, but out of curiosity, on the original bill that held the CERB and CEBA programs, I wonder if FINTRAC was consulted on the drafting of that bill to assist the government or assist the Canada Revenue Agency with the types of preventive measures that might prevent the potential for what we're discussing here today.