Finance Committee on April 27th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 86 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, April 20, 2023, the committee is meeting to discuss the subject matter of Bill C-47, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023, divisions 1 to 9, 32 to 34 and 37.

I will remind members that divisions other than those in part 4 will be studied at a subsequent meeting.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I'd like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members. Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of the floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. I remind everyone that all comments should be addressed through the chair. For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as well as we can, and we appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

Members, we have 22 great officials with us today, as I understand it. I'd love to read out all their names and their titles and everything they do, but that would take a great deal of time, so they have chosen a spokesperson. Mr. Countryman is going to be speaking on behalf of the team of officials.

Just before we get to that, I do see a hand up.

MP Ste-Marie, go ahead.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a point of order.

I acknowledge all the senior officials who are here and thank them for joining us.

In committee, we have recently been discussing the possibility of sending parts of Bill C‑47 to other committees for study. I would like to call on the Liberals, in this case Mr. Beech, who represents the government in this context, and ask him if he will propose to us by next Tuesday what parts of the bill will be assigned to other committees and what committees those are. If so, we look forward to that proposal. If not, we could work on a proposal.

I would also like to remind the folks at the Department of Finance that we asked for clarification on the Canada growth fund a few weeks ago. We wanted a breakdown of the budget by province and by sector. On the committee's behalf, the clerk sent a reminder to the department and received an acknowledgement, but we are still anxiously awaiting that data.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Ste-Marie. Your question and the desire to get an answer to that from the ministry are noted.

We are going to go to Parliamentary Secretary Beech on the letter we intend to send out to a number of committees.

Clerk, can you just update us on that? Is the letter ready?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Alexandre Roger]

Yes, the letter is ready. The only thing we need to know from the committee is which committees we want to send letters to and which parts we want to send to which committees. Basically that is the only information that is missing at the moment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

Parliamentary Secretary Beech, go ahead.

[Terry Beech, Liberal, Burnaby North—Seymour, BC]

Hi, everybody. Happy Thursday.

Thanks for the question, Gabriel. That is something we have been considering and discussing with various members. It was something Mr. Chambers brought up earlier as well.

I am working on something, and I think having it before next Tuesday is easy. I could probably talk to you even later today about how we could do it. In fact, I could probably talk to all critics later today about how we think we could do it. We can get moving on that. I think that would be very helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, PS Beech.

I see a thumbs-up from MP Ste-Marie. That's great.

Now we'll get into our meeting on the BIA.

Mr. Countryman, go ahead, please. The floor is yours.

[Galen Countryman, Director General, Federal-Provincial Relations and Social Policy Branch, Department of Finance]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Committee members, thank you for the invitation to appear before you today.

I'm Galen Countryman. I'm the director general of the federal-provincial relations division at the Department of Finance. I'm joined here today by many of my colleagues from the Department of Finance, from the finance sector policy branch in particular, to speak to divisions 1 to 9, 32 to 34 and 37 of part 4 of the budget implementation act. It is a great pleasure to be here today.

Merci.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you very much. You do have a great team, and I know that members look forward to asking you many questions, so we are going to start with our first round of questions and each party will have up to six minutes to ask those questions.

We'll start with the Conservatives. I have MP Chambers for six minutes.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome. It's nice to see everybody in person. Most of these have been done virtually, so it's nice to see you.

Congratulations on another budget. We had a good discussion with some of your colleagues earlier this week. I want to thank the analysts for another good and thorough suggested line of questioning for today. I'll draw on a little bit of that.

Before we start, I'd like more of a high-level overview of some of the changes to the proceeds of crime and money laundering act specifically as it relates to information sharing. Can someone give maybe a 30-second overview of what's being changed there?

[Erin Hunt, Director General, Financial Crimes and Security Division, Department of Finance]

Yes. Thank you very much for your question.

My name is Erin Hunt. I'm the director general of financial crimes and security at the Department of Finance. It would be my pleasure to give you an overview of the information-sharing components or proposals related to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. In fact, there's also a proposal with respect to the Criminal Code. Maybe I'll start with that one, because that one's a little bit separate.

The proposal with respect to the Criminal Code would allow for an Attorney General to seek a warrant with respect to seeking information regarding tax. It adds additional offences under which it would simplify that warrant process.

That's the Criminal Code change. There are also several proposals to improve information sharing under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. One would assist FINTRAC, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre, which is Canada's financial intelligence unit, to provide strategic analysis related to threats to national security. This is something that addresses a gap that our security and intelligence establishment asked for...to be able to understand and provide more strategic intelligence to them to address threats to national security.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

I have a quick point. I don't mean to cut you off.

[Erin Hunt]

That's fine.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

It's just that my time is short.

It's my understanding that the information-sharing provisions are to allow more information to go from government. The government is a key actor in the information sharing. Has the Privacy Commissioner been consulted on some of these changes yet?

[Erin Hunt]

Yes—the Privacy Commissioner, and we've reviewed it from a Charter of Rights and Freedoms perspective as well. There are very clear protections within the act itself that protect the information, and personal information, in those contexts.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

That's good.

The industry...or in fact, it was this committee, maybe last Parliament or two Parliaments ago, that recommended that the information-sharing provisions within the proceeds of crime and money laundering act, as it relates to allowing financial institutions to share information between themselves as it relates to money laundering, be updated. Those are not in this package of amendments. Is that correct?

[Erin Hunt]

That is correct.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Okay.

Are you familiar with section 73.11, which deals with giving penalties under the act?

It's okay if you're not. I'm not trying to test you or trick you.

[Erin Hunt]

No. I would have to take that question back.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

That's fair.

[Erin Hunt]

I'm happy to listen to the question and take it back.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

That section says that any penalties given under the proceeds of crime and money laundering act are to be assessed only to enforce “compliance” with the act and not to “punish”. It's not like a Criminal Code provision. It's not used for deterrence for other people. It's used just to make sure that people comply.

That is a very problematic provision, because we don't really see many people getting significant penalties under the proceeds of crime and money laundering act. To your knowledge, has anybody been sent to prison?

[Erin Hunt]

To my understanding, there are two separate commitments there. One is related to the administration of the act. Those penalties are to try to promote compliance with the act so that our reporting entities contribute to fighting financial crimes across the country. There are also criminal penalties for criminal violations of the compliance components. That's a separate consideration in separate parts of the act.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Would it be fair to ask if, in the last two or three years, anyone has received jail time? I'm not expecting you to answer that now, but if that is something you could check—

[Erin Hunt]

I would prefer to come back to you on that.