Finance Committee on Dec. 1st, 2025

[C/Supt Michael Saghbini]

Okay.

[Éric Lefebvre, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

I’d like you to provide a brief overview of the new system you have set up.

[C/Supt Michael Saghbini]

I'm sorry. I misunderstood your question.

[Éric Lefebvre, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

That's not a problem.

[C/Supt Michael Saghbini]

Through the cyber centre, we do have an intake where people can report frauds and anything they've encountered. As we know, there are multiple frauds happening, from an alleged bank sending you a message to romance scams. The cyber centre provides a one-stop shop for receiving all these fraud reports.

It then gets dispersed, if it should go to the police of a particular jurisdiction. If it happened in, let's say, the city of Montreal, we'll work with the Montreal police. Wherever the jurisdiction of that crime is, we will work with the police of jurisdiction to fan out those complaints and to allow the police to deal with all those specific complaints.

In terms of statistics, I don't have those available. From what I understand, it's working well. As I said, having one point of contact so that the general public knows where to go is a very effective and efficient tool.

[Éric Lefebvre, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

It has been said that tax havens are a way to get taxes paid in Canada.

What do you think of such a statement?

[C/Supt Michael Saghbini]

I can't comment on that. That's more of a question for the CRA, in terms of the offshore money and tax havens.

As I said, we deal with the criminality that gets the money that gets sent out, but in terms of tax evasion and tax havens, that's more of a CRA question.

[The Vice-Chair (Jasraj Hallan), Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Thank you very much.

Next, we have Mr. MacDonald for five minutes.

[Kent MacDonald, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

In budget 2025, we introduced a national anti-fraud strategy. In 2024 alone, we saw that Canadians lost $643 million to fraud. That was a 300% increase since 2020, with only a small fraction of those scams being reported for investigation.

From the RCMP's perspective, what factors are driving this rapid rise in fraud, particularly the scams targeting seniors? How is your policing adapting to the investigations of this higher-technology fraud?

[C/Supt Michael Saghbini]

The issue with these frauds is that they're becoming more sophisticated. They're becoming more obfuscating. A lot of times, it's happening in countries where we don't have a relationship in terms of the Canadian government and law enforcement. That makes it extremely difficult. As well, in some of these countries, there's rampant corruption, so if we deal with the local police, nothing comes of it. In some instances, the government or the police may be involved. It makes it extremely difficult.

There's also an education piece, I think, that we need to really push to our seniors and even to our young folks who are on cellphones. They're moving so fast. They're just clicking and not even realizing what they're clicking. The next thing you know, they're in some sort of scam, or now someone has access to their phone or their bank account information. I think education is a big piece for us.

These are really long, drawn-out affairs. In some cases, they're using different email servers to obfuscate where they come from. Again, are they in a country we can't deal with? It's sophisticated. For the ones we do find, we are very serious in both investigating them, obviously, and prosecuting them. On the prosecution side, when you have something that's so sophisticated, it becomes a very complex case for the Crown. That can get drawn out. There are the disclosures in dealing with other countries and what they can and can't share. It becomes a very complicated affair.

[Kent MacDonald, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Your answer leads me to another topic, although it may be varying a little from tax avoidance.

I've had interactions with constituents who are very concerned with sextortion and the online harms bill that was introduced last year and didn't pass. Now we'll be introducing new legislation. I'm wondering if you would comment on the ability to prosecute these offenders who may be based in a foreign country—in Nigeria, for instance, in the situation I'm referring to. Where do we put the onus? Does it have to go on the platform providers? I'm talking about youth or teenagers.

[C/Supt Michael Saghbini]

I think everyone has a bit of a role to play there. I think there's a role for service providers to play as well. You're absolutely right; it would be difficult to deal with some of the countries that we see. These criminals are using those countries because they know it makes it difficult for law enforcement to deal with them due to corruption and the lack of relations between the two countries.

We have liaison officers who are around the world in different countries. We will have a director in an area that's responsible for five, six or seven countries. We continually go into those countries to build our relationships, but it's definitely a work-in-progress in terms of building those relationships and the willingness of that host country to actually work with us. I think there's a lot of corruption happening, and it's in their best interest to keep it going.

[Kent MacDonald, Liberal, Cardigan, PE]

Finally, getting back to money laundering, you mentioned in your opening statement that you work co-operatively with the CRA, FINTRAC and other organizations, including provincial regulators, obviously, to investigate these complex financial crimes. What legislative improvements would you recommend to members of Parliament to improve the ability to investigate?

[S/Sgt Chad Babin]

Increased access to tax records and faster access to tax records would be a big help.

[The Vice-Chair (Jasraj Hallan), Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Next, we have Monsieur Garon for two and a half minutes.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Saghbini, our Liberal colleagues have mentioned the creation of a new infrastructure to better combat fraud. The announcement was made by the Minister of Finance and National Revenue. Also, the government published its anti-fraud strategy earlier this year.

For our part, we were a little dubious about this announcement. We have the impression that this is basically a reorganization of administrative structures, but that there are still no new financial resources allocated to running this agency.

I’d like to talk about fighting financial crime and fraud. Compared with other countries you work with, is Canada one of the countries where the government invests heavily in police forces and various stakeholders to fight fraud? Do you think the Government of Canada should significantly reinvest in providing you with better tools, especially as your work is becoming increasingly more complex?

[C/Supt Michael Saghbini]

I don't want to speak on behalf of other organizations or other groups, but I can tell you that the RCMP are continually looking at resources and where our resources are better placed. Currently, within our financial crime and other units, I would say we're adequately staffed where we need it.

We're continually looking at how crimes are evolving. Today, we might have a big investigation in cryptocurrency. We might take some of our money-laundering folks and augment that person-power—if you want to call it that—and vice versa.

We're constantly evolving and looking at where we can better put our resources.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Saghbini, more succinctly, in today’s complex financial world, do you think that the RCMP lacks the financial resources to fully carry out its mission?

[C/Supt Michael Saghbini]

If you're asking me, I think that having more resources in anything is more efficient. You can always do more with more, obviously, but I think we have the resources to adequately do what we're doing today.

There are always evolving technologies. You mentioned technologies. There are technologies that we're always looking to enhance, like cryptocurrency tracing, cryptocurrency wallets, etc. There are things we're always looking to try to enhance, because, as you know, when the criminal gets ahead, it's almost like a cat-and-mouse game, where we're trying to always get there.

[The Vice-Chair (Jasraj Hallan), Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Thank you, Mr. Saghbini. That's the time.

[C/Supt Michael Saghbini]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair (Jasraj Hallan), Conservative, Jasraj Singh Hallan]

Next, we have Mr. Kelly for five minutes.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Do you find that it's common for the criminal organizations you investigate to use tax havens, both to hide their gains from law enforcement but also to avoid taxes?

[C/Supt Michael Saghbini]

I can start, and then maybe Chad can jump in.

Yes, I do believe they use tax havens to hide and launder their money. They also use the cryptocurrency exchanges. That's another piece. In short, the answer is, yes, they do.

Chad, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

That's good. That answer is a good answer, or a complete answer.

That leads to my next question. The CRA told us a few weeks ago that they had referred and successfully seen through only 14 prosecutions for offshore tax avoidance since 2000, which is a little less than three per year. Let's even go to the broadest category of files you investigate. How often are you laying charges for tax avoidance, fraud, money laundering and all the things under your mandate?