Foreign Affairs Committee on April 30th, 2012

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I think I'm finished.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Oh, you're finished all right. And Mr. Dechert is finished as well. We'll get him next time.

Mr. Harris, five minutes.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Superintendent, for joining us today. I have a question for you.

I'm not suggesting this is your fault, but you're here, so maybe you can help answer the question. It wasn't just Transparency International that criticized Canada; the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, of which we are a member, was also very critical. What they said last March was that Canada has only....

The treaty, I know, is recent, but we have an anti-bribery law that is 12 years old. The only company ever convicted of that was fined less than the amount of money it paid in bribes to a U.S. company.

I want to know what kind of message that sends to Canadian companies doing business abroad, particularly in countries where money is flowing overnight in the hotel lobbies, as Ms. Brown suggested, and where I suppose Canadian companies might feel disadvantaged if they don't engage in that practice.

Is that kind of history with these companies sending a bad message? How do we fix that? Is it all based on complaints, that if you don't get any complaints you can't do anything?

[Supt Stephen Foster]

Not all of what we do would be based on complaints. In part we operate from open-source information, so intelligence.

With respect to the OECD having criticized what Canada is doing, in part that's as a result of the Government of Canada's policy with respect to advising them or providing details with respect to ongoing investigations. For the purposes of attending the OECD meeting on Canada's ongoing phase 3 review of Canada's implementation of their convention, I had counted the number of ongoing outstanding investigations. It was 34.

In addition, there was very favourable reporting with respect to one of the prosecutions from the Calgary International Anti-Corruption Unit on the amount of the fine that had been levied in that case and the impact that would have on Canadian corporations and their understanding that Canada was—

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

You're suggesting there's been a second conviction.

[Supt Stephen Foster]

—taking this seriously.

The first conviction you're referring to is what, sir?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

It's the Hydro Kleen case.

[Supt Stephen Foster]

Hydro Kleen. Yes. The second conviction was a guilty plea last June by a Canadian company headquartered in Calgary, which was fined a total of just short of $9.5 million, including the victim services surcharge.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

So things are stepping up.

One of the concerns in the OECD report was that “Canada's ability to prosecute these investigations will be in jeopardy” unless resources are set aside to deal with the volume of cases expected to follow.

Are you satisfied that your organization has sufficient resources to investigate and prosecute claims? Or, as the OECD says, is the enforcement still lagging by not having enough resources?

[Supt Stephen Foster]

The OECD might have characterized it as “insufficient resources”. We do have the two seven-person teams in Calgary and Ottawa. They're overseen by an officer at RCMP headquarters. By design those teams are embedded with the commercial crime sections, and they can draw on the resources of those sections. While they're fully engaged themselves, they have additional capacity in terms of the commercial crime section resources that are available to them.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

A year ago you had 20; now you have 34 investigations and you have 14 people in two different cities. Is that causing you a delay in having these investigations result in prosecutions? Or what seems to be the reason it takes so long?

I know that commercial crime is a complicated matter, but you're satisfied that you have enough resources for the 34 cases you have, I take it.

[Supt Stephen Foster]

Yes, that's my....

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I have one more question. Transparency International suggested that Canada lacked sufficient jurisdiction to prosecute citizens accused of bribery abroad in terms of what they call “nationality jurisdiction”.

Are you aware of that concern?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have, but go ahead and answer the question.

[Supt Stephen Foster]

I am aware of that concern. Our current jurisdiction is based on territorial jurisdiction as interpreted in R. v. Libman. The way that jurisdiction is interpreted is that if it's something with a real and substantial link back to Canada—so a decision made here, the money came through here, or there's a subsidiary in another country controlled from Canada—all of that provides an extraterritorial jurisdiction but not nationality jurisdiction, which I think is the criticism.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

That's not Canadians abroad doing things. Okay.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Mr. Dechert for five minutes.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Foster, for being here today.

If a Canadian company is asked by a foreign government official for a bribe, who can they report that to in Canada?

[Supt Stephen Foster]

They should be able to report that to the RCMP.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

And then what would the RCMP do with that information?

[Supt Stephen Foster]

If it's reported to the RCMP, the complaint would be referred then to one of the international anti-corruption units, whether in Calgary or in Ottawa.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

From there, I would assume, there would be some communication to the relevant police force in the particular jurisdiction.

[Supt Stephen Foster]

In terms of the particular jurisdiction and trying...?

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Right.

[Supt Stephen Foster]

There might be. In the first instance, the primary jurisdiction for investigation would be, if it's an offence under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, our investigative unit.