That's a great point. When we add names to these lists, again I hope the committee understands that these lists are individual lists under individual regulations. When a company, especially an SME, addresses that situation, if we have 20 different sanctions regulations, each has its own list, and in theory the company has to go through each of those regulations and check the lists.
The lists get updated all the time. The Canadian government might be updating them. If they're UN lists, the UN is updating them. It's an exercise that occurs when you first on board customers or counterparties, but also in your continuing relationship you should still be scanning those lists, and many sophisticated financial institutions do just that.
The problem is that the sophisticated financial institutions can afford the third party screening services that will do all that work for you. They'll consolidate those lists. They'll put them into huge databases and the financial institutions will use that when they do implement these kinds of asset freezes.
SMEs have to pay a third party service provider to do that and it's expensive. We're asked all the time to make recommendations for third party service providers to do that. It's thousands of dollars. If an SME wants to trade with a country, let's say in the Middle East or North Africa, that isn't even subject to sanctions, because they're dealing in a high-risk area where there are sanction countries, they'd better be screening that list or they'll run into situations where they are doing business with these individuals. The lists don't key off where the individual is located; once an individual is on a list, you can't do business with them anywhere in the world.
I just want the committee to understand that when we do put additional lists in place, when we add names to lists, it's not a simple task for the business community to deal with that if the government isn't making it easier. One way to do that is to have a consolidated list published on their website. The United States does it. Australia does it. Australia sends out an email to their exporters every time their lists are updated. I think that's something we should really consider doing in Canada to make this more of an effective mechanism.
The other issue with the list is the description of the names on those lists. You need more information than simply just the name.
I'll stop there.