I think there are two issues, and let me be very clear. Canada has very good mutual assistance legislation and very good legislation dealing with proceeds of crime and freezing of assets. It's getting better, but it's never going to be foolproof. It's never going to be able to deal with all the cases, especially those involving corrupt officials who are being protected by their governments.
My view is that rather than trying to build specific pieces of legislation for every gap we run into—and we will continually run into gaps—we need to focus on fixing the regime as a whole. Is there more we could do in the mutual assistance provisions to make it clearer how we could freeze assets faster in situations where they don't have court orders? Maybe that's one thing that could be done.
Is there something that could be done in the definitions of “proceeds of crime”? Are there more things we can do in terms of going after assets and attacking assets through civil proceedings?
That's just on going after the assets, and I think that if you're talking about trying to go after the assets and corrupt officials, we have very good tools. To me, the best approach is to try to strengthen those tools, because they already have built-in protections and schemes.
The second thing that can be considered is the other side of this, which is sanctions. In the case of a corrupt official, if we're not going to be able to get to his assets, prosecute him, or get the government to properly prosecute him in the other country, then we can see whether there is a policy or a threat here that Canada wants to address.
The third option is simply to accept that it is not something that Canada can address, either through asset freezing or through a sanction, because it is outside Canada's reach. I think we also have to accept that there are some things we don't like that are just outside the reach of our legislative ability.