Thank you very much for the invitation to be here. Since I'm a lawyer, it won't surprise you that I'm going to start with a disclaimer.
My disclaimer is that when I was initially asked to speak, I declined on the basis that I did not have any specific knowledge about the two acts that your committee is reviewing. When I responded in that fashion to your clerk, she persuaded me that you were interested in hearing from me because of my general interest and knowledge about global corruption. I just want to lay that disclaimer out to you. I'm not intimately familiar with the application of FACFOA or SEMA, which you are now about to review, but I do have a few comments on it as it fits into the larger picture.
I want to leave a main message with you. I'll start, however, by saying I have prepared a brief. The brief was just submitted this morning. It needs to be translated, so you don't have a copy in front of you. The clerk will be giving you that later. It's about 45 pages in a PowerPoint style. I won't be able to touch on a lot of the detail today, but that information will be there.
I did also just want to mention in terms of detail that much of my knowledge on global corruption, asset recovery, and all matters related can be found in a two-volume book that I wrote just a year and a half ago and am currently updating for another release in January. That book is called Global Corruption: Law, Theory and Practice. It looks at global corruption largely from the international perspective and then compares Canada, the U.S., Britain, and the U.K. in terms of how we have or have not implemented our convention requirements.
I mention that book to you because it is about 780 pages, and there is a lot of detail in it. I designed it so it would be available to all interested parties. It is free. It's open access. It's on five websites, one of which is Transparency International Canada, and it was done under the auspices of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, so it's available there as well.
Going back to what I want to say, my main message is that I think creating and maintaining an efficient, fair, and effective system for both freezing and ultimately returning corrupt foreign assets that are situated in Canada to lawful owners is obviously both a moral and international legal obligation. I believe that Canada has to step up its game and take those obligations more seriously.
Creating such a system—efficient, fair, and effective—is easy to say and I know difficult to create, but it's not impossible. I want to emphasize for you why I think it's so important that we have this effective system.
I start from a proposition. My main interest is global corruption, the largest topic. To me, it's a pernicious evil in our society. In my paper and my book I spend a lot of time talking about why global corruption is such a concern and what the devastating consequences are. One has to start by being convinced that, yes, it is a big problem.
The second point is that if we get to the point of accepting that global corruption is indeed a pernicious and devastating concept or activity or practice, what flows from that is grand corruption of the sort that you're interested in and I'm most interested in. Grand corruption can flourish when officials from these foreign countries can launder the proceeds of that corruption in other foreign countries and convert those proceeds into things such as real estate or luxury items in our country. You all are aware of the fact that there are certainly allegations of this happening substantially in the Vancouver region in the housing market.
My point here is that money laundering is really the lifeblood of corruption. It allows corruption, this grand corruption, to flourish. It seems to me that of maybe 10 things that are essential to grappling with corruption, one of those is that we have to try to choke out the personal profit and gain that arises out of this grand corruption. One of several important ways of doing so is creating this effective and efficient money-laundering and asset recovery law.
As I understand it, FACFOA is a very small but nonetheless important piece in the creation of an overall effective system for the recovery of assets. However, with respect, it seems to me that reviewing just FACFOA is like swatting a flea while ignoring the elephant in the room. FACFOA is important, but the real elephant in the room is global corruption and the absence of a fair and efficient way of attacking it from several points of view, including a good asset recovery system.
My hope is that you will find some room in your committee report of FACFOA and SEMA to convince other parliamentarians and the public of the fact that global corruption is indeed a devastating plague, with disastrous consequences far greater than most of us appreciate here in Canada, or I dare say worldwide.
There is indeed a pressing need to tackle global corruption on many fronts, including effective anti-money-laundering and asset recovery systems. I think Canada needs to seriously re-examine how well it are doing on both fronts. My assessment is that it are not doing well at all.
Finally, to me, one of the most urgent aspects of improving our asset recovery system is to move towards a beneficial ownership registry, just as the United Kingdom has in April of this year. We talk about returning assets, and I want to also ask the committee for some specific information about FACFOA and its success, which seems to me to be pretty small. The point is that if we are attempting to ascertain whether corrupt officials own property when 70% of that property is held in shell companies and we can not even ascertain who the true beneficial owner is, it's little wonder that we're not returning many corrupt proceeds.
If there's a point that leads directly into what you're doing, although it's clearly not in FACFOA, I think it's that Canada has to very seriously—as a few other countries are, England especially—create a beneficial ownership registry. It would be open to the public, but more importantly to investigative officers, to ascertain whether Mr. Gadhafi or somebody else actually owns that property in the name of company X. His name would not appear, and it would be deeply hidden.
The rest of my presentation really goes in that direction. I'm not going to go through it. However, the first part of my presentation tries to convince you that global corruption is indeed a very serious problem with disastrous consequences. I don't think the Canadian public appreciates that fully; hence there is less motivation on the part of the public, and hence on the part of our parliamentarians. That's the first part: trying to convince you of the importance of taking action against global corruption.
As I said, one of the very important pieces of taking action is creating a system that helps to prevent foreign corrupt officials from laundering their money through Canada, and in fact parking their money here and converting it into luxury items such as houses, etc.
There are many things that need to be done with regard to that system, but I think the one most required at the moment is for Canada to start studying, hopefully quickly, the creation of a beneficial ownership registry so that we can better determine who in fact is in possession of these potentially corrupt proceeds.
I think I'll stop there. I'd be happy to answer questions on any aspects of my opening statement.