Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Through you, Mr. Chair, I first of all want to thank my former colleague Madam Andreychuk for appearing in front of our committee today.
We miss you in Parliament and the work that you do, but your legacy lives on in the bill you introduced that is now law, the Magnitsky act. Thank you for your opening remarks.
I'd like to focus my questions on enforcement. Just three months ago, The New York Times had a headline on their social media platforms that said that “Canada is such an attractive place for money laundering that there's even a special name to describe the activity here: 'snow washing'.”
I make that as my opening remark so that we can focus on what I think is a major problem, which is the lack of enforcement. We can announce all the sanctions we want, but if we're not enforcing them, they're of no use.
At the last meeting, we focused on the U.S. enforcement of sanctions through OFAC in the Department of the Treasury. This meeting, I'd like to talk a little about U.K. enforcement, because we have very similar systems of government.
The United Kingdom, like Canada, announced a U.K. financial crimes agency. I'd like to ask Professor Cardwell about that.
Can you tell us when this agency will be operational? Do you know when it's going to be stood up?