Evidence of meeting #42 for Industry and Technology in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was telecommunications.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Bankers Association
Yes, very much so.
I think part of this is why we want to move upstream and have that cross-sector public-private partnership. If we can put a higher wall around Canada and stop these bad actors coming in via multiple channels, we can better protect and reduce the risk of our citizens being fooled by these people.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
I have one more question for you before I move to Mr. Frey.
What level of responsibility or onus should the banks take in these types of situations where there are scams?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Bankers Association
We're highly regulated, potentially. We have a code of conduct.
If the consumer is truly a victim, from the point of view that they've not given out any information or sent stuff out and they've been defrauded, then our members obviously look after them. Unfortunately, a lot of people voluntarily send the money. The banks ask when they're sending it, are you sure? What are you doing?
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
I appreciate when I get those texts that ask, is this actually you buying this?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Bankers Association
Right. We do a lot to try to help our clients. What we've realized is that we want to move upstream to try to stop them from being fooled in the first place.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Colleagues, we're going to have bells at 12 o'clock for votes if everything goes according to plan. I need unanimous consent to work through bells. I'd like to establish that first. If I don't have it, we're going to have to stop. If I do have it and folks are willing to vote virtually, then we can keep going.
Can everyone please very clearly indicate whether they're okay with this?
Go ahead, Mr. Ma.
Liberal
Michael Ma Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
I support that, but we need to pause for a few minutes to do the vote.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Yes, it's to vote, but I need unanimous consent to work through the bells themselves. The vote wouldn't occur until about 12:30, so we would be okay.
Do I have unanimous consent to work through them?
I do. Okay. In that case, I'm going to be a little more lenient. We went substantially over with Monsieur Ste-Marie. It seems to be a pattern. I myself have a few questions, and since it's our first meeting, maybe I'll be a bit more lenient.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Mr. Falk, she was tough, yes.
Be very quick with Mr. Frey, and then I'm going to get a couple of questions in as well. We'll just keep going, and when we hear the bells at 12:00, that doesn't mean it's the start of the vote. It just means it's the warning period.
Mr. Falk, I'm going to give you about 45 seconds.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
That'll be great. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Frey, you indicated that three of those fraudsters doing the SMS blaster were charged with 44 different counts. What level of...? What was the punishment? Are you satisfied with what the Crown is asking for?
Chief Security Officer, Telus
Yes, but certainly they stacked a number of charges in this case, in many different categories. I think one possible interpretation of that is that the individual crimes in and of themselves were probably minor, but 44 crimes in aggregate may result in a much longer sentence.
It's before the courts, so we'll have to see what the outcome is.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Thank you, Mr. Falk.
Mr. Ntumba, you have the floor for five minutes but, as I said, I'll give Ms. Begum a few seconds to ask a question. I'm giving everyone here a bit more time.
So, Mr. Ntumba, you have the floor for five minutes, then on to Ms. Begum for 45 seconds.
Liberal
Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba Liberal Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. No worries.
My question is for Mr. Ostler or Mr. Frey, whoever wants to answer.
Artificial intelligence now enables fraudsters to create increasingly convincing scams. Is Canada sufficiently prepared for this new generation of fraudsters? What measures should be prioritized over the next three years?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Bankers Association
Unfortunately, as we've seen by the statistics, Canada is not fully prepared. Because we've had our voluntary anti-scam coalition in place for a couple years, we're probably ahead of many or most countries from the point of view of better understanding the risks, but like every country except Australia, we don't actually have a comprehensive, cross-sector, public-private initiative in place.
I think we could get there fairly rapidly. The government does have a national anti-fraud strategy. It is creating the financial crimes agency. It has an opportunity for AML regime reform. I could picture us being in a position to actually bend the curve on this and reduce scams and fraud within a couple of years.
Once Australia figured out how to do it, they very quickly had results. We're on the cusp of getting there, but a key part of that is thinking about how we work across aligning clear definitions with a cross-sector framework, so that all the different players know the roles they need to play and we have controls for the various sectors.
As our colleagues have mentioned here, each sector has its own regulators, but we need some sort of overlay to make sure there's coordination. As part of making it effective, we need improved fraud data sharing, oversight of that and public education.
We've done a lot on the public education front—
Liberal
Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba Liberal Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie, QC
Actually, your comment on the exchange of fraud-related data pretty much answers my next question. I was going to ask you whether banks have the necessary tools to quickly share information about fraudsters with their financial partners, as well as with other security organizations, governments and law enforcement agencies.
Please provide a brief response so Mr. Frey can also answer.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Bankers Association
That's a good question.
We have the legal framework to share information. We have information, but we do not have a tool to exchange that information quickly. We do have our pilot under way that we're doing between a couple of our members in telecoms. That is working, and quickly, to the entity that's holding the information securely, but then the actual analysis is slow, because it's not automated.
We're not there yet, but now that we have a taxonomy that's designed that would work across, the next step would be developing an information exchange, and that taxonomy was designed so that it would work for government.
Liberal
Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba Liberal Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie, QC
Mr. Frey, if you had to recommend just one measure to the federal government to minimize fraud or attempted fraud in Canada, what would it be? Why would it be important?
Chief Security Officer, Telus
As I mentioned in my testimony, we need a convening power, not a committee—not attempting to address fraud holistically by committee, but a single place where an organization can take the accountability for understanding how fraud is happening and lead the strategies and campaigns that all of us can participate in to tackle whatever the solution is to rid ourselves of the particular scam or fraud ring that's perpetrating these crimes against Canadians.
Liberal
Bienvenu-Olivier Ntumba Liberal Mont-Saint-Bruno—L’Acadie, QC
Do you think citizens are sufficiently equipped to deal with types of fraud that rely on new technology?
Although we all have access to the information, there are three groups of people: young people, middle-aged people and older adults. What are your thoughts on how perceptions of information vary across these different age groups?
Chief Security Officer, Telus
I believe that we need much more awareness and focus for Canadians on the types of new frauds and scams that are occurring. I would answer personally that I used to feel I could keep up with it. I've been a security professional for three decades, and I'm at the point where I can no longer keep up with it for my own personal considerations.
Extrapolating that across all of our society, no, I don't believe that we're prepared, and we need a much greater focus and concentration on this, because, to my colleague's point, awareness about these scams and measures that we can take to not become victim to them is paramount.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ben Carr
Thank you, Mr. Ntumba.
Ms. Begum said she didn't need speaking time, so the floor is yours, Mr. Ste‑Marie.