Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Members of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, on behalf of the Desjardins Group, I would like to thank you for the invitation.
My name is Bernard Brun. I'm the vice‑president of government relations for the Desjardins Group. I'm here with my colleague, Frédéric Lapalme, senior director and deputy head of the fraud and financial crime management and supervision unit.
It's a privilege to contribute to your study on financial fraud and scams in Canada, a key concern for Desjardins. Remember that Desjardins currently has over $524 billion in assets and over 10 million members and clients across the country. We serve close to half a million businesses—ranging from small and medium‑sized businesses to large organizations—across all sectors of the Canadian economy. We're the largest co‑operative financial group in North America and the eighth‑largest financial group in the world.
Fraud is now one of the most widespread, sophisticated and damaging forms of economic crime in Canada and abroad. Fuelled by the digitalization of the economy, artificial intelligence—as my colleagues said earlier—and global access to digital platforms, the problem is evolving at such a rapid pace that public and private institutions can hardly keep up.
Fraud has become a low‑risk and highly profitable crime. Criminal networks now operate with greater capabilities, without geographic boundaries. They use digital technologies, cryptoassets and even artificial intelligence‑powered impersonation capabilities.
A number of structuring challenges are currently limiting the effectiveness of fraud prevention efforts. I'll list five of them. These challenges are the fragmentation of data and information‑sharing mechanisms; the increase in regulatory initiatives and compliance frameworks; the transnational nature of criminal operations; the consequences for victims; and the ability of fraudsters to adapt quickly and their growing use of artificial intelligence.
In this environment, every improvement in security quickly leads to the emergence of new workaround strategies. This dynamic creates an ongoing technological race. This places significant pressure on governments, but also on financial institutions and businesses. The impact goes far beyond monetary losses. Victims frequently report long‑lasting consequences, such as psychological distress, loss of trust in institutions, social isolation and compromised personal financial security.
As a Quebec‑chartered financial group, most of our oversight comes from the Quebec government and agencies. However, we operate across Canada. This gives us experience and insight into the importance of coordination and regulatory complementarity in achieving tangible results.
We're pleased to see the federal government's commitment to encouraging the various stakeholders to work together to combat financial fraud. The many stakeholders working to reduce incidents of fraud must be brought together. This specifically goes hand in hand with the work of the Canadian Anti‑Scam Coalition, of which Desjardins is an active member.
Last April, we submitted a brief to the Department of Finance in response to its consultation on the national anti‑fraud strategy. We would be happy to share this brief with the committee if it would help with your work.
In conclusion, if we had to prioritize a single action to effectively combat financial fraud and scams in Canada, we would first focus on facilitating a form of information sharing among regulated organizations in order to improve prevention and detection.
With this in mind, yesterday we saw the introduction of Bill C‑36. This bill seeks to strengthen privacy and to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. The text notably includes an exception to the consent requirement in order to make it possible to share information for the purposes of preventing, detecting and reducing fraudulent activities. In our view, this positive development should be pursued and carefully analyzed in order to align and coordinate efforts with the provincial legislative frameworks.
Thank you for your attention. My colleague and I would be happy to answer your questions.