I understand and I appreciate the provincial jurisdiction in some of these areas, and certainly the sensitivity shown by my colleague Monsieur Fortin. It would seem to me that one of the biggest advantages of the U.K. office is the combination of having prosecutors work with investigators from the very beginning. I'd encourage us to consider that as we walk through this bill.
There is another issue that I noticed in the bill. Clause 17 of the bill instructs the commissioner to develop criteria for defining “serious and complex financial crimes”. I think that is the wording. I've heard from many legal analysts that the current statutory framework is heavily focused on traditional words like “asset forfeiture” and “money laundering”. One of the things that some people have proposed is amending the text of the bill to explicitly enumerate modern digital threats, such as AI-driven consumer fraud, decentralized cryptocurrency scams, etc.
Was there a thought of actually defining them in the bill, instead of putting them entirely to regulatory discretion?