Mr. Speaker, I have caused a stir with a couple of my remarks but I have never had that level of dramatic response. It has been another great day for democracy and a moment in which I take great pleasure in having participated. My time in the Senate was all too brief, I may add.
The issues in Bill S-16 of critical importance to me and to our party pertain to whether the new agency has the resources necessary to deal with the increasing challenges and the great level of complexity in the nature of money laundering, the sophistication of financial instruments, and the almost unlimited resources of international organized crime. We have to ensure that we do not simply create an agency with a tremendous level of responsibility but with very little resources to do what has to be done.
A bad job is one with lots of responsibility and no authority. I would suggest that to ask the agency to take on such a mammoth task and not provide it with the appropriate level of resources would be typical of what the government has done in a number of areas, but it would not be an appropriate way to proceed.
A concern that I have had in the past and still have is the accountability of the agency, particularly in terms of the criteria required to meet the conditions that the agency share information with other agencies, for example, the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.
It would be appropriate that any information attained by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency indicating money laundering activity would be shared with the money laundering agency.
That type of sharing of information back and forth could be constructive. However I would be very concerned if, for instance, the individuals involved in the new money laundering agency were to identify no evidence of money laundering but some evidence of potential money laundering which could indicate some tax evasion or something similar. I would be concerned if the agency were to share that information with Revenue Canada.
While I agree that we need a much stronger approach to money laundering, Canadians would not feel comfortable with a resulting beefed up Revenue Canada agency. We have to be careful there are clear criteria and conditions that have to be met before it is deemed appropriate for the money laundering agency to share information with Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.
I have another concern that the arm's length nature of these agencies tends in an institutional way to reduce the amount of accountability to parliament. I understand some of the arguments, particularly from the government, in favour of achieving greater levels of flexibility for compensatory arrangements with the workers and offering a more flexible approach to provide these public services to arm's length agencies.
However much of this could be achieved within the context of more direct departmental agencies as opposed to these arm's length agencies. I have a significant concern about what seems to be a secular decline in the level of accountability to parliament that the government seems to be very comfortable with. Again, these arm's length agencies are all part of that greater reduction in accountability to parliament.
The Progressive Conservative Party supports the legislation and the amendment which would improve accountability of the new agency. The agency in the legislation is a step in the right direction. Canada needs to do less following of what is happening in other countries and what our trading partners in the G-8 and OECD are doing. We should try to be more proactive in leading on some of these issues whether it be on money laundering or in corporate governance issues.
It always seems that we are just a step slower than a lot of our international partners. I would hope the government of a country like Canada, which in the past under the previous government was an international leader in many ways, would try to copy some of the initiatives of that previous government. It has on other issues. The government should provide some level of international leadership on some of these issues as opposed to being followers. That is my wish in closing my remarks today.