Mr. Speaker, I am especially grateful to have the full attention of the government House leader. The Canadian Alliance, as my colleague has indicated, will support Bill S-16 which comes to us essentially as legislative amendments the Senate has sought to Bill S-22. I echo the concern of my colleague from Elk Island about the growing practice under the current government of initiating legislation in the other place.
However I would also highlight that Senate committees, in particular the Senate banking committee in this instance, do good work. Frankly they pay more attention to the details of legislation of this nature than do some of our own committees.
The bill deals with the proceeds of crime, otherwise known as money laundering. I rise to make the point as finance critic for the opposition that Canada's laws with respect to proceeds of crime are unfortunately not as robust as they ought to be. Other jurisdictions have taken far more significant legislative steps to plug loopholes which allow those who benefit from proceeds of crime to secrete assets in Canada.
I also second the remarks of my colleague from Kings—Hants who pointed out that although we have a legislative framework to deal with the proceeds of crime, we do not provide nearly sufficient resources to law enforcement agencies to enforce the laws.
In particular, the proceeds of crimes division or white collar crime division of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is constrained by quite finite resources. This means major fraudsters have pretty significant resources at their disposal.
These people benefit from tens, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars of defrauded moneys and assets. They can afford the very best legal advice, lawyers, financial advice and accountants to hide their illegally gained assets and launder them so they become ostensibly legal funds. This is because police simply do not have sufficient resources to combat the problem on a large scale in Canada.
Consequently, victims of commercial crime increasingly are turning to lawyers to pursue civil remedies. That is a concern. I want to raise in the debate the need to consider giving, through our laws, greater latitude to victims of fraud to pursue civil remedies in court. In many Canadian jurisdictions it is difficult, if not impossible, for victims of fraud to collectively pursue so-called class action cases against fraudsters.
The legal framework in the United States allows for fairly robust civil remedies. For instance, when a telemarketing scam defrauds thousands of American seniors, they can put together a class action suit. They can find and hire skilled lawyers to investigate, track laundered assets, seek and in many instances obtain judgments against fraudsters, and restore defrauded moneys to the people to whom they rightfully belong.
In many Canadian jurisdictions similar remedies are not available. Individual victims of fraud are not able to collectively pool their resources and pursue legal remedies. In Canada police do not have the resources or advanced legal expertise to pursue money laundering cases, and affected individuals cannot collectively join together to finance the expensive investigatory and legal work required to pursue these cases. I raise this as an important point.
We need to join growing international efforts to stamp out money laundering. Literally billions of dollars are laundered in and through the Canadian economy every year. Multiple billions of dollars of assets in Canada belong to criminals indirectly and are controlled by criminals. Our police forces do not have the resources or expertise to fully trace the laundering process and restore justice to victims of fraudulent activity. Our legal framework limits the remedies available to those people.
I raise this as a matter of concern. I invite the government to revisit the issue in a broader perspective to find out how we can amend laws to be more clearly in compliance with the growing international intolerance of money laundering. I invite the government to find out how we can give more powerful civil remedies to victims of fraud. Finally, I invite the government to find out how we can better equip the RCMP and other police services across the country to plug loopholes, track down fraudulent and laundered assets and enforce the law to protect the tens of thousands of Canadians who are the unwitting victims of fraudulent scams.
I invite the government to consider all these things. However we in the Canadian Alliance Party will be supporting the bill.