Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party supports the principle underlying this bill. This is not surprising, since we essentially created this bill following the events of September 11, 2001.
I would like to emphasize that my colleague, the member for Willowdale, brought the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) into being. After a certain period of time, we have to amend it. Generally, the amendments proposed in this bill make sense.
I think everyone in the House would agree that while money is not everything, money is a lot, and one of the best ways to choke off terrorism and money launderers is to remove them from their source of money. Essentially, that is the purpose of FINTRAC. The purpose of the bill is to strengthen our ability to act in this area and to bring FINTRAC up to the international norms in terms of money laundering and terrorist financing. However, it is also important that we look at the other side of the coin, and that is privacy concerns and individual rights.
While the pursuit of choking off the sources of funds for money launderers and terrorists is extremely important, at the same time the bill has to safeguard the privacy rights of individuals and prevent a situation in which totally innocent people suffer as a consequence of this bill. I will come back to that point in a few minutes.
Overall, Liberals think the bill is a move in the right direction. We have a number of concerns that we will raise in committee and possibly propose amendments, but we will certainly support the bill for second reading.
The bill proposes to make some necessary changes to the previous government's bill in 2001, Bill C-36, the Anti-terrorism Act. I think changes like this will likely be required every few years as money launderers become more sophisticated and police need new powers to combat them. This is essentially the nature of money laundering and why it is so difficult to combat.
Technological changes occur and money launderers make a few steps ahead. It is always important for the government to react to that so we can be ahead of them, rather than they ahead of us. In that general sense, we fully support the intentions and actions of the bill.
There are three concerns I would like to highlight today. Two of them have been raised by my colleague, the member for Scarborough—Guildwood.
The first of these is that money laundering does not necessarily involve just money. It might involve precious jewels, diamonds and even real estate, as the parliamentary secretary indicated. Therefore, if we are to be comprehensive and effective in our pursuit of terrorist financing and money laundering, then we have to broaden the scope of the act beyond pure cash.
Much of what I am saying, I should point out, has come from a very good report entitled “Stemming the Flow of Illicit Money”, which was presented by fine colleagues from the other place. As they reported, the RCMP believes:
--[a]s stricter regulations are imposed on businesses in the financial services industry, criminals are seeking alternative methods of laundering the money accumulated from criminal activity. Various characteristics of the (precious metals, stones and jewellery) industry make it highly vulnerable to criminal activity.
The RCMP has identified these businesses as likely places for criminals to launder their money. Therefore, there is a good case that the bill require members of this industry to report suspicious transactions in the same way that banks and other financial institutions are required to do. This point was reinforced by my colleague in his conversations with people in Russia.
I know the parliamentary secretary has suggested that in some respects the bill may respond to these concerns, but from my initial knowledge of the bill, it is not at all obvious to me that the bill provides an adequate response to these concerns. This will certainly be one of the areas that the Liberal Party will want to explore when the bill goes to committee.
This as well was mentioned by my colleague from Scarborough. It is the issue of solicitor-client privilege and the need to balance that principle with the need for the government and for Canadian society to get tough and serious with terrorist financing and money laundering.
I am not sure that the compromise that has been reached with the legal profession is the perfect compromise. There may be other means to tighten that up, so the government, the security agencies and FINTRAC can get better information from the legal profession.
I was chatting with my colleague, the member for Vancouver Quadra. He is a lawyer and he has some ideas in this regard. I am sure when the bill gets to committee, the question of solicitor-client privilege and how best to deal with it and whether the law adequately deals with will certainly be one of the areas where my party will want to ask questions and possibly propose amendments.
The third and final concern is that the bill may not adequately address privacy concerns. When the initial law was written, I believe a lot of work was done to create the appropriate balance between on the one hand the need for FINTRAC to share information with law enforcement agencies and on the other hand privacy concerns and the right to protect individuals.
The Auditor General in her 2003 report also commented on this. She said:
The government should assess the level of review and reporting to Parliament for security and intelligence agencies to ensure that agencies exercising intrusive powers are subject to levels of external review and disclosure proportionate to the level of intrusion.
The bill allows FINTRAC to share more information than had been the case before with law enforcement agencies. If we are to preserve the balance, then maybe, in going further in the direction of giving more information to law enforcement agencies, the bill should offer a greater measure of protection due to privacy concerns and a greater level of review, as suggested by the Auditor General, than was in the earlier law.
I know, for example, CSIS and it is also true for CSE, because I dealt with it when I was defence minister, have important civilian review functions. This is designed to monitor the agencies to ensure that nothing unfair or inappropriate is done and to safeguard the rights of individuals and their right to privacy. It may be that some further steps should be taken. I do not know yet what those might be. This will be another issue for the committee.
Of course, the Maher Arar case has brought home to Canadians the importance of this area. I think it could be important as well in the area of money laundering and terrorist financing.
We support the bill in principle, but we have significant concerns in those three areas that I have mentioned. We will want to consider further in committee whether amendments would best be provided to the law. Again, those areas are as follows.
The first is whether the scope of the bill should be broadened to include not only cash, but in a meaningful and strong way also jewels, diamonds and other forms of wealth that can be used as a substitute for cash in money laundering and terrorist financing.
Second, is the issue of solicitor-client privilege and whether the invocation of that privilege has not been so strong in the bill that we are not availing ourselves of information that the legal profession has and could help society track down terrorist financiers and money launderers.
Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, I have some concerns with the whole issue of the balance between, on the one hand, our need to get tough and track down terrorist finances and money launderers, and on the other hand, the need to protect the rights of the individual and privacy. I believe that balance has been undone by the bill and that the defence of privacy issues will need to be correspondingly strengthened.