Mr. Speaker, Bill C-25 would expand programs that we have already. To some degree, from that experience, we are plugging some loopholes and expanding the use of these programs to deal with money laundering and proceeds of money laundering and with terrorist financing.
As has already been expressed by some of my colleagues from the NDP, we will be supporting the bill at second reading. As opposed to a half dozen or more other crime bills that have come from the government, this bill at least makes sense. It would address some real problems in the country with regard to money laundering by organized crime and terrorist financing from either potential terrorist groups in the country and, as often as not, from outside the country who are using Canada, as we know, mostly as a conduit.
Some of the money is raised in Canada but a great deal of both the money laundering from organized crime and from the terrorist groups outside the country is coming from outside, moving through Canada and on into the United States or back to other countries where it is used to finance terrorism in those countries.
We do have some concerns about the bill and my colleague from British Columbia just raised one of them. We do not seem to be able to figure out a way to accommodate the legal community in terms of the lawyers and the law firms having to report either suspicious transactions or large sums of money passing, mostly through their trust accounts but through their offices. That has been an ongoing problem.
The bill originated, I would say, at least two years ago and maybe three, and has been held up all that time because of the ongoing dispute between the law societies across the country and the federal government. The law society, in a previous piece of legislation, actually challenged the government in court and was successful in having itself excluded under the terminology and provisions of that particular law. We were hoping that this bill, which we hope will eventually become law, would have included at least some meaningful reporting from the legal community.
We will explore this more at the committee to see if there is some possibility of that happening and, if not, an explanation as to why not and also what types of negotiations have gone on between the federal government and the legal community, the law societies in particular, to try to resolve this issue.
One of the very good points about the bill is that it does include the foreign exchange shop. We know from a number of reports that we have had from police sources and our intelligence sources that repeatedly, because they are not covered by the existing law, people have gone to foreign exchange shops, exchanged large amounts of money from one currency into Canadian currency and oftentimes go to another shop to exchange that into another currency, oftentimes U.S. currency, and the money moves on out of the country without any formal recording. This will cease with this legislation coming into effect. It is one of the major holes that we have in our system of protections, both against organized crime and potential terrorist groups, and it badly needs to be plugged.
There is also a concern about the cost of the administration of this program as it is now, and that will become somewhat more onerous, because again, we are bringing in more private sector companies which will be responsible for additional reporting.
I know from my colleague from Winnipeg that there has been some expression of concern from small credit unions about their ability to provide sufficient resources, both in terms of technology and in terms of personnel to meet the requirements of this reporting.
That is another matter that needs to be explored at committee, and in particular, to see if the federal government could be doing something to assist smaller operators who are affected by this legislation. It may be by providing them with a software package that would let them track the funds or it may be suggestions on how small financial institutions can streamline their process and still meet the requirements of the act without making it too onerous for them to perform their responsibilities.
I want to raise one additional problem, which concerns how this information is used, and I will do it in two contexts. The Auditor General, Ms. Fraser, issued a report on the central agency, FINTRAC, which is the intelligence gathering organization in this country that sifts all this information and helps identify whether in fact it is coming from organized crime or from some terrorist activity.
In her report, which I believe was for the 2003-04 period of time, she found that although a number of transactions had been identified and had been, as permitted under the legislation, reported to both the RCMP and CSIS, neither of those agencies appeared to have used the information, either for investigation purposes or for laying charges. That appears to be an ongoing problem and it is of concern. FINTRAC was running in that year on a budget of about $31 million annually. If we are spending that amount of money on this intelligence gathering program, we should be seeing some results.
In the two subsequent years of 2004-05 and 2005-06, again there appears to have been limited use made of this. This is something that will need to be explored at committee to ensure Canadian taxpayers receive good results from their tax dollars that go into these services.
The other context where I would like to address the use of this is the issue of privacy and, in particular, the risk that some of this information will find its way into the United States and, under the patriot act, be disclosed to a number of agencies in the U.S. I have not been convinced that we have closed all the loopholes so that this information, the intelligence and results of the investigation which are badly needed in Canada, does not go into the United States.