Mr. Speaker, whether the House has agreed because the members look forward to hearing my colleague or because they have less time to listen to me, either way they have accepted and I thank them all.
We on this side of the House certainly support the bill. Indeed, to a large degree, the bill is based on recommendations by the Department of Finance when we were in government, so we certainly agree with the bill as amended.
It is clear that money laundering and terrorist financing have economic and social costs against which we must remain forever vigilant. It is true that we have to seek out this activity in all corners of the world, because if there are corners that we neglect, that is where the criminals and the terrorist financing people will go.
It is clear as well that this kind of legislation has to be continuously reviewed and updated, because in a sense there is a technological race between the terrorists and the money launderers on the one hand and the government on the other. They, of course, are always trying to be one step ahead of the regulators in terms of the technologies and the techniques they use, so we must be involved in this never-ending racing to be ahead of them. I believe that on the whole the bill does make significant improvements and significant progress to this end, an end which I am sure all of us in this House would share.
I would also like to point out, as the parliamentary secretary did, that we were influenced to a significant extent by the good work in the Senate, led by Senator Grafstein, and its report entitled, “Stemming the Flow of Illicit Money - A Priority for Canada”. It is nice to hear praise from the Conservative Party for the good work of the Senate, so I do thank those members for that, but it is also clear that this report made several excellent recommendations, some but not all of which were included in this bill.
One of the areas where the Senate made a good recommendation, which was not accepted, was that the report urged the government to have precious metal and jewellery dealers report large transactions to FINTRAC. This was not in the original bill. This is an open door. Criminals are not stupid. If the cash is covered but the jewellery or the diamonds are not, they can use diamonds instead of cash. I think this is one of the loopholes that this bill ought to have covered off, but it failed to do so.
Nobody wants to put undue burdens on Canadian businesses, and yes, having to report these transactions to FINTRAC is another burden for the businesses involved, but if these types of businesses are identified by the criminal element as safe places to launder money, then that is where they may choose to go. I do think that this is a significant deficiency.
Indeed, my colleague, the hon. member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, did propose amendments at committee that would have brought precious metal and jewellery dealers into the legislation. Unfortunately, these amendments were found to be out of order by the chair because they were said to be beyond the scope of the bill. When the bill is updated, I hope that this is one area that will be covered off in future amendments.
There is also the very important issue of privacy and parliamentary oversight. I believe the original bill provided a delicate balance between two good things. On the one hand, the bill has to be tough in its ability to go after money launderers and people involved in terrorist financing. On the other hand, the bill has to protect the privacy rights of Canadians. I believe the original bill had a delicate balance between these two sometimes competing objectives.
The new bill correctly strengthens the enforcement side of this equation. We on this side of the House agreed with those measures, but we also think that in order to retain balance, if we strengthen the enforcement side we should also ask the question of whether the side of privacy or the protection of individual rights should also be strengthened.
That is why, right from the beginning, our party, and I believe the other opposition parties, sought to bring parliamentary oversight into the equation, parliamentary oversight being absent from the original bill and from the bill put forward by the government. Throughout the committee hearings, the government side did not display an interest in any form of parliamentary oversight. It was satisfied with the status quo.
Then, at committee, the Liberal side brought in an amendment, based on the work of the Senate committee, to provide oversight by SIRC, but with annual reports to Parliament, and this is the point the parliamentary secretary neglected . This, for the first time, would have brought in the principle of annual parliamentary oversight, which was absent from the previous bill and absent from the government's bill.
The record will show that four Conservative hands went up to vote against our amendment in terms of whether it was in order. It was only when the opposition together combined to bring forward this amendment that the government accepted the principle of parliamentary oversight.
I repeat the point that I made in my question and comment. The government opposed the principle of parliamentary oversight of FINTRAC. Once we introduced our amendment, we had further discussions and agreed with the government side that its alternative form of parliamentary oversight through the Privacy Commissioner rather than SIRC was acceptable.
The main reason why I agreed that this was all right and an improvement was that I consulted Senator Grafstein, the person who originally had recommended parliamentary oversight through SIRC. He thought this was a reasonable proposal by the government, so we on this side accepted that proposal, as did the opposition parties.
That does not negate my central point that parliamentary oversight is important for FINTRAC. There is plenty of scope for individual privacy to be put in jeopardy. The government side had to be dragged kicking and screaming to accept this principle only after the three opposition parties combined to force the issue.
That having been said, I will say that this side of the House does support the bill. We are certainly the creators of this institution. We believe it is necessary. We believe that it has to be updated continuously. My principal reservations are on the diamonds and the jewellery, which is work still to be done in the future, and the parliamentary oversight that the government was forced to accept is also an important part of this amended bill.