Debates of June 20th, 2023

Canada Business Corporations Act

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am going to be speaking on Bill C-42, an act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts.

Before I begin, I seek unanimous consent from the House to split my time with the hon. member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

I have heard from all recognized parties that they are in agreement with this request.

Does the hon. member have the consent of the House to split his time?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, Conservatives are proposing that we amend the motion before the House today, the motion that Bill C-42 be read for a third time, in order to send Bill C-42 back to committee for some important additions, with number one being thresholds.

During our study at INDU, the RCMP officials were clear that reducing the threshold for significant control would strengthen the registry and law enforcement agencies' ability to utilize it in the fight against money laundering. Let me quote Denis Beaudoin, director of financial crime at the RCMP. He stated:

The RCMP standpoint is that the more names and more information, the better. As we're trying to make links in a criminal investigation, it certainly can help.

This was in respect to thresholds.

The End Snow-Washing campaign also pushed for a 10% threshold, though the officials have since suggested it could be done at a later date through the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act review, which takes place every five years.

During testimony, the representative from Transparency International, which is tied to the End Snow-Washing campaign, stated:

I don't think, for one, lowering the threshold from 25% to 10% and a risk-based approach are mutually exclusive. I think they actually go hand in hand. I would note that the 25% isn't so much a standard as it was an initial global recommendation that everyone just kind of grabbed on to.

This quote contradicts the point that we have seen raised repeatedly by Liberal members that 25% is an international standard. They argue that moving the threshold away from the standard would hurt interoperability, but I have doubts. Does the government really believe that provinces would not follow suit and align with a new federal threshold? Twenty-five per cent remains far too open to abuse. The lower we bring the threshold, the less opportunity there would be for criminals to circumvent it. As I understand this bill, a sole owner of a small business worth $100,000 in gross profit on an annual basis would be subject to reporting requirements and included in this registry. Meanwhile, a person with a 20% stake in a $100-million corporation would not.

As has been mentioned during debate so far, currently the Ontario Securities Commission requires that any shareholder with a 10% share or more has to be reported. Private corporations should be held to the same standard of transparency and accountability. Frankly, I do not understand or trust public servants who say they are going to follow through on this. I predict that we will be back in this House in less than 10 years, wondering why the threshold was not adjusted to a lower rate in this bill to account for the serious problem of money laundering that we have.

Conservatives are therefore proposing that we send Bill C-42 back to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology with the aim of reducing the threshold for significant control from 25% to 10%.

The second point I would like to raise tonight relates to interoperability. We are also calling on the industry committee to adopt additional amendments in relation to the interoperability of the registry with provincial and territorial registries.

As of now, penalties for violating requirements in respect to reporting information would only apply to federally registered corporations, which represent less than 15% of private corporations in Canada. As we heard at committee, there is as much as $113 billion being laundered in Canada annually. We must ensure that this registry can reduce that figure as much as possible and end Canada's reputation as a haven for dirty money. To that end, by changing some of the clauses through the Criminal Code, we could achieve a higher standard of interoperability by making sure that provinces that opt in to a federal registry would impose the same penalties as a federally registered corporation.

Other areas for improvement of Bill C-42 were also raised through numerous amendments to strengthen the registry.

With my time here today I will talk about law enforcement. Conservatives also moved an amendment to ensure law enforcement would have back-end access to the registry without having to go directly to corporations. Department staff at committee assured members that there is already a provision for this in place. However, to my understanding this is not the case, based on the bill itself, and what we needed through more committee testimony was clarity through the officials on how that would actually be done.

The Budget Implementation Act, 2022, No. 1, did include an amendment to the CBCA to give law enforcement this access. However, it has never been brought into force.

We moved further amendments at INDU in relation to interoperability as well. The first would have added the jurisdiction of residents and the name of the corporation to the registry, ensuring it could have been searched by these fields. The second would have added specific language to require the registry to be made public in a searchable format.

I will quote Sasha Caldera from Publish What You Pay, which is associated with Transparency International. He said:

Searching by the name of the corporation is a function that the U.K. registry has, and it allows for reverse searching. If you don't know the name of the beneficial owner, you can look up the name of the corporation, for instance. That would be incredibly helpful. In some of our other recommendations, we just want to ensure that all publicly accessible data is searchable.

We wanted to achieve the same objective.

Another amendment we moved was raised by the End Snow-Washing campaign of Transparency International. One of them would have added “mechanisms to prevent beneficial owners from knowingly abusing the PO box system”. Officials outlined at the clause-by-clause debate that this is a regulation that already applies to federally registered corporations.

However, what was not made clear is whether that same regulatory standard would apply to provincially regulated corporations. As a result, we left the amendment stage of the bill not knowing whether P.O. box numbers where provincially registered corporations are held would be subject to the same standard as federally registered corporations if any set agreement was made between the federal, provincial or territorial government in their respective jurisdictions. What I am getting at here is that we just needed a bit more time.

I will quickly touch upon identity verification, another area we wanted to spend a bit more time on. An amendment we were unable to get to the floor in time from the Transparency International campaign related to identity verification. It requested language to require corporations to verify the identity of individuals with significant control. Indeed, there already is a precedent for this in Canada. B.C.'s Business Corporations Amendment Act, 2023, included the following language, which the organization included for reference in its submission to committee the hour before clause-by-clause:

Verification of identity of significant individual

(1) On the request of the registrar, a significant individual, or a person in a prescribed class of persons who can verify the identity of the individual, must provide to the registrar

(a) any prescribed records, or

(b) information or proof the registrar considers necessary

to verify the identity of the individual.

(2) The records, information or proof must be provided under subsection (1) in the prescribed form and manner.

We needed to do so much more for the bill, but I have just been informed by leadership that we will be removing our amendments to the bill, unfortunately, because it looks like we are going to recess for the summer this month. We will not be able to sit this summer and go through this important work.

That said, I still very strongly believe that, when we look at the proceeds of crime and money laundering act, we should revisit the CBCA to ensure we do the utmost to protect Canadians from money laundering. We have so much more work to do on this, and I am sad the Liberals tried to push this through right to the very end. If we just had a few more meetings, the bill could have been so much better.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I do want to acknowledge the efforts of the standing committees and those who have ultimately had direct input to bring the legislation to the state it is at today, and I think working with provinces, as I indicated in my speech earlier, is so critically important. By building upon the momentum we are adding great value to this evening by the passage of this bill, I think we would be doing a good thing for all Canadians. I just wanted to get the member's thoughts in regard to the provincial participation in or buy-in to the program.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, the only assurances committee members have received regarding provincial participation relate to a letter the minister sent. What is problematic for me, as an opposition MP, and I am learning this the more time I spend going through amendments and clause-by-clause, is that the word of a minister is not enough. I need to see concrete action.

The minister did not provide the letter, and he did not provide any indication that any provincial register has so far indicated they are going to participate. That is the reason I spoke to the need to include provincial members in the legislation as a starting point, through amendments to the Criminal Code, as it relates to the penalties in this legislation to ensure provincial participation. My province wants it and so do many others, but we need to see more concrete and transparent action from the government on that front.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I take it my hon. colleague from Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon is persuaded there is enough good in this bill in having a beneficial ownership registry that he will be voting for it. I ask him to comment on how he sees the use of this reducing money laundering, which has been a scandal, particularly in our home province.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, as I mentioned in the debate yesterday, perfection cannot be the enemy of the good. The Conservative Party will be supporting this bill reluctantly, but my cry tonight, my plea with the government, is to never again during this parliamentary session try to have witnesses the hour before clause-by-clause.

In British Columbia, we had the Cullen commission and the Peter German report. We have had so many people negatively impacted by money laundering. On the impact it has had and the deaths related to opioids, all of that money and those deaths are related to money laundering. We have not done enough in the House to address it. Lives are being lost in B.C. because of money laundering, and we could have done more.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Madam Speaker, I had the honour to serve with the member on the committee that briefly looked at this bill.

One of the most important proposed amendments the government rejected was one that would have taken the level of reporting of who owns what percentage of shares down from 25%, meaning anyone who has 25% or more has to be recorded, down to 10%, and 10% of course is what is used for making public disclosure by the Ontario Securities Commission. When one acquires shares in a company, they have to publicly disclose if they have 10% or more. I would like the member to comment on what value that would have brought and how disappointing it was for us that the government did not consider it.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague from Nova Scotia is a true historian and parliamentarian in the very best sense of the word. Changing the threshold from 25% to 10% would have done what the RCMP said, in the testimony I shared today from that one hour from witnesses, which is that it would have given law enforcement organizations such as FINTRAC, and the RCMP and its money laundering unit more tools to combat the up to $113 billion that is laundered in Canada every year.

We are so far behind other developed economies when it comes to money laundering. This is one tiny step in the right direction. All we were trying to do is get tough on those individuals who are costing lives because of money laundering, and we wanted to strengthen this bill and follow the spirit of what the government put forward in the first place to make it better. Unfortunately, it did not agree with us and sided with the Bloc Québécois when the NDP and the Conservatives brought forward reasonable amendments.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, just to be clear, I am not speaking about Bill C-18, nor am I speaking about any purported amendments to Bill C-42. Rather, I am speaking about Bill C-42, an act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act.

The bill does a number of things. Its stated goal is protecting Canadians against money laundering and terrorist financing, deterring tax evasion and tax avoidance, and making sure that Canada is an attractive place to do business. Those are all laudable goals.

We know that money laundering in Canada is a serious issue. It is so serious that we have earned our own nickname as the land of snow washing. That is not a badge of honour. In 2022, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reported $530 million in victim losses, a 40% increase over 2021.

These are vulnerable Canadians being preyed upon by fraudsters, who are destroying lives. It is important that, as parliamentarians, we come together to deal with these problems and do our best to protect Canadians and their retirement savings.

In 2016, the Financial Action Task Force said that Canada was completely deficient in many areas. One of its main criticisms, in fact, was our lack of a beneficial ownership registry. That was seven years ago, and we are only getting to it today. Establishing such a registry would be a major step forward, and Conservatives certainly support that. The problem, as always, is that the devil is in the details.

In committee, Conservatives tried to strengthen the bill in a number of ways. One glaring problem with the bill is that the corporate and personal fines for failure to provide required information were too low under the CBSA. The fine was only $5,000 for corporations and only $200,000 plus six months' imprisonment for individuals. I was happy to see the INDU committee increase personal fines for individuals to $1 million plus five years' imprisonment, as well as fines for corporations to $200,000. Of course, Conservatives supported those amendments, as did Liberals on the committee. We can see that when Conservatives and Liberals vote together, amendments actually pass at committee.

There were, however, a number of other Conservative amendments related to thresholds, real estate, interoperability, law enforcement, access, searchability and the use of post office boxes, of all things, which would have made the bill more effective. They were all voted down by Liberal committee members.

I want to touch on a few of them now. Currently, under the CBSA, the threshold for what is called a “significant interest” is 25%. This means that corporations only have to disclose those shareholders who have at least a 25% interest in the outstanding shares of a corporation. This poses a problem, because if we really want to crack down on money launderers and terrorist financiers, the threshold should be lower. For instance, the Ontario Securities Commission threshold is 10%.

At committee, Conservatives proposed this amendment. However, it was rejected, even though the RCMP felt it was necessary. It was rejected by Liberal members of the committee, who purport to want this legislation to be effective. It is hard to understand why they would not want to lower the threshold. James Cohen, executive director of Transparency International Canada, said that it should go down as well.

Conservatives proposed another amendment that would have brought real estate holdings into the registry. In 2018, money laundering funded $5.3 billion in British Columbia real estate purchases alone, further driving up the cost of homes in that province. The amendment said, “The corporation shall prepare and maintain...a register of individuals with control over the corporation and its real property”; it was a very important amendment that would have gone a long way in helping to control money laundering in Canada through real estate acquisitions. This amendment would have expanded the scope of the registry to make it similar to British Columbia's land ownership transparency register.

Another amendment called for interoperability with provincial registries. The fact of the matter is that most corporations in Canada are provincial. As this bill only governs federally incorporated companies, it misses out on bringing in the provinces, which would make it far more effective.

Another amendment that was defeated had to do with law enforcement access. This amendment would have added specific language to the bill to ensure that law enforcement and organizations like FINTRAC could access information from the director rather than having to go to the corporations directly. It would also have removed reference to prescribed circumstances, ensuring that only minors would be automatically exempted.

Another amendment defeated by Liberal members had to do with using post office boxes, of all things. It would have barred individuals from using post office boxes as their address in the registry. This was a specific request of the End Snow-Washing campaign.

On a cautionary note, it is always important to give consideration to stakeholders and their concerns. Small business is the backbone of this country's economy. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business raised a number of concerns, and I want to talk about some of them here.

It raised the issue of privacy and personal security. It said many small business owners are concerned about having their information available to the general public, such as name, place of residence, date of birth, citizenship, telephone number, etc. In fact, individuals in small towns may not want neighbours or acquaintances to know they have a controlling interest in a company. The CFIB talked about fraud and crime risks and how making beneficial ownership registries public could make it easier for criminals to target wealthy individuals or SMEs. Small business owners are often the targets of fraud and could be even more vulnerable than consumers, as they do not have consumer protection acts to help them manage those who want to take advantage of them.

It talked about competitive disadvantage and that requiring SMEs to disclose detailed ownership information publicly might give their competitors a strategic advantage. Rival businesses could gain insight into their ownership structure, investments and so forth. It talked about inaccurate or outdated information and how public registries may not always provide accurate or up-to-date information due to delays in reporting areas or deliberate misrepresentations. It talked about how requiring small businesses to disclose their beneficial ownership information publicly could impose an additional administrative burden and compliance costs, and that this burden might disproportionately affect smaller companies with limited resources.

Also, I want to touch on the Canadian Bar Association, which raised concerns about the risk of identity theft from the registry, potentially undermining its anti-fraud rationale.

I raise these concerns not to say that we should not make this legislation effective but to say that as parliamentarians, it is incumbent on us to listen to the stakeholders and their concerns as we try to craft and fashion legislation that addresses those concerns but still accomplishes the ultimate goal of the legislation.

The reality is that money laundering is a very serious problem. We know from our friend Bill Browder that Canada has been fertile ground for Russian oligarchs to clean their ill-gotten cash.

I mentioned earlier how money laundering has driven up the cost of housing. This is at a time in this country, after eight years of this Prime Minister, that the dream of home ownership is in critical condition. The average mortgage payment has doubled. The average family now needs to spend 62% of its monthly income to own the average home.

The cause is clear: Inflation fuelled by wasteful government spending has fuelled the inflationary fire. Just today, the International Money Fund cautioned that Canada needs to bring back a debt anchor and keep fiscal policy tight. Money laundering makes things even worse.

Finally, I must reiterate how important it is to bring provinces on board. It is a matter of basic federalism. The government will need information-sharing agreements with the provinces if this registry is going to work. It will only be as strong as the provinces willing to co-operate with it, and that means all the provinces, because if one jurisdiction is left out, it will become a hotbed for money laundering.

I will wrap up by saying that although Bill C-42 is far from a perfect bill and has key shortcomings, including leaving in place a high threshold for significant control, failing to bring into force a clause allowing law enforcement back-end access to the registry and failing to ensure interoperability with the provinces, it is clear that it is a step in the right direction, and Conservatives will support it on third reading.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the member opposite. Again, I would reinforce the fact that having this searchable data bank is going to be beneficial. We recognize that.

We also recognize that it is important to reach out to other jurisdictions. This is all about restoring the confidence of the public and business, as it is healthier for the economy to do so.

We appreciate the support the Conservative Party is giving the legislation. I guess this is more of a comment than it is a question.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member's comment leaves me wondering why the specific amendments that he just spoke of were defeated by the Liberal members at committee when they were proposed. Amendments around searchability and interoperability were defeated. They had their chance at committee to strengthen the bill and yet they chose not to.

One is just left to wonder why. Why leave Canadians so vulnerable to predators who can commit fraud upon them and money launderers who can jack up the costs of their homes, when they had the chance to stop them?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Madam Speaker, as a lawyer, my colleague will have seen when there is a hole in the registration process. Let us say that three provinces have a beneficial registry or even eight have a beneficial registry, the federal government has one and two have none. What happens? Can he explains to this House what happens and where corporations go?

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Madam Speaker, I think that is pretty straightforward. Every province, every jurisdiction has to be on board with this idea. If one province does not have a registry and does not follow these rules, it will become a haven for the oligarchs, for the money launderers, for the fraudsters, to come and do their dirty work and defraud Canadians in that jurisdiction.

There is a whole-of-government approach that is required. It is a matter of federalism that needs to be determined.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Madam Speaker, I too rise this evening to speak on Bill C-42, an act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act.

The bill was tabled about two and half months ago and would create what is known colloquially as beneficial corporate ownership registry. The purpose of that is to make transparent the true and beneficial owners of every federally registered company. A legal owner of a company holds the legal title to that company while the beneficial owner holds certain benefits and rights to company assets, even though the beneficial owner's name may not appear in the legal title.

Corporations in Canada need only register information such as names of directors. They do not have to register who their shareholders are. The current law only requires that lawyers maintain a registry of beneficial owners, so there is no government registry. The lawyers and the companies have to maintain their own sort of self-regulated registry. It is not transparent, it is not visible and it is not even visible to governments unless asked. When police need to find out who the beneficial owner of a company is, they have to contact that company's lawyers, say they are calling from the RCMP and would like to know who the beneficial owner of the company is. The lawyer may say he will get back to the officer and then call the client to say the RCMP is doing an investigation into it.

These are the things that exist now and why we need beneficial ownership registries on who the individuals are, not the corporations, who actually benefit from the ownership of corporations, whether they are federally or provincially incorporated. A beneficiary is the individual or entity, as I said, that will benefit from the transactions or the profits of the remittances of the activities of that corporation.

This bill is a good start, finally, after years and years of discussing it. I think there was a joint press release with the provinces almost six years ago that said we should maybe think about doing this. It has taken the government quite a bit of time to get to this important issue.

The government sets that any individual who owns 25% or more of the shares of a federally incorporated company must provide the information to the registry. What does this mean? There are 4.3 million incorporated companies in Canada and only about 10% of them are incorporated federally. Most corporations are incorporated provincially. Therefore, this bill would have no direct impact on 90% of companies.

With regard to the question earlier from the leader of the Green Party, when 90% of the companies in this country are not included or not brought under the umbrella of a national beneficial ownership registry, it is pretty clear that we are going to still have a significant money-laundering problem.

That is the primary reason, as the minister claimed, the government claims and most interest groups have claimed, we need to have this registry: to deal with money laundering. Other members have mentioned, and I will too, that Canada does not have a very nice nickname around money laundering that has been coined and used internationally to describe Canada, and that is snow washing. We are the place where money goes to get laundered and cleaned up from illegal activities. It describes the flow of dirty money entering Canada.

The registration system for Canada at both the federal and provincial levels is totally shrouded in secrecy, which means that the real owner of a company or a trust can hire a person as a stand-in or substitute to conduct all financial filings and submissions for that company. The practice effectively makes Canada a tax haven, along with countries such as the British Virgin Islands, Panama and the Bahamas. The process has been made even easier since the Canadian government signed tax treaties with 115 countries.

With a form of business organization called a Canadian limited partnership, the only persons who have to declare themselves to authorities are the partners, and if they do not live in Canada, they are exempt from filing taxes in Canada. If stocks of a firm are not traded publicly, the rules require that only the directors of such companies be identified, and these directors are not required to reveal whether they are acting on behalf of someone else or whether they actually own any shares in the company.

How bad is it? Recent estimates have put money laundering in Canada at $133 billion a year. Now, that is a big number. It is 5% of our GDP. It is a huge amount of money from illegal gains that is being cleared through our system in Canada.

Money laundering has its origin in crimes that destroy communities, such as drug trafficking, human trafficking and fraud. These crimes victimize the most vulnerable members of society. Money laundering is also an affront to law-abiding citizens who earn their money honestly and pay their fair share of the cost of living in the communities where they choose to live.

There can be few things more destructive to a community's sense of well-being than a governing regime that fails to resist those whose opportunities were unfairly gained at the expense of others. If one jurisdiction, such as Ottawa, or even Ottawa and a few of the provinces, as I mentioned earlier, create a corporate beneficial registry that is publicly available but others do not, then money launderers will gravitate towards those jurisdictions within Canada in order to hide their ownership and enable their money laundering.

We have talked a lot in this debate in the few moments that we have had about the issue of money laundering, and I will give another example of a problem that is caused by not having a beneficial corporate registry.

All politics are local. I have 7,000 commercial fishermen in my riding. There are 16,243 fishing licences in Atlantic Canada and in the gulf region of Quebec. There are 5,727 fishing licences in British Columbia. That is a total of about 22,000 commercial fishing licences that have been issued by DFO in Canada. However, do members know that DFO does not know who owns them? DFO does not know who owns them because there is no beneficial corporate registry.

In fact, 17 months ago, DFO went out for the first time to do a survey of the licence holders. They are not necessarily the licence owners, because in British Columbia, the licences can be leased out to someone, who would then be called the licence holder. Do members know what the result is? The result is that DFO now has to hire a forensic auditor to come in and try to figure out what happened with the information they got.

After more than 150 years of the Government of Canada handing out fishing licences, DFO still does not know who owns them, and that is a problem. It is a problem because DFO has policies around who can control a particular fish species or an area of fishing, and we cannot have an uncompetitive situation. We have had evidence in our study in the House of Commons fisheries committee on corporate concentration and foreign ownership in the fishery that there is one particular company that may own up to 50% of all commercial licences in British Columbia. This is way above what the Competition Bureau says is an acceptable concentration for any business, which is about 30% maximum in any industry. One company in B.C. may own half the licences, but we do not know because we do not have an ongoing federal or provincial beneficial registry that can provide that transparency.

It should not be up to a government department to do a survey once every 150 years in hopes of trying to figure this out. This should be something we could search regularly.

This is an issue in industries like the lobster industry. In southwest Nova Scotia, in my riding and in the riding of the member for West Nova, we all know that there was a lot of organized crime and cash. Whenever there is cash flowing and there are untraceable products like seafood, there is the opportunity for money laundering. This is a huge issue in Canada, and even those numbers are probably not included in the $133 billion I talked about earlier.

The bill is a good first step, but it really just plays at the edges when so many corporations provincially are not included in it.

We mentioned earlier that we tried to make a few improvements with the help of the government on this, in a genuine effort, as we are very collegial in the industry committee, to try to get things done. However, we only had two meetings, one hour of outside witnesses, officials for the other one, and then straight into clause-by-clause.

I will give a couple of outlines. In that time, we tried to bring that threshold from 25% down to 10%. That is not uncommon. The government said that this is some sort of international standard. In other areas, the government likes to be the leader around the world, in saying that it is leading everybody on trying to have more NPAs than anybody else in the world, that it is trying to push the envelope. On this one, it would not push the envelope. Moreover, it is not really pushing the envelope, because the Ontario Securities Commission requires that when someone buys 10% or more of a publicly traded company, they have to put out a news release and tell the market that they are doing that.

When they want to go below 10%, once they own those shares, the Ontario Securities Commission actually requires them to put out a news release before they sell the shares. They must actually notify the markets that they are going to sell their shares to below 10%. However, apparently, when it comes to money laundering, 10% is too aggressive for the government. It wanted to keep it at 25%.

When it comes to owners getting influence in a widely held company, if someone holds 20% of the shares of that company and the rest of the shares are widely held, then they are essentially the one that is controlling what happens in that company. The inability of the government to see that was greatly disappointing.

We want, as we have said, to expand it to real property, which is not that difficult. It is just connecting in the registries for property registration. We know that, in Vancouver and Toronto in particular, huge amounts of money laundering have happened around the purchase of residential properties. However, that has been rejected by the Liberals.

Finally, let us say that we have the provinces that, all on their own, go on and do provincial registries. Would that not be great? We put in an amendment saying that if there is a provincial registry, the federal government should go and get an agreement with the province to share the data back and forth, so that they are both searchable on all the data. It should not do it on its own, but it should do it under a federal-provincial agreement with the province. Again, the Liberals, and, I might say in answer to the parliamentary secretary's question, the Bloc Québécois voted against those amendments. The NDP supported them.

I think it is too bad that we have had so little debate, just five hours in the House, and six outside witnesses. This is such an important bill, but it has been rushed through; so much more could have been done for this. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, after the next election, with a change in government, there will be an opportunity to improve this bill much more than the Liberals are willing to do at this location.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I think it is important to recognize that we have had a couple of Conservative speakers who have indicated, with a pretty heavy stick, I would suggest, that one gets provinces to come onside, possibly by bringing in some sort of amendment.

I was not at the committee stage. I do not know if they were proposing an amendment that would legislate provinces to get on board. I think the government's approach, whether it is the municipalities or provinces in other areas, has been to lead, more so, with a carrot, as opposed to trying to legislate. I think we have been able to deliver.

One only needs to take a look at the health care, the child care and the CPP program, where the federal government has worked very clearly with provincial jurisdictions and territorial jurisdictions to bring results. I would think we will see some results that will hopefully be satisfactory even for opposition members.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Madam Speaker, I will let the House judge, since the Liberals made the judgment in committee. We were proposing to amend clause 15 of Bill C-42 to say the following:

The Director may, with the approval of the Minister, enter into an agreement or arrangement with a provincial corporate registry or with a provincial government department or agency that is responsible for corporate law in the province for the purpose of facilitating timely access to beneficial ownership information that could relate to the commission or potential commission of wrongdoing as described in paragraph (3)(b) [of the bill].

It was not an amendment that was going into provincial jurisdiction. It was an amendment saying that with co-operation of the province, if it were willing to do it, we could share information. Apparently, sharing information and getting a more effective registry was not something that the government wanted to see in this bill.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from South Shore—St. Margarets for highlighting so many aspects of this bill. It begs the question of how serious this government is about fighting money laundering in Canada and controlling this. It damages so much of the Canadian economy and lives of Canadians.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Madam Speaker, I will start with the positive. The positive is that there is a bill that will establish a federally incorporated beneficial owner registry for the 10% of companies in Canada that are federally registered. That is a good thing.

How serious is the government? The press release to do this was issued in 2017, six years ago. That is even slow by Liberal standards to get such a simple bill through. It was rushed through in two and a half months after it made a commitment six years ago. If it were treating this seriously, it would have given us a little bit more time in committee and worked with us to improve the bill, as other parties tried to do.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, it has been outlined in the debate thus far that some provinces are further ahead than others. We have learned that the Province of Quebec has moved forward and enacted a registry.

This measure will help fight money laundering, which is a good thing.

As well, British Columbia has moved forward with implementing a registry. I believe almost all provinces in Canada, save Alberta, have moved forward.

I wonder if the member from Nova Scotia could outline what the federal government can do more effectively to include provincial registries in an interoperable format to ensure that every Canadian can access a public registry to combat money laundering and find information about corporations.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Madam Speaker, I would say it is positive if any province is at the point where it has put in place a beneficial ownership registry. It was a commitment six years ago. Some of them already have them. They beat the federal government to it.

In spite of the fact that the government rejected the amendment to get an agreement, it can still get an agreement. There is nothing that prevents the federal government from doing what we were trying to compel in law to get that agreement. It would make sure we share both the federal information with the provincial registries and the provincial registries with the federal registry.

The benefit of a federal registry is that people do not have to look in 11 different locations. They could look in one.

When this bill passes through the House, it should be a priority of the government to start the process to get those agreements and get that information in place.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I want to come back to something quite shocking the hon. member told the House. I know it is true because it happens on the B.C. coast too. We have a fleet separation in B.C. that is more extreme than what happens in Nova Scotia. The people who are fishing do not own their own business. They are essentially employees in a vast machine. In British Columbia, billionaire Jimmy Pattison controls the entire herring stock.

I want the hon. member to perhaps reflect on what it means that DFO is giving fishing licences when it does not actually know who owns the businesses that are depleting our fish stocks. People, not necessarily foreign corporations, are completely unconnected from care and concern for the health of biodiversity.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Madam Speaker, the leader of the Green Party is bang on. This is why a beneficial registry goes beyond just the money laundering issue. It could be of great benefit to other things.

I do not know how one would enforce, as DFO policy, that there cannot be a monopoly or monopolistic tendencies if one does not know which companies own the licences. One does not even know whether or not a particular company has a monopolistic tendency.

There is owner-operator fleet separation on the east coast, which has helped. That is good policy. It was enshrined in law. There are still some issues in making sure those companies are what they say they are and who the beneficial owner is.

On the west coast, there is no ability to do that. A survey was done by DFO on the licence-holders. As the hon. member noted, most of those licences are actually leased out to employees. The person who is holding a licence does not actually own it. Licences are owned by large corporations.

In lots of instances, there are companies from foreign countries, not necessarily all of which are open and democratic, which have acquired control of some of those resources too. They are now acquiring the resources of the fisheries and corporations on the provincial side. It is provincial. They are trying to get a whole of supply chain control of particular fish species.

This is a major problem on both coasts, but particularly so in British Columbia. It does not have the benefit of owner-operator fleet separation. It is something fishing groups are asking for. I believe it should be implemented on the west coast as well.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague on his speech. There are certainly things that we do not agree on, but I would like to focus on what we do agree on. Obviously, we both agree that there must be co-operation between the federal government and the provinces, especially Quebec.

As members are aware, business ownership laws fall under the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. There are things that work well. Every province has its own securities commission. In Quebec, we have the Autorité des marchés financiers. I want to reiterate that it is important that the federal government fully co-operate with the Government of Quebec to share information and to establish a framework or registry that will enable us to fight money laundering. We do not want the government to barge in and make decisions unilaterally, without coordinating those efforts. If we do not centralize the data, our efforts will be counterproductive and we will be duplicating work rather than working effectively.

I would like my colleague to share his thoughts on that. What practical action can the federal government take to work with Quebec and the provinces?