Mr. Speaker, I would like to address my remarks to one narrow aspect of the motion before us and that is the part of the motion that calls on anti-terrorism legislation that should specifically ban fundraising for the purposes of supporting terrorism anywhere in the world. It is all very well to pass legislation like that but if there is not the ability to actually implement a ban like that then it falls far short of what is desired.
Mr. Speaker, you of all people will remember that for many years now I have been an active campaigner for the reform of Canada's charity legislation and regulations. You will know and remember, Mr. Speaker, that I did two reports in which I examined some 500 charities. I examined their financial information returns, compared them to the published financial statements that they put out and kept track of them in a general fashion.
Mr. Speaker, you will also remember that what I found was that Canada's $90 billion charity industry runs essentially without any kind of legislative oversight whatsoever. In other words, the money is being raised by big charities and small charities across the land and is being spent and no one knows how it is being raised or where it is being spent.
I am the first to say that there are many very good charities but the reality is Canada has become notorious worldwide for the ease with which a terrorist organizations and groups engaged in ethnic conflicts in various parts of the world use Canada's absence of meaningful not for profit legislation in order to raise money here in Canada and transfer those funds to support these conflicts abroad.
Mr. Speaker, I know you will find this hard to believe and many of the members in the House will probably be surprised to hear this, but the reality is that there are only guidelines for charities in Canadian federal legislation. There are no actual standards of financial reporting. There are no standards of corporate governance and we have a situation where a charity can raise a million dollars or so. A small charity with some ethnic ties abroad can raise this money and there is no mechanism at all for the federal government to determine how that money was raised because there is no requirement to keep receipts. The money can then be disbursed by third parties. It literally can be transferred out of the country and spent by a third party in ways that we will never know.
This is obviously an invitation to all kinds of abuse. This is not the time, in this particular sensitive time, to actually name the type of organizations or name the specific organizations that I have encountered that are engaged in very unusual activities.
However, let me give the House an example of what I discovered. I discovered, for example, a very large and well known charity that engages in overseas community project development which was receiving millions of dollars a year from the Canadian government to further these developments in third world countries abroad. When I attempted to get from the charity the names of these organizations, I could get brochures and beautiful pictures and all those kinds of thing, but the charity was never able to supply me with the names of the organizations, the addresses or the telephone numbers. In this particular case it was in India where it was actually operating. The irony was that in this particular instance the Canadian International Development Agency actually sent a team abroad to look at this particular development. They looked at it and made a report but two years later, even though it was still receiving money, there was no trace of it. We have to ask ourselves what this charity was doing with the money that it was actually receiving from the Government of Canada?
In another instance I found a charity that was not an ethnic charity at all. It was engaged in a certain activity abroad that was regarded in the public interest. I will not say what that activity was but it involved officials from the charity leaving Canada and going to various countries, generally in the Middle East. An audit was done on that charity by CIDA and it was found that the charity officials were carrying tens of thousands of dollars in cash by airplane to the Middle East.
Mr. Speaker, I just leave it to your imagination what an organization, what individuals would possibly be doing bringing cash into the Middle East when I would point out to you that the Middle East is not the end of the world. It is possible to have proper electronic transfers of money to this part of the world so you have to ask yourself what is going on.
The numbers of instances of this kind of thing are, I am sorry to say, legion. I do not like to suggest even for a moment that all charities are engaged in this kind of thing but the reality is that we as a country, indeed we as a federal government, have failed absolutely in our responsibility to Canadians and our responsibility to ethnic Canadians, those people who have settled in Canada and taken out Canadian citizenship or just settled in Canada. Our responsibility to them is to guarantee that they are not subject to pressure from their homelands to finance conflicts that still exist in their homelands. This is not just a question about whether money is being raised in this country to finance terrorism abroad, it is a question of whether money is being raised in this country to finance the ethnic conflicts in the various homelands.
I have made many representations to government on this. About two years ago it did appear that cabinet was prepared to look at the not for profit sector and bring in some legislation and some rules that particularly pertain to the transparency in their financial dealings. I regret to say that because of, I think, a very strong lobby from the very large charitable organizations and the charity leadership in this country, the government backed off. I think the argument was that the charity industry, even though it is a very large industry, was not willing to accept the red tape that comes from keeping good financial books.
I should say in passing that under Canadian legislation a charity, no matter how large or how small, does not require a proper auditor to do its books. Basically anyone can do the books of a charity. The only reporting a charity is required to do is a financial information return to Revenue Canada. There is no law on the books that even requires the charity to fill out the lines.
The official opposition raised the point that the legislation that was introduced, Bill C-16, was designed to lift the charitable registration status of organizations that are suspected by the security services of raising money for illegal activities abroad. What I must point out is that this falls completely short of actually solving the problem or even coming close to answering the problem.
The reality is that because of the Access to Information Act we cannot see even the non-profit organizations' financial statements to government. In other words, the world police organizations have recognized that because of Canada's open or lack of legislation with respect to charities, we are the most backward of all nations with respect to legislation on charities. Because of that, we are a favoured nation for raising funds, not only for terrorism but for ethnic conflicts and, I fear, even for organized crime.
