Randall Garrison

[Criminal Code, November 17th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, let me start by saying that I do accept the good intentions of those who brought this bill forward. It is an important distinction in changing the terminology from “child pornography” to “child sexual abuse material”, which brings to the fore the question of the fact that there can never be consent for children.

However, given that there is absolutely no disagreement in this House, I had hoped we would move quickly through this bill today, perhaps all stages. If I had been able to ask a question earlier, I would have asked for assurances that this bill would be dealt with quickly and not become part of some larger strategy of delay by any given party later on either in committee or at third reading.

Let us not kid ourselves. This change would have, at best, only marginal impact on combatting child sexual exploitation. We know what works when it comes to combatting child sexual exploitation, and that is enforcement. That enforcement needs additional resources, especially for the specialized law enforcement units that work so hard to combat this scourge. We also need better coordination among federal, provincial and international partners, both public and those in the non-government sector, who are working to fight child sexual abuse.

Today, I want to say thanks to the police and those others who work in non-government organizations to combat sexual exploitation of children. This is, by default, unpleasant work and difficult work, but it is so important to the future of children in this country and around the world.

Today, I want to say to victims that I am not just an ally, but as an adult survivor of child sexual exploitation, I am with them and I know first-hand the lifelong impacts that can carry forward from child sexual exploitation.

I hope that once we have dispatched this bill as quickly as we can, all parties will still be there when it comes time to support improvements to services and supports for survivors. I trust the good intentions, as I said at the beginning of my brief remarks. I hope we can move quickly and I hope that when the time comes, we will all be there to provide the support that survivors need.

[Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022, November 4th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his very perceptive speech on this act. I wonder if he shares the concern I have, which is that whatever good provisions are here, a lot of my constituents do things every day online that put their privacy at risk. They do not understand the implications of the things that have become routine. When I read through the bill and I look at this, I wonder how we are going to deal with that problem in the future, because this is very complex material. Ordinary consumers are giving up their privacy rights, not willingly, but because of the complexity of the issues they do not really understand the implications of with respect to their privacy.

[Cost of Living Relief Act, No. 2., October 27th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am astonished by the speech from the member for Cumberland—Colchester. He pits people with mental health challenges against families who need dental health care.

If we actually took the money that we spend, that we waste, on fossil fuel subsidies, and if we made corporations pay what they owe in terms of taxes, we would have far enough funds in this country to pay for both dental health care and mental health care. Why does the member try to pit Canadians against each other?

[Petitions, October 25th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to table petition e-4062.

The petitioners recognize the ongoing crisis we have with intimate partner violence, as we now have the fifth year of consecutive increases. In doing so, they call on the government to introduce legislation to make coercive and controlling behaviour a criminal offence in this country and to enact a suite of measures, in concert with the provinces, to provide better supports to those who are survivors of intimate partner violence.

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, October 24th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's positive comments on the bill, but I think she may know, as others do, that one of the things I really want to see is mandatory labelling of heavy metals and toxic chemicals on consumer products, which is not in the bill at present. As I have referred to several times in this debate, we found that in dollar stores, lots of the products that have been tested contain heavy metals and toxic chemicals.

Would the member's party be willing to consider amendments that would make mandatory labelling of these consumer products available to parents so they can decide what they are going to expose their families to?

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, October 24th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I would also like to congratulate the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent on becoming the environmental spokesperson for his party, and for that reason I will listen with care to his answer to my question.

A recent study from Environmental Defence found that 30% of products in well-known dollar stores contained heavy metals, such as lead, and toxic chemicals. Studies have shown that nine out of 10 Canadians have been found to have endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which have been used widely in consumer products, in their bloodstream. Would the member support improvements to this bill to require the mandatory labelling of hazardous substances in consumer products so that Canadians know what dangers they are exposing themselves and their children to?

[Criminal Code, October 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am not questioning the motives of the member for Simcoe North, but I worry that the impact of putting forward such a narrow bill as Bill C-289 only makes it appear like the House of Commons, particularly the Conservatives, want to crack down on money laundering, when in fact this bill would make little or no contribution to the actual fight against money laundering.

The Cullen report on money laundering in B.C., made public last June, made literally dozens of recommendations for effective measures to fight money laundering, but creating a separate criminal offence for providing false or misleading information in money laundering investigations was not one of them.

New Democrats will be opposing this bill because a serious problem like money laundering requires a much more serious and robust action than the one small and probably redundant measure suggested in Bill C-289. I will continue to question why we are here talking about this narrow and probably redundant bill instead of talking about more robust measures to fight money laundering, such as those suggested in the Cullen report.

It is also important to note that the Cullen commission report clearly states that it was the Harper government that made a very significant contribution to the explosion of money laundering in Canada when its 2012 cutbacks to the RCMP caused the closing down of the integrated proceeds of crime units, which it had been operating in each province from 1990 to 2012.

Let me quote the Cullen report directly here. It states, “The RCMP's lack of attention to money laundering has allowed the unchecked growth of money laundering since...2012.” A cynic might even wonder if this Conservative private member's bill on money laundering might have been put forward as a distraction from the role the Harper Conservative government played in allowing the explosion of money laundering through its cutbacks in 2012.

The current Liberal government does not escape criticism either. The Cullen commission reports condemns the current federal anti-money laundering legislation and enforcement in simply one word, ineffective. I will cite just one piece of evidence of how ineffective the current federal efforts are.

In 2019-20, FINTRAC received over 31 million individual reports of suspicious financial transactions, yet it transferred only 2,057 of those reports to law enforcement agencies. When we compare the efforts of other jurisdictions, we find that they have many more reports. If we compare it to the United States, we get about 12 times as many reports of suspicious transactions, but when it comes to actual prosecutions as a result of those reports, we are in the tiny percentages.

The Cullen report did note that there was some progress in British Columbia starting in 2015 when David Eby became the B.C. attorney general. The previous government had very clear warnings from law enforcement and regulators that money laundering had become a massive industry in B.C., especially at casinos. A key change was finally introduced in 2018 by Attorney General Eby. It implemented a provision requiring casino patrons to present proof that the cash used in transactions of $10,000 or more came from legitimate sources, and there was an immediate drop in the amount of transactions over $10,000 in those casinos.

While the Cullen commission report and study were really focused on British Columbia, it still made six major suggestions for improving the federal response to money laundering. I will talk for just a minute about each one of those, and they are: unexplained wealth orders; corporate beneficial ownership registry; a program to fight trade-based money laundering; better and more frequent scrutiny of money service businesses; the requirement for better reporting by chartered professional accountants; and, finally, better regulation of the mortgage industry.

All of those are not things that we normally talk about in our daily lives, so let me talk for a minute about unexplained wealth orders, which has been used very successfully in the United Kingdom. This is where either FINTRAC, or possibly the Canada Revenue Agency, would be given the power to go to court where criminal activity is suspected and require those suspected to produce information about where the money used to purchase assets has come from, was the source of funds was to purchase, for instance, real estate. If it cannot be explained and proven that it came from legal sources, then the court can order that property forfeited to the government. This is essentially what happens in British Columbia through the civil forfeiture process. That is a power we do not have. It is one I would like to see us talking about here tonight, rather than this narrow bill.

The second major recommendation is for a corporate beneficial owner registry. What does that mean in common language? We have numbered corporations, which means we cannot figure out who actually owns them and we cannot figure out their links to other corporations that take place in the darkness of those numbered corporations.

We are told now that legislation is coming. I am interested to hear the Conservatives say that they are now in favour of public access to a corporate beneficial ownership registry, but I have to say that in 2018, when New Democrats put forward this kind of idea, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives were enthusiastic about proceeding with this. This is a recommendation that has already been made in the fisheries and oceans committee as a way of getting at another problem on the west coast in British Columbia, and that is the problem of not being able to find out who actually owns fishing licences because a great number of them are numbered corporations. I am happy that we appear to have a consensus growing here that we need such a corporate beneficial ownership registry. I would like to see the government come forward very soon with legislation to implement that proposal.

The Cullen commission also pointed out that probably one of the largest sources of money laundering goes completely unmonitored in this country, and that is what is called trade-based money laundering. If I understand it, it is pretty simple. People who make money from illegal criminal activities order and purchase goods from abroad which either do not exist or are not valued at the amount they are paying. That money goes to a company they own offshore and then comes back as clean money as a result of selling products into Canada. Nobody is monitoring this, nobody at all.

The Cullen commission said very clearly that the federal government should set up a program that would combat trade-based money laundering and the power to share information with other governments about suspicious trade transactions, which apparently are simply money laundering. That is another good thing we could be talking about tonight instead of this very narrow bill.

I will briefly name the problem with chartered professional accountants, which is that in a five-year period, only one chartered professional accountant was ever prosecuted for participating in money laundering. I would like people to raise their hands if they think that only happened once in five years in Canada. The Cullen commission pointed out that we need better reporting regulations for chartered professional accountants and we need better monitoring of their activities. It is not casting aspersions on all CPAs. It is saying that the lack of monitoring allows for those who are unscrupulous to take advantage of that and get involved in money laundering.

The fifth one of those is better and more frequent scrutiny of what are called money service businesses. That is where money is transferred back and forth abroad or back and forth around the country. There is a peculiar regulation that allows most of those businesses to avoid scrutiny from FINTRAC by changing their names and reconstituting themselves every two years. The final one is better regulation of the mortgage industry.

Let me close by repeating what I said. Money laundering is a very serious problem and we need serious measures, both in terms of legislation and enforcement, to crack down on money laundering. I do not believe that Bill C-289 is one of those measures. I do not think it makes a major contribution. However, both the Liberal and Conservative governments before and both Liberal and Conservative government policies before have prevented us from taking the actions we need to take on money laundering on a serious basis.

[Criminal Code, October 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am really pleased to rise tonight to talk about money laundering, as this is a multi-billion dollar industry in Canada. We require serious legislative and enforcement measures if we are to curb its role in facilitating other types of criminal activity and prevent money laundering from contributing to higher housing prices due to its sheer volume and the frequent use of real estate as a way to launder proceeds of crime.

I have to say that over the past decade, both the current Liberal government and the Conservative government before it have failed to devote adequate resources to the fight against the increase in money laundering and its increasing sophistication. This is becoming an increasing challenge with technological change and with the emergence of cryptocurrencies, which are quite often used for obscuring the sources of funds.

I do not wish tonight to question the motives of the member for Simcoe North for putting forward this particular bill on money laundering—

[Criminal Code, October 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I listened with care to the member's introduction of his bill, and I guess I have a fundamental question about the bill. There are lots of very robust measures that have been suggested for tackling money laundering, and it seems to me that all this bill does is take something that is an administrative penalty now and make it a criminal penalty. It seems like a very small measure given the very robust recommendations we have had from the Cullen commission about the things we need to do to combat money laundering.

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, October 19th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, as I said in an earlier intervention, there is no doubt that there is a need to update the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and that there are some very good things in Bill S-5.

However, surveys have found that there are a lot of toxic substances in ordinary consumer products. We had a study that found very high levels of lead in products that were being sold in dollar stores, including in canned food and children's toys. This bill does not have any requirement for more transparency from corporations about the presence of toxic chemicals in ordinary consumer products. Why is that left out of this version of the bill?