Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting us to speak with you today regarding your broader study on terrorism financing. I can assure you that we will be as forthcoming as we can with our answers today; however, I know you understand that we cannot provide classified information in th

Finance committee  If I may, Mr. Chair, the first thing is that FINTRAC receives information that is provided by the different financial sectors in Canada. We do not have the means technically or legally to access the bank accounts of Canadians. All the information that is provided to us comes from

Finance committee  No.

Finance committee  No. In fact the legislation has been designed specifically to ensure that FINTRAC is the only organization that can access that data holding. So neither the police forces nor CSIS have access to our database. That's the first thing. The second issue is that we can disclose exclu

Finance committee  If we had something in our holdings and if what we could see related to those operations, yes, but I will not comment on specific operations.

Finance committee  I will not comment specifically on the attacks. What I can say, though, is that we did disclose information and the information we disclosed is either a series of transactions or it is information that the financial institution may report to us because it was suspicious. For exam

Finance committee  The issue is that FINTRAC is not an investigative body. Therefore, while we do receive information, we work with that information and then we disclose it to either CSIS, the RCMP, or local police forces. The fusion of what the financial transactions involve and what the enforceme

Finance committee  Transferring funds can be done in various ways including electronic funds transfers. It can be done through cash smuggling. It may be through the exchange of goods. It may be through an informal mechanism whereby you give the money to a relative here in Canada who knows somebody

Finance committee  We have not necessarily. I would say we have not, according to our own data holdings. I don't know, Luc, if you have a more precise answer.

Finance committee  Well, the money may go to different groups through different routes. Basically, some people would carry the money with them in order to finance their own operations abroad. It's very difficult in fact to pinpoint which group receives what amounts of money. Maybe CSIS would be in

Finance committee  We do. We are a member of the Egmont Group, which is an organization of 147 countries and includes FINTRAC. We do have, in fact, a memorandum of understanding with 90 of these countries. So yes, we do exchange information with them on an ongoing basis.

Finance committee  We do share best practices as well. In fact, we teach one another. In the context of the Egmont plenary in June. FINTRAC will be hosting a seminar on terrorism financing on behalf of the Egmont Group.

Finance committee  Well, that's one of the challenges we face. The automatic reports that are higher than $10,000—if you need a different criterion—are reported to us. We know that terrorism financing is done at a much lower level. Since we do not have access to reports under $10,000, again, it's i

Finance committee  In fact, we're working with our finance partner on the possibility of reducing the electronic fund transfer to $0. So far it hasn't been possible for all kinds of reasons, one of them being technical, because we did not have the technical means to analyze such a huge data holding

Finance committee  I would say, Mr. Chair, it was caused by two things. The first was that, as soon as the unfortunate shootout happened in Ottawa, we sent an email to all the reporting entities asking them—given the fact that the names of perpetrators were public—to go to their holdings and report