Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank the committee for this invitation. My remarks will be in English, but I will be pleased to answer questions in French. Again, thanks for the opportunity to be heard by video conference. I think the technology is wonderful, and I

Industry committee  I don't know about pitfalls, but the challenge, of course, is our wonderful federal structure, our Constitution, which provides exclusive jurisdiction to the provinces to do what they want with their companies acts. The federal government doesn't have the authority to force the p

Industry committee  It's difficult to get very hard data on exactly how much dirty money is being funnelled through Canadian anonymous corporations. Most of the evidence is indirect, but if you look at our report, there are a lot of indications that a lot of money is being laundered through Canada t

Industry committee  I will say something very quick about that, and then I'm going to ask Monsieur Meunier to chime in as well. To put it very simply, if you are an RCMP investigator trying to understand who is behind a company or a transaction because you have some evidence that indicates that a n

Industry committee  Yes. We believe that the name of the shareholders of Canadian companies should be in a public registry. However, there is much discussion about making information available to government authorities but not to the public.

Industry committee  We think this information should be public by default. If important reasons, such as privacy, for instance, or other reasons like that were invoked to ensure that the information wasn't disclosed—

Industry committee  —then it would have to be demonstrated they are well-founded.

Industry committee  First, I think again it's the wrong question.

Industry committee  Why not divulge it to the public—

Industry committee  What is the interest you're trying to—

Industry committee  We're not talking about divulging—

Industry committee  We're not talking about—

Industry committee  I don't—

Industry committee  I think the privacy—

Industry committee  Okay, the privacy element on beneficial ownership on corporate shares, to our mind, is a red herring. We're not asking people to divulge how much they make or how much things are worth or what their net value is. It's very basic tombstone information. People who own 25% or more—t