Finance committee  At Transparency International Canada, certainly our goal is ensuring greater transparency. If it comes with efficiency, savings, and compliance, we're all for it. Certainly, a beneficial ownership registry that's publicly accessible would help all of the reporting entities—all of

Finance committee  I think my colleague has expressed it well. There is a regime of penalties at this point, and I think the penalties FATF may have referred to, if I'm correct, are perhaps in regard to the effort put into prosecution and trading off a predicate offence for money-laundering offence

Finance committee  I think that enforcement is an issue, but it's not enforcement alone. It's prosecution as well. The minister who spoke before us made some very good points. I might disagree with the way he characterized the information being sent to FINTRAC, as it being faxed and being in paper

Finance committee  In a few words, we're behind the eight ball. We're going to continue to be behind the eight ball because the world trend is to go to publicly accessible beneficial ownership registries. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, in a couple of months we expect that the European Union

Finance committee  You're addressing your question to?

Finance committee  The Minister of Finance is working very closely with the provinces on this, according to his announcement back in December. We're very happy to hear that. There are obviously some challenges, I'm sure. The interprovincial trade agreement of 1994 was made as a result of a commitm

Finance committee  I can't speak to how things work today, but I assume they're going well and that the communication mechanism is even stronger than it used to be. I have to say that, as soon as the legislation changed, in July 2010, and tax evasion became a predicate offence for money laundering

Finance committee  I'd have to say that the best people to comment on that would certainly be active members of law enforcement. In my own experience, I've had opportunities in the past to speak with crown prosecutors in a few provinces, and at the federal level—and they're swamped. To be fair, I

Finance committee  Thank you for your question. On the second recommendation you mentioned, I would say that annual reports would be very welcome. Oftentimes, committees—and I've attended many committee meetings—don't have immediate access to information on the entire compliance continuum. The jus

Finance committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the committee's review. I will be giving my presentation in English but would be happy to answer questions in English or French. I am an Advisor on Beneficial Ownership a