Finance committee  Thank you very much, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak briefly. I work with the Federation of Law Societies of Canada. We are the national association of the provincial and territorial regulators of the legal profession, of which the Law Society of Ontario is

Finance committee  I only want to say with regard to the comment about our failure to have a centralized security regulator, I think Ms. Johnson is absolutely right that the approach on this issue doesn't require there to be a single regulator or a single registry, but more that there be integratio

Finance committee  Just quickly, it may interest you to know that we surveyed that in the work of our committee. We went to criminal lawyers, in particular, thinking that they might be more likely recipients of cash, and it's actually not common. I think what Ms. MacPherson said is absolutely corre

Finance committee  Prior to the introduction of the client identification and verification rules, we had extensive discussions/negotiations with the Department of Finance and FINTRAC to explore ways that we might be able to avoid the constitutional battle that we then had. There was, at that time—a

Finance committee  I think there are two important things to remember. The first is that law societies exist solely for the purpose of regulating the profession in the public's interest. I believe, from what I see, that they take that responsibility very seriously. They would feel that they have no

Finance committee  Well, I know from the law society experience that fraud is complex and difficult to investigate, and difficult to prosecute as a result—certainly one that has any sophistication to it. Therefore, these investigations take quite a commitment of resources. I'm not expert on law e

Finance committee  Well it depends on whom you're asking for the information. If you're requiring the corporation to file that information—if that is a requirement of corporate law that you provide—as you now have to file a variety of information for publicly traded corporations, then it would have

Finance committee  I want to clarify one thing. I don't know that law enforcement is not interested. It may be a resource question, or it may be a response to the fact that some action has been taken, so I don't want to smear law enforcement. When a member is under active investigation or has bee

Finance committee  I do think there should be a uniform standard, and we are working on that. However, the reality, of course, is that when you're regulating 50,000 lawyers, as the Law Society of Ontario does, compared to regulating a few hundred as the Law Society of Prince Edward Island does, the

Finance committee  The simple answer is no, because of the point I made earlier about how the data is collected. What I can tell you is that law societies—all but our tiniest law societies.... And as you'll appreciate, we have three northern law societies that are required to do all of the same thi

Finance committee  I do very briefly. I'm respectful of everybody's time. I started my career as a criminal lawyer. It's been a long time since I was practising so I don't want to misspeak, but there is very well-developed law on mens rea, and strict and absolute liability offences. They are tied,

Finance committee  I'll say one thing and then defer to Ms. Johnson, because I think she may have more insight to offer than I do on this. Your question really demonstrates to me the important point to keep in mind, that in many cases and many transactions, there are a number of players, some of w

Finance committee  Yes, in fact, we've begun our work on best practices, and we have identified the lack of consistent data as a weakness and something we would like to see changed. I mentioned that law societies are enforcing their rules and they keep pretty good data on the breaches of this oblig

Finance committee  We talked about and worried about that kind of strategy in the committee that I co-chair. The people I'm working with are people working directly in investigations, enforcement, and similar activities at the law society. They're not the politicians; they are the people who are do

Finance committee  It may interest you and Ms. Johnson to know that the draft rules, which of course are not finalized yet, are amendments to the client identification verification rule and include requirements to inquire into sources of funds. They include requirements that are not simply for one