At the beginning of 2017, Transparency International ranked Canada 9 out of 176 on the 2016 Corruption Perception Index. Taking this International Anti-Corruption Day to reflect on 2017, this year revealed that Canada’s top CPI position can make the country a target if we do not remain vigilant against corruption, particularly beneficial ownership transparency.
Continuing revelations a year on from the Paradise Papers revealed that Canada’s squeaky clean reputation is marketed abroad by financial and legal interlocutors to nefarious actors who would stash their ill-gotten gains here. The term used to market Canada for money laundering and tax dodging is ‘snow washing’. Park your dirty money in Canada and it will be washed clean like the pure white snow.
Recently, at a TI Canada supported event in Vancouver, we heard yet another term hiding behind Canada’s lax legal systems and clean reputation, ‘the Vancouver model’. British Columbia Attorney General David Eby revealed to an audience that money laundering through BC casinos has gotten so bad in Vancouver that it has its own special category among the international intelligence agencies. B.C.’s opaque property and business registry then allows this money to be parked. TI Canada revealed the impact of this system on Vancouver’s property market in our report No Reason to Hide: Unmasking the Anonymous Owners of Canadian Companies and Trusts.
Canada’s problems are not only based on dirty money flowing into our boarders, and out as the Paradise Papers recently revealed. The Charbonneau Commission was a seismic uncovering about the extent of corruption in Quebec contracting. Even experts in Quebec were shocked at what the commission revealed. Canadians across the country would be naive to think that those levels only lie in Quebec. As Eby said about first taking on the role of B.C. Attorney General, “One of the members of the public service said, ‘Get ready. I think we are going to blow your mind.”
Canada cannot afford to be lax on these issues that make us vulnerable any longer.
To start increasing beneficial ownership transparency would be a win for the Federal Liberal Government who have had a tough time working on their campaign for economic fairness. Earlier this year, Finance Minister Bill Morneau said he would address this issue and raised it at the Finance Ministers Meeting in June. We were pleased to hear Attorney General Eby’s strong words in support of public beneficial ownership registry that could put B.C. on the leadership path in Canada.
What Canadians cannot do is become complacent and cynical, throwing up our hands and saying ‘oh well, there’s always corruption’. Those attitudes run the danger of becoming tolerant of corruption and even complicit as ‘everyone else is doing it’. The news has not been all bad this year. The federal government’s amendment to end exemptions on facilitation payments on the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act was a very welcome measure.
As we close out 2017, let’s look forward to a 2018 where the federal government, provinces, territories, and municipalities all move forward on making sure Canada works for its CPI rank, and doesn’t coast on it to its own detriment.