In the past week Transparency International Canada and our partner organizations have been making continued strides towards establishing a centralized public registry of beneficial ownership in Canada.
TI Canada Testifies before Senate
Today, December 6, TI Canada Board Member Jon Allen, and Beneficial Ownership Working Group Member, Denis Muenier, testified before the Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce.
There, Mr. Allen and Mr. Muenier presented on the potential to add an amendment for a public beneficial ownership registry to Bill C-25, An Act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act, the Canada Cooperatives Act, the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act, and the Competition Act.
Read the full briefing note that was submitted here.
New Publish What You Pay Canada Report on Beneficial Ownership
On Monday, December 4, our partners at Publish What You Pay Canada, released the new report Secret Entities: A legal analysis of the transparency of beneficial ownership in Canada.
The report advocates for the development of a beneficial ownership registry that: includes a wide range of legal entities; covers all 14 provincial and territorial jurisdictions; is accessible to the public; contains information that is verified for accuracy; is managed by skilled registrars with regulatory powers; that requires prompt information updates and; collects adequate data sets.
Registrars should be empowered and resourced to verify information and identities provided and capable of applying dissuasive sanctions for non-compliance. PWYP-Canada and TI Canada believe that the Government of Canada should move expediently to act upon its commitment made to strengthen beneficial ownership transparency in the 2017 Budget.
You can find the report on PWYP-Canada website here and a summary note of the report findings in English and French.
Read a review of the report by the CBC here.
British Columbia Attorney General Addresses Beneficial Ownership at Vancouver Colloquium
On Friday, December 1, TI Canada held a colloquium in Vancouver to wrap up this year’s Anti-Corruption Law Program in partnership with UBC’s Peter Allard School of Law and the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy.
B.C. Attorney General David Eby was a special guest of the event and he discussed his work since taking on the role and his path moving forward.
Attorney General Eby reviewed the scale of the challenge of money laundering in B.C., to the extent that “the particular style of money laundering in B.C. related to B.C. casinos is being called, quote, ‘the Vancouver model’ in at least one international intelligence community.”
The Attorney General said that B.C.’s opaque land and business ownership system are connected to these problems. He cited TI Canada’s report No Reason to Hide: Unmasking the Anonymous Owners of Canadian Companies and Trusts as evidence of the problem, and its impact on Vancouver’s real estate market.
Attorney General Eby said that he and B.C. Minister of Finance, Carol James are “doing the policy work required to reform our land and corporate registries to increase transparency.”
TI Canada Chair and President Paul Lalonde, speaking on a later panel voiced approval stating “I heard something that sounds like a commitment to reform beneficial ownership transparency. We are very encouraged by what we heard.”
You can read a summary of Attorney General Eby’s speech here.
Read our No Reason to Hide report here.
Going Forward
2017 has been a fast moving year on beneficial ownership. Canadians learned earlier in the year that intermediaries aboard are using our lax system to sell Canada to clients through the term ‘snow washing’ and we now hear about the ‘Vancouver Model’ of money laundering.
TI Canada goes into 2018, working with our partners to build momentum on commitments by Attorney General Eby and Federal Minister of Finance Bill Morneau to address beneficial ownership.
You can help TI Canada to bring about this change by supporting our work here.