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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 316

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 23, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 316 - May/23/24
Hon. Arif Virani
  • May/23/24 8:20:43 p.m.
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Madam Chair, those who resort to violence when stealing a vehicle will be subject to harsher sentences thanks to the changes that we—
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Context: House Hansard - 316 - May/23/24
Hon. Arif Virani (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.)
  • May/23/24 9:50:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what I appreciate from the member's comments is that he obviously delves into his experience as a past minister of finance in Ontario. He understands, as law enforcement has continuously explained to me, that gone are the days of a teenager off on a joyride, stealing a car from someone's home. This is an organized effort that is very profitable for international crime ranks. That is what we are dealing with here. In order to address auto theft, we need to address the path of the money. How are we doing that? There are six measures, and some of them were touched upon by my colleague. We are addressing challenges with prosecuting third party money launderers by amending the money-laundering offence. That is in the fall economic statement that, unfortunately, the members opposite have been obstructing. Second, we are responding to the rapidly evolving nature of financial crime by adapting the production order for financial data so that it more effectively applies to accounts associated with digital assets. We know what that party thinks about digital assets, because at one point the Conservative leader opined that crypto was the way out of inflation. Thankfully, the Bank of Canada was not listening. Third, we also know that modernizing provisions related to the search, seizure and restraint of proceeds of crime is critical, which is also in the fall economic statement. Fourth, there is a provision in the current budget implementation bill that deals with issuing an order to require a financial institution to keep an account open to assist in the investigation of a suspected criminal offence. Fifth, there is a provision that would allow for issuing a repeat production order to authorize law enforcement to obtain ongoing specified information on activity in an account or multiple accounts. The members opposite love to listen to law enforcement. I would urge them to do this, at least on this one occasion, because law enforcement is asking for these tools that they are actively voting against. The last piece is an offence that would explicitly criminalize operating a money service business that is not registered with FINTRAC. That is really critical because that is something that again helps us to track the money. With the learned knowledge of my friend, in terms of his background in finance, he has applied a critical lens to what we are doing on auto theft. If members think that we can tackle this one at a time, by targeting adolescents who have been deployed by an organized crime ring, and solve the auto theft crisis, the members are sorely mistaken. In order to do this, we need to operate on multiple fronts, including tracking the money. That is what these auto theft provisions would do. That is why we are behind them and are proceeding with them with pace. We just wish the Conservatives would get on board.
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