We are heartened by the news that the New Democratic Party of Canada has passed a resolution to “recognize and support” The Leap Manifesto as a “statement of principles that is in line with the aspirations, history, and values of the party.” The party did not adopt the Leap Manifesto: it has started a process of debating it in electoral districts across the country.
The Leap Manifesto: A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another is a plan for how Canada can transition off fossil fuels in ways that change our country for the better. It was crafted in partnership with leaders from Canada’s labour, Indigenous rights, social and food justice, environmental, and faith-based movements and endorsed by over 200 organizations and 35,000 signatories across the country.
The NDP resolution was passed at a convention in Alberta. It was the result of a difficult debate underscored by very real fears and anxieties after 75,000 workers have been laid off by the oil and gas industry since the oil price crash. The Leap Manifesto is a roadmap to create a massive number of jobs in low-carbon sectors and the next renewable economy:
We want a universal program to build energy efficient homes, and retrofit existing housing, ensuring that the lowest income communities and neighbourhoods will benefit first and receive job training and opportunities that reduce poverty over the long term. We want training and other resources for workers in carbon-intensive jobs, ensuring they are fully able to take part in the clean energy economy. This transition should involve the democratic participation of workers themselves.
— The Leap Manifesto
We released The Leap Manifesto during the last federal election in the hope that it would encourage all parties to take bolder positions on the social and economic benefits of Canada’s transition to clean energy.
We have been encouraged by the results, from endorsements by the federal and Quebec Green Party and Quebec Solidaire at the launch in September, to the Liberals’ recent moves to advance several of the key demands, including:
budget investments in transit and other green infrastructure, and more funding for low-carbon sectors like the arts;
a pledge to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;
the commitment that 2015 would be the last first-past-the-post election in Canada;
the upcoming pilot project to test the implementation of a universal basic annual income.
These are first steps, but all of these measures fall far short of the leap the country needs. We do not yet have emission reduction plans that are in line with the temperature targets the Trudeau government championed in the Paris Accord. We continue to allow our country to be divided over ugly pipeline battles — the infrastructure of the past — rather than moving as rapidly as possible to a fully renewable economy, with all the good jobs that would go along with it. First Nations communities continue to be confronted with high-risk and polluting infrastructure projects on their land, without their consent.
With the new budget the government has reneged on its campaign promise to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. And they recently signed the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, the first step towards implementing a trade deal that would open Canada’s government to legal challenges from corporations threatened by climate action.
Despite making strides in welcoming refugees fleeing war in Syria, we are alarmed by the federal government’s continued practice of draconian detentions and deportation of migrants. And though there is much political talk of “reconciliation” with First Nations, Indigenous nations still face scandalous inequities and lack of recognition of their rights.
The Leap Manifesto is and will always be a non-partisan project, with supporters from every political party, and some who support none. We will continue to build a coalition broad and strong enough to see the document’s bold vision become a political reality in Canada.
By JUSTIN GIOVANNETTI, reposted from the Globe and Mail, Apr 10, 2016
NDP MP Niki Ashton asks a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday March 7, 2013. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)
Niki Ashton
At 33, the northern Manitoba MP has more than seven years in the Commons under her belt. Ms. Ashton, an advocate for indigenous and women’s rights, finished seventh in the 2012 leadership race, but she might appeal to those looking for the NDP to take a left turn.
New Democratic Party Member of Parliament Alexandre Boulerice speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa October 18, 2012. (REUTERS/Chris Wattie)
Alexandre Boulerice
The NDP’s star Quebec MP may be the party’s best hope in the province, where the New Democrats lost more than 40 seats last fall. He’d be a dark horse for a party that wants a Quebec candidate, but might face attacks for once donating to a Quebec separatist party.
New Democratic Party House leader Nathan Cullen speaks in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa December 5, 2012. (REUTERS/Chris Wattie)
Nathan Cullen
A well-liked, high-profile member of Mr. Mulcair’s team who served in major front-bench roles, the British Columbia MP was the surprise performer in the 2012 leadership race. If he runs, he might be hampered by his former call for co-operation with the Liberals.
NDP environment critic Megan Leslie speaks in the House of Commons on May 29, 2014. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)
Megan Leslie
The former Halifax MP, who lost her seat in the 2015 election, is still popular among the NDP grassroots and seen as a strong advocate of climate-change action. Now a senior adviser at the World Wildlife Fund, Ms. Leslie is also one of the voices behind the Leap Manifesto.
Director Avi Lewis, right, and author Naomi Klein of the film ‘This Changes Everything,’ stand for a photo on the red carpet during the Toronto International Film Festival press conference announcing the 2015 Canadian features and shorts lineup in Toronto on Wednesday, August 5, 2015. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Aaron Vincent Elkaim)
Avi Lewis
Mr. Leap Manifesto is the Toronto-based filmmaker who helped draft the far-reaching plan now embraced by many in the NDP. Married to activist Naomi Klein, Mr. Lewis hasn’t indicated much interest in running for the party’s leadership, but his activism on climate change and social issues has made him a folk hero among Canadian leftists.
by Allison Lampert, Reuters, reposted from BNN, Apr 8, 2016
Quebec’s Liberal government said on Thursday it was aiming to cut the province’s use of petroleum products by 40 per cent by 2030 and would invest $4 billion to pursue that strategy.
Renewable energy now supplies about 47 per cent of Quebec’s needs, an amount the province intends to boost to 61 percent by 2030, as part of five targets to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, Energy Minister Pierre Arcand told reporters in Montreal.
Along with greater use of hydroelectric energy, Canada’s second-most populous province would boost its consumption of natural gas to offset oil, both through imports and by encouraging local production.
The province said it would also put an end to its already limited usage of coal.
“What we are proposing to Quebecers is a new energy pact,” Arcand said.
Arcand said the energy project would be introduced as a bill in Quebec’s provincial parliament, where the Liberals have a majority, by the end of the session in June. It could be approved into law by the end of the year.
Quebec, the fourth largest hydroelectric producer in the world, pledged in 2015 to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 37.5 percent by 2030. It is part of a cap-and-trade system with Ontario, Manitoba and California.
Quebec Environment Minister David Heurtel called the greenhouse gas emissions target the most “ambitious in Canada and one of the most ambitious in the world.”
The province has set additional targets of boosting its production of renewable energy by 25 percent and bioenergy by 50 percent. Quebec also wants to improve its energy efficiency by 15 percent.
Arcand said it did not appear that Quebec’s new policy, with its goal of reducing oil usage, would have an impact on the province’s evaluation of TransCanada Corp’s TRP.TO proposed Energy East pipeline. On March 1, Quebec asked for a court injunction to ensure the Energy East pipeline complied with the province’s environmental laws.
“We have the objective of reducing greenhouse gases,” Arcand said. “The TransCanada project transports oil that will use electric pumping stations. There are some greenhouse gas emissions, but will the emissions be significant - I can’t say.” SOURCE
Cindy Blackstock will likely be remembered one day as one of the greatest human rights advocates in 21st-century Canada. As she walked out on the stage to address a full house at the second annual Progress Summit in Ottawa this past weekend, she received a standing ovation for her tireless work in seeking justice for First Nations children.
“So welcome to Algonquin territory, all of us,” she said happily in her opening remarks.
For the next 20 minutes, Blackstock captivated her audience with cold hard facts on how the federal government — past and present — knowingly underfunded First Nations child welfare services in Canada. According to Blackstock, previous federal governments allocated between 22 to 30 per cent less money for First Nations children welfare programs than the provinces spend on the same programs for non-Indigenous children.
“A lot of people say that dealing with First Nations children issues, because there is so many of them, it makes us complex. But my mom always had a good saying for that. She said when people say things are complex, look for the obvious, because almost no one does,” Blackstock continued.
“And the obvious is these are symptoms of the federal government’s use of racial discrimination as a fiscal policy,” she said. “It is the biggest human rights issue we have in this country and yet it has failed to capture the Canadian imagination.”
Legal victory but little follow-up
Blackstock and her organization, First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, won a major legal ruling last January before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in which the federal government was ordered to “cease the discriminatory practice” and provide “immediate relief for First Nations children.”
“As race and/or national or ethnic origin is a factor in those adverse impacts, the Panel concluded First Nations children and families living on reserve and in the Yukon are discriminated against in the provision of child and family services by AANDC (Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada),” the Tribunal’s ruling states.
“What the Tribunal found was that for the first time in the world, a developed country, our country, was found to have racially discriminated against 163,000 children,” Blackstock told her audience.
“They were ordered to immediately stop. But they haven’t done it.”
The recent federal budget provides approximately $71 million for First Nations child welfare programs for the 2016/2017 fiscal year. Blackstock’s organization argues the amount falls $129 million short of what is needed to provide immediate relief for on-reserve children depending on welfare services.
Undisputed inequality
Blackstock said that during the nine years over which former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government “vigorously” fought the case, the federal government never disputed that it was treating First Nations children unequally.
“The federal government tried eight times to get [the case] dismissed on this basis. They said it is unfair to compare the level of services we provide to First Nations to the level of services the provinces provide to everybody else,” recalled Blackstock.
“They also argued that if First Nations are delivering inadequate child welfare as a result of federal funding, then it is the First Nations discriminating against their people, not us,” she continued. “Never once did they advance a case about what was in the interest of the children.”
Blackstock slammed the Canadian government for willfully ignoring chilling statistics such as First Nations children being 12 times more likely to wind up in foster care than non-Indigenous children, and the cumulative 66 million nights between 1989 and 2012 that First Nations children in foster homes have spent without their parents.
“It is our job as adults to stand up for the kids, isn’t it,” she said calmly.
Making reconciliation real
A chapter of the First Nations child welfare services case that Blackstock did not discuss in her keynote was the Harper government spying on her while the human rights complaint was before the Tribunal. By 2011, Blackstock had obtained under the Privacy Act a 2,500-page file that the federal government kept on her activities. The privacy commissioner at the time ordered the Harper government to end its surveillance operation.
“I have a dream for Canada’s birthday — and so do the non-Aboriginal children I work with and the First Nations children. I want to see a country where First Nations children … [no longer] have to spend their childhoods fighting for equity and a country where everyone knows that that’s wrong to give a child less because of who they are. I want to give this country the bedrock of fairness and coherence with its values that it has been robbed of for 148 years. But I cannot do that without all of you.”
First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, along with the Assembly of First Nations, launched the complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 2007 on behalf of the over 160,000 First Nations children who are in or have gone through foster services in Canada. The total exceeds the number of Métis, Inuit and First Nations children forced into the residential school system.
Canada has only recently woken up to the wrongs that successive federal governments committed against Indigenous children in the past. Now, because of Blackstock and those working with her, Canada will have to address the harm it is causing Indigenous children presently.
“If you want to make reconciliation real, I think it begins with not saying sorry twice,” Blackstock said before exiting the stage.
Blackstock is a member of the Gitxsan First Nation in British Columbia and an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta. She is currently the executive director of First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.
Dark dreary bus shelters could soon be a thing of the past after London’s first transparent solar bus shelter was switched on at the Canary Wharf business district on Friday. The shelter is reported capable of producing enough electricity for a standard London home for a year and will be used to power signage and other transport infrastructure around the Canary Wharf estate.
London is no stranger to solar-powered bus shelters, having installed solar-powered E-ink displays last year. Transparent solar panels are also something we’ve seen before, but early prototypes only offered around 1 percent conversion efficiency. UK solar technology company Polysolar has developed a new solar-photovoltaic technology with a whopping 6-12 percent conversion efficiency, dependent on the film’s level of transparency. This new design allows for a transparent shelter that operates in low and ambient light.
A thin solar-paneling film is laminated onto glass, and small quantities of powdered silicon are used to create a conductive surface. This creates a transparent solar surface that processes light from both sides of the glass and at non-optimal angles. The material is priced at £250 (US$350) per square meter, Polysolar states its cost will be “similar to conventional building materials.”
The bus shelter is expected to generate 2,000 kWh of electricity per year, which Polysolar says would be just enough to power a standard London home. Polysolar aims to implement this technology across London, with the goal of lowering the city’s carbon emissions.
The Canary Wharf Group (CWG), the British property company that operates the Canary Wharf business district, commissioned Polysolar to develop the bus shelter and aims to extend use of Polysolar’s solar-photovoltaic technology in its high-rise developments
“We are hopeful that this technology will have the potential to significantly reduce the carbon impact of our future developments,” said Sir George Iacobescu, Chief Executive Officer of CWG.
Polysolar was the winner of CWG’s Cognicity smart technology challenge in 2015, taking out the Sustainable Buildings category with the prize including a permit to pilot its new technology in the estate. The company worked on the design of the shelter with street furniture supplier Marshalls.
The opening was officiated by London’s Green Party Mayoral candidate Sian Berry, whose party recently called for solar paneling to be installed on the massive 5,700 acres (2,300 ha) of transport infrastructure across the city.
“Using our solar PV glazing across London’s transport sector, in things like bus shelters, EV charging canopies, walkways and bike parks, could have a significant impact on the city’s emissions, without compromising its environment, architecture or budgets,” said Polysolar’s CEO Hamish Watson.
Former Ontario provincial NDP leader Stephen Lewis outlined six reasons why he’s feeling “ebullient” about his party’s prospects against Justin Trudeau.
That’s because in Lewis’s opinion, the governing party has “begun to fray”.
“That doesn’t mean the bloom is off the Justin rose,” Lewis said in his speech. “It will last for a while longer. He’s a prime minister of amiable disposition and appearance. Sure, he’s riding high in the polls today, but that’s the most ephemeral thing in the world. The test comes on policy not aesthetics. And predictably, the Liberals are already shuffling backwards into the precincts of ignominy where they so comfortably reside.”
He cited six policy areas where the NDP differs from the Liberals. Read a transcript of this section of Lewis’s speech below:
First: Feminism
It is a huge pleasure to have a prime minister who unselfconsciously calls himself a feminist. And the clever use of the phrase “It’s 2015” has now entered the lexicon of political memorabilia. But we have a message for the prime minister: feminism is a vacant construct without a childcare program across Canada.
You don’t provide child care with a limited financial transfer to individual families. You provide child care as a matter of well-funded public policy, with spaces for all who need them and trained early childhood educators to staff them. In terms of social policy, there’s arguably nothing more important for this country at this moment. Someone has to tell the prime minister of Canada that the use of feminism has a hypocritical ring when the women of Canada, who play the central role in the raising of children, are denied the child care to which they are entitled as of right.
Second: Electoral reform
The prime minister has said, ad nauseam, that we will never again fight a Canadian election based on the system of ‘first past the post’. Bravo. Canadians, in various opinion surveys, have indicated a significant plurality in favour of change. And the change everyone is talking about is proportional representation.
But there’s an ominous, unprincipled cloud emerging. In the guarded, cautious language employed by the prime minister it becomes clear, ever-so-clear, that there will be a variation on the present electoral process, but the variation will protect and benefit the government.
You don’t need prophetic vision to know that we’re about to experience one of those brazenly cynical political moments: the sonorous sounds of desirable change will mask the self-serving manipulation of desirable change. It would appear that something called ranked ballots now has the inner track in the mind of the government, and to use Ed Broadbent’s evocative phrase, it would be like the ‘first past the post’ system on steroids. But it would be conveyed as qualitative change.
I could say, “how disappointing”. Electoral reform is an issue whose time has come. Proportional representation cries out for implementation. But whom are we kidding? Do we really think that the government will relinquish the cozy asylum of political advantage? This is a fight we have to win: it should consume our collective energies.
Third: Bill C-51
Here’s the nemesis if ever there was one. This piece of hoked-up antiterror legislation, so excessive in tone and content, so contemptuous of civil liberties, so effectively lacerated during the course of the election campaign, is apparently sticking around, largely in its present form, to live another day.
Our prime minister, having promised significant changes to the bill, is again subsiding into the shadows of incrementalism. You see, he didn’t mistakenly support the bill, and then scramble for redemption by suggesting there would be amendments. The prime minister truly and fundamentally agrees with the bill, and will offer only the most cosmetic shifts in wording and nuance.
You have to smile, a grim tight-lipped smile. Liberals never disappoint.
Fourth: Health care
Herein lies one of the most distressing gaps in the budget. There is no provision for a redesigned funding formula for health care into the future. I remember all the way back to the Charlottetown Accord, when another survey of Canadians, attempting to identify our defining characteristic, revealed, overwhelmingly, that it was health care. That’s what Canadians most cared about. And I dare say, the same sentiments would be expressed today.
It’s our issue. From Tommy Douglas to Roy Romanow, it’s our issue. We cannot allow it to be depreciated or trifled with. Modern, sophisticated economies, do not regard health as a soft sector. Public health lies at the very heart of the international Sustainable Development Goals; goals meant to govern public policy for the next 15 years; goals effectively ratified by every one of the 193 member states of the United Nations, Canada of course included.
It is now finally understood, worldwide, that resources for health are the sine qua non of a civilized society, and the foundation of economic growth.
We have so much ground yet to cover. The Liberal pledge for homecare appears to have been abandoned, and universal pharmacare is nowhere to be seen. Those are programs that we must pursue as though life depended on it because, in fact, life does depend on it.
Fifth: International trade agreements
The economist, Joseph Stiglitz recently said that he’d met with Chrystia Freeland, the Liberal Minister for International Trade, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January. Now just to provide the context—and setting Stiglitz aside for a moment—the World Economic Forum is a gathering, overwhelmingly, of multinational corporate leadership with a sprinkling of politicians, and Bill Gates types, who engage in a protracted orgy of self-congratulation about how they collectively save the world.
People who attend are not what you would call left-of-centre. Stiglitz is an anomaly. He apparently pressed on Chrystia Freeland the negative consequences of signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and according to Stiglitz she seemed to understand.
Poor Joseph. How was he to know that he was taken down the Trans-Pacific path? Less than two weeks later, the Minister signed the TPP in New Zealand in the presence of twelve Pacific Rim partners. It was said to be ceremonial. It is said that extensive consultations will take place across Canada before there’s a House of Commons vote.
Is there anyone in this hall who thinks the TPP won’t be formally endorsed by the government of Canada? Of course it will. The irony is that with both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders coming out against the TPP, it may not even be embraced by the United States.
And rightly so. The TPP, as with so many other current international trade agreements, results in the loss of jobs—a possible loss of 60,000 projected for Canada—and the investor-state dispute provisions put at risk Canada’s autonomy as a democratic state. Foreign corporations, were they to claim unfair treatment, can effectively bypass Canadian laws and seek compensation from an international tribunal. And there is no appeal. These are ridiculous provisions—the ugly quintessence of corporate capitalism.
But that’s not all. There is an even more pernicious aspect at work. As I learned, painfully, over the years involved with HIV and AIDS, one of the greatest benefits of these trade agreements is conferred on the brand-name drug companies. They negotiate and receive preferential patent privileges that undermine the manufacture of equivalent generic drugs. For the pharmaceutical industry, the trade agreements are a financial bonanza. For impoverished citizens of developing countries, fighting communicable and noncommunicable disease, they can be and often are a disaster. For countries like Canada, they will inevitably mean an increase in prescription drug prices.
No Government of Canada should lend itself to the knee-jerk signing of the TPP. No Government of Canada, in this day and age, should embrace the discordant siren song of free trade.
Sixth: Arms sales
What in heaven’s name possesses the Liberal government to consummate the sale of light-armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia? It reveals so much about this government, so much that cries out for an aggressive political response.
The arms sale shows an astonishing contempt for human rights. Not only has the government of Saudi Arabia recently been excoriated by the United Nations for the conduct of war in Yemen—the wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter of civilian populations—but it’s also a country where beheadings of dissidents rivals the madness of ISIL. There is absolutely no guarantee that the weapons in question won’t be used, at some point, to assault the Shia minority within Saudi Arabia. We’re talking about a regime whose hands are drenched in blood.
And of course that’s not all. The sale also directly contradicts stated Canadian policy. We’re not supposed to be sending armaments to countries that have a “persistent record of serious violations of the human rights of their citizens”. Saudi Arabia is the embodiment of the meaning of the word “violations”. And the government of Canada refuses to release its so-called assessment of the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia. So much for the newly-minted policy of transparency.
But perhaps what is most offensive and revealing in all of this is the proposition, oft-stated by the foreign minister, that the contract is sacrosanct: it can’t be broken. We know that Stephane Dion is a nice fellow. He must be privately writhing with the disingenuous guff he is forced to disgorge. We’re in the earliest stages of this sale, and the sale is overseen by the government. What do you mean you can’t break the contract? What you mean is that you won’t break the contract, and with the greatest respect, that’s just nonsensical claptrap. As is the proposition that if we pull out, others will fill the gap. Well let them. What kind of twisted logic is it that says we should cozy up to murderers because if we don’t, others will.
And I know you will agree with me that there’s an additional matter that I wish someone would put to the prime minister one day in Question Period: what kind of feminism is it that sells weapons to a government steeped in misogyny?
By CHRISTINE DUHAIME, reposted from the Globe and Mail, Apr 11, 2016
One of the biggest stories in Canada last week was the news that the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FinTRAC) had issued a $1.1-million administrative fine to a Canadian bank but decided to keep the institution’s name a secret.
The fact that the name of the bank is being kept a secret became a secondary story all its own. Canadians had a visceral reaction to it because the secrecy offended and shocked us. It runs contrary to what we believe about the rule of law. If there is one thing that unites Canadians from coast to coast and for which we are immensely proud, it is our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which recognizes, above all else, the supremacy of the rule of law on which our democracy is based.
The rule of law not only renders us all equal before and under the law, but it ensures that justice, including administrative justice, is applied evenly to all persons – whether they be a legal person, such as a bank, or a natural person, such as you or me. Administrative secrecy was a popular legal principle in the days of absolute monarchy, but our ancestors spilled an awful lot of blood on battlefields hundreds of years ago to replace it with the rule of law.
The $1.1-million fine was not for minor infractions of the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA); it was for multiple violations, one of which is among the most serious offences under the PCMLTFA – namely, a failure to report a suspicious transaction, for which the highest penalties apply and for which the bank and its directors and officers could be prosecuted criminally. A failure to report a suspicious transaction means that the bank noticed, or should have noticed, that the financial system was being abused for serious criminal activity such as tax evasion, terrorist financing, drug trafficking or insider trading and did absolutely nothing about it.
Canadians rightly feel that a fine of $1.1-million – paid by a secret corporate defendant for serious administrative offences that imperil the integrity of our financial system and affect Canada’s reputation in the international financial community – lacks the transparency and accountability that are hallmarks of the rule of law, particularly when you and I have no right to have our name protected if we commit much less serious administrative offences that do not harm Canada.
There is another equally important constitutional principle that the FinTRAC secret bank fine offends: the principle of open justice, which is fundamental to maintaining integrity and confidence in our judicial process in the eyes of the public. In 1982, then-justice Brian Dickson of the Supreme Court of Canada articulated this best when he wrote: “Where there is no publicity, there is no justice.”
As a society, we insist on open justice so that Canadians may know how justice is being rendered and against whom. There is no room for secret defendants in the open justice system and we ought not to countenance it now – particularly when it involves a critical government agency like FinTRAC, whose mandate involves protecting Canada’s financial system against serious financial crimes such as tax evasion, money laundering and terrorist financing.
Other countries publicize fines imposed on or negotiated with banks, which are routinely named when it involves failure to comply with anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing laws. Those fines are usually in the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars. And they go much further, publishing settlement orders that detail the violations committed by a bank and the bank’s failures and orders against it to ensure that banks take remedial steps in anti-money laundering law to protect the financial system.
The reason they do this is not only because the rule of law demands it, but for denunciation and deterrence. When a corporate defendant is kept secret, there is no denunciation and certainly no deterrence. So what prevents them from committing further offences? Nothing, is the answer.
I shared this story last week with attendees of Money 20/20 in Copenhagen, the biggest financial conference in the world, where I was speaking about financial technology and its attendant financial crime risks. The unanimous reaction of the global banking and fintech community – banks, payment firms, foreign regulators, lawyers, journalists, tech companies and foreign government representatives – was the same as in Canada: They were shocked.
It’s not the size of the fine that naturally offends people (although it is quite low), but the secrecy and apparent preferential treatment. “One would expect that in the Third World, not Canada” was the kind of comment I heard frequently.
Christine Duhaime is a lawyer with a specialized law practice in financial crime mitigation and the founder of the Digital Finance Institute, a Canadian financial-tech think tank.
