A new financial crimes agency was among the topics discussed at a meeting of federal, provincial and territorial finance ministers in PEI this week.
The federal government announced plans in the spring to develop the country’s first-ever federal law enforcement agency dedicated to investigating fraud and money laundering and recovering illicit proceeds.
Legislation to enact the new agency was tabled in April.
Provincial Finance Minister Craig Pardy says he and his counterparts were provided with more detail on what the agency will look like by federal minister François-Philippe Champagne.
“He referred to it as a new police force that would be in Canada to follow the money.”
Pardy says he can see the value in the new agency based on the numbers provided by Minister Champagne.
“One piece of data that he did throw out, was to state that in the past five years, we’ve had five convictions for money laundering…and he thought that was ridiculously low” given the activity that’s out there.
