Lawyers are the ‘black hole’ of money laundering. Why is Canada turning a blind eye?

opinion

There is much hand-wringing in Ottawa about an international review of Canada’s efforts to fight financial crime.

A team of assessors from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global body that sets standards to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, is conducting an on-site evaluation this month.

One doesn’t need a crystal ball to predict that they will home in on the exclusion of lawyers and other legal professionals from Canada’s anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorist-financing regime – a glaring gap previously flagged by the FATF in its last full review of our country roughly a decade ago.

That’s why it was disappointing that the Carney government failed to include a proposal to finally close that loophole when it presented the federal budget this week.