Bureaucrats should not be arbiters of our online world

From the Macdonald Laurier Institute

By Leonid Sirota and Mark Mancini

When it comes to regulating the internet, Ottawa tells Canadians to simply “trust the experts.”

The federal government has pursued a far-reaching internet regulation agenda. This includes the Online Streaming Act (previously known as Bill C-11) and the Online News Act (previously known as Bill C-18). Both are ostensibly designed to force foreign online platforms – streaming ones such as Netflix, Disney+, and YouTube in the former case, Google and Facebook in the latter – to provide support, mainly but not exclusively financial, to Canadian cultural and journalistic producers. The most recent addition to this regulatory programme, Bill C-63, partly targets online platforms too, but its reach is broader. It seeks to prevent a range of “online harms” – from the distribution of child pornography to hate speech.

These legislative endeavours have attracted commentary from all corners, not least from Macdonald-Laurier Institute experts. Much of the discussion has been critical of the government’s policies on the ground of their unwisdom, immorality, and possible unconstitutionality.

But we would like to take a different tack here and focus not on the ends pursued but the means employed by C-11, C-18, and C-63: the empowerment of administrative agencies as rule-makers and arbiters of Canadians’ online world. While they purport to regulate new technologies, business models, and cultural forms, these policies are a throwback to an old philosophy of government that subverts fundamental constitutional principles: democracy, the separation of powers, and the rule of law.

It is worth beginning with a brief restatement of what these principles mean. Democracy means the exercise of political power – law-making, in particular – by either the people themselves or, more commonly, through elected representatives. The separation of powers means that the making and execution of laws are different functions, not to be confused or conflated, and that adjudication of disputes in accordance with the law is a separate function still. The rule of law is a complex idea, but perhaps the pithiest formulation of its core meaning belongs to economist and political philosopher F.A. Hayek: it “means that government in all its actions is bound by rules … which make it possible to foresee how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances.”

Contrast this with the philosophy underpinning the government’s approach to internet regulation. This philosophy permeated the report of a panel commissioned by the federal government at the end of the last decade to propose reforms to Canada’s regulation of the internet. Published in January 2020, “Canada’s Communications Future: Time to Act” called for legislation that would “provide sufficient guidance to assist the [Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)] in the discharge of its duties, but sufficient flexibility for it to operate independently in deciding how to implement sector policy. To achieve this, legislative statements of policy should set out broadly framed objectives and should not be overly prescriptive.” Translation: the democratically elected Parliament should not bother with making actual rules; that would be the job of the bureaucrats at the CRTC. They know better – both what the rules should be and how to apply them. Parliament is their enabler, not their master, and the courts should defer to their judgments.

In fairness, the legislation ultimately enacted or considered by Parliament does not go quite as far in empowering the CRTC or a new Digital Safety Commission (DSC) at the expense of Parliament as that report had urged. But it does go far. Probably the most important example of this concerns the amenability of user content – the average TikTok video, rather than Netflix – to CRTC regulation. This was one of the major points of contention when Bill C-11 was before Parliament. The Bill itself – despite claims by the government to the contrary – quite clearly permitted the CRTC to regulate user content, though it did not require it to do so. Amendments to remove this discretionary power were roundly rejected at the government’s insistence, in favour of leaving the user content question open for decision by the CRTC – only for the government to issue a Policy Direction to the CRTC “not to impose regulatory requirements” on user content.

The real scope of the law, and hence the degree of its impact on the freedom of expression of ordinary Canadians, will thus be fleshed out through the interplay of policy directions from Cabinet and CRTC consultations and orders. The same goes for various other aspects of the Online Streaming Act, such as Canadian content and discoverability requirements to be imposed on online platforms. The Online News Act, had it functioned as intended, would similarly have given the CRTC the final say over the extent of the obligations of the platforms subject to it. (In reality, one of these two platforms instead banned the publication of news content, and to avoid the other doing the same thing, the government made a deal with it that eviscerated the act.) And under Bill C-63, the decisions as to whether an online platform’s policies are “adequate to mitigate the risk that users … will be exposed to harmful content” is similarly within the remit of the DSC, with little if any guidance from Parliament as to what is in fact required.

This way of doing things undermines parliamentary democracy as anyone, except some scholars of administrative law would understand it. The people elected to make laws do not, in fact, make them in any meaningful way. On the contrary, they pawn off responsibility for contentious policy choices to administrators; they enact no more than empty shells, politely described as “framework legislation,” full of blanks to be filled out later. This transgression against constitutional principle is compounded when Cabinet makes a mockery of the parliamentary process with its policy flip-flops, which can then be reversed by further Cabinet fiat. The excuse typically given for this dereliction of duty is that the problems to be addressed are too complex for parliamentarians to deal with, which only makes one wonder at their nerve to have put themselves forward to do a job they are concededly unqualified for in the first place.

Enthusiasts for the internet agenda may say that it remedies its democratic deficiencies by consulting with those subject to new registration requirements. Yet CRTC consultations on the Online Streaming Act provided no more than a shabby ersatz of what democracy is supposed to mean – debate and discussion in Parliament. The submission period was short, and “industry-focused.” The CRTC ended up issuing orders requiring registration on a range of internet services that meet a $10 million revenue threshold, and the government issued a policy direction to the CRTC instructing that user content not be regulated. The CRTC’s regulatory plan for the Online Streaming Act is still being developed, and will likely involve further decisions about the reach of registration requirements. Whether the DSC does any better – if and when it implements Bill C-63 – remains to be seen. But, in any case, consultations that only include industry players, or some nominal number of users, cannot replicate an engaged and informed Parliament that weighs competing interests. Nor can it replace an engaged and informed citizenry, holding politicians to account for their choices at the ballot box.

Separation of powers fares no better. Instead of Parliament making laws, independent prosecutors bringing charges, and independent courts ruling on them, the CRTC and DSC combine their broad rule-making powers with the ability to both jawbone and outright prosecute online platforms, and to rule on the charges. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association rightly laments “the vast authority bestowed upon” the DSC “to interpret the law, make up new rules, enforce them, and then serve as judge, jury, and executioner.”

Here again, proponents of administrative power think they have an answer. Instead of the old-fashioned institutions wielding divided powers, they say the modern world requires the government’s full authority to be concentrated in the hands of experts. Agencies like the CRTC and, presumably, the DSC have the skills and wisdom to deal with the complex and increasingly difficult online environment. This claim is attractive in part because the layman often cannot comprehend the size and scale of challenges that modern regulation confronts, while politicians are all too often happy to demonstrate their unseriousness and ignorance.

But, in addition to its other problems, the vision of expert administrators who know better is simply unwarranted by the facts. For example, Konrad von Finckenstein, former chair of the CRTC, has told a Senate committee studying Bill C-11 that the CRTC simply does not normally deal with matters of this nature; and that the CRTC will likely need to hire contractors to fulfil its mandate under the legislation. The CRTC is also, by its own admission, not really up to speed when it comes to the universe of online media it is required to regulate under the Online Streaming Act: it has invoked the need to gather information about podcasting to justify its far-reaching registration requirements for platforms that host them. As for the DSC, it will of course be an entirely new bureaucratic structure with no existing expertise at all. Perhaps the government will appoint experts to it. But it doesn’t have to. Bill C-63 imposes no requirements as to the qualifications of the DSC’s members other than their being Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Under the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the same is also true of the CRTC.

Over-reliance on administrative regulation and enforcement undermines the rule of law too, by making the rules applicable to the internet uncertain and their application unpredictable. The legislation relies on vague terms that will only be fleshed out as the agencies that apply it go along, which will discourage innovation, chill expression, and incentivize platforms to take quick action against their users to avoid getting into trouble with the regulators. And if the victims of unfavourable rulings want to challenge them in actual courts, the Supreme Court’s precedents prevent judges from coming to their own independent assessment of what the law requires, but instead require them to yield to the bureaucrats’ interpretations unless these are not “merely” mistaken, but outright unreasonable. Even the requirements of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are dissolved in this bureaucratic acid; from the supreme law of Canada, they are diluted into values that must, to be sure, be taken into account, but only as a factor among others.

All this may seem like legalistic pedantry propounded by academics who do not care about the pressing needs of contemporary society. But that impression would be mistaken. It is precisely the government’s disregard for Canada’s constitutional foundations that ultimately ensures that the rules produced for it by its administrative instrumentalities are out of touch.

Instead of legislation reflecting Canada’s public opinion as represented in Parliament, we are to be governed by rules drafted by unrepresentative bureaucrats, potentially influenced by special interest groups with a privileged access to them. Instead of the exercise of coercive power being channelled through institutions with limited remits keeping one another accountable, we are told to trust experts who cheerfully admit having no real expertise to speak of. And instead of the law being predictably and impartially applied by judges who are not invested in the government’s policy and do not depend on government goodwill for reappointment, the law, and the constitution itself, only count insofar as they are consistent with administrative need.

It may be that we are stuck with the administrative state. Although some scholars have made arguments to the contrary, we believe that, as a matter of law, Parliament is entitled to delegate very considerable policy-making powers to agencies such as the CRTC and the DSC. If the government is set on pursuing its regulatory agenda through the old-fashioned means of creating and empowering bureaucratic structures, the courts will not save us, even though, as we have argued elsewhere, they have become rather more skeptical of the administrative state’s claim to be the solution to all the problems of the modern world than they used to be until fairly recently.

But the government having the authority to do something does not mean that doing it would be a good idea. It, and we the citizens, should embrace the judiciary’s skepticism of the vision of government-by-administrator that characterizes the federal government’s plans. More to the point, we should recall what our most important constitutional principles mean. If we are not to erode them, we need to reject the means the government is proposing to employ, as well as, arguably, the ends it is pursuing.

Leonid Sirota is Senior Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and an Associate Professor in the School of Law at the University of Reading, in the United Kingdom, where he teaches public law. His research interests include the rule of law, constitutional interpretation, administrative law, the freedoms of conscience and expression, election law, and other aspects of Canadian and comparative public law.

Mark Mancini, a Senior Fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia, Peter A. Allard School of Law. He holds a J.D. from the University of New Brunswick, Faculty of Law, and an LL.M. from the University of Chicago Law School.

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Canada needs to get serious about securing its border

Published on December 19, 2024

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From the Macdonald Laurier Institute

By Todd Hataley for Inside Policy

US President-elect Donald Trump has made clear his intention to call out Canada on weak enforcement on migration, money laundering, and the cross-border trafficking of narcotics, especially fentanyl.

Until just very recently, Canada has remained largely silent on these issues. Security agencies, such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), Sûreté du Québec (SQ) and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), have tried to secure the border via memorandums of understanding, framework agreements, and legislated agreements that allow them to share information and even work together.

However, resources are limited for cross-border law enforcement co-operation. CBSA remains understaffed and RCMP Integrated Border Enforcement Teams (which work with US security agencies) have limited geographic reach, leaving much of the enforcement between ports of entry left to police of jurisdiction, who already are hard pressed to provide services to the communities they serve.

The Canadian government’s apparent strategy of largely ignoring the problem is becoming more difficult to maintain. With the United States Border Patrol intercepting increasing numbers of illegal migrants crossing into that country from Canada, it’s clear the porous border is a concern. Exacerbating the situation is the recent discovery of illegal narcotic super labs in Canada – where production far outstrips the market – and Canada’s unfortunate, albeit well-deserved reputation as a haven for global money launderers.

Thanks to Trump’s 25 per cent tariff threat, the crisis is now endangering Canada’s relationship with its largest and most-important trading partner. This announcement sent all sectors of government and the private sector into a frenzy, prompting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to fly to Florida to seek out an early audience with Trump at his Mar-a-lago resort home. Trudeau’s team spun the trip as proof that the federal government is serious about working with the US to address its border security and public safety concerns.

But with political crises piling up, it will be difficult for Trudeau to also manage the political optics of kowtowing to Trump, who is widely unpopular among Canadians. Spending extra money to appease Trump during the ongoing housing, immigration, and health care crises could make the Trudeau’s popularity nosedive even further. Adding insult to injury, Trump is essentially demanding that Canada do America’s work by stopping illicit goods and people from entering the United States: customs and border security officials generally work on the principle of stopping goods from entering their country.

Trudeau faces many practical challenges, including the need to ramp up the number of border and law enforcement agents who have the skill sets and training required to police offences such as drug production, money laundering, and the cross-border smuggling of goods and humans. Purchasing helicopters and drones to conduct surveillance will do little to aid enforcement, since most goods smuggled across the border pass through legitimate border crossings. RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme even suggested putting RCMP cadets along the border – a challenging proposition since vast swathes of the border are either wilderness or water. Surveillance is one thing, but the act of enforcement takes skilled people with the capacity to investigate, gather evidence, and articulate that evidence into something that can be used by the courts for convictions. These concerns are not being addressed in this current frenzy to spend money on border security.

There is also good evidence that fortifying the border, or what has become known as forward deployment along the border, does nothing to stop the cross-border transit of contraband goods and people. One need only look as far as the United States-Mexico border to see the failure of forward deployment.

As authorities increase border enforcement activities, the costs of smuggling goods and people mounts for criminals. Eventually, it drives out amateurs, leaving only the professional, skilled, and well-equipped criminal groups. This, in turn, often leads to increasing levels of violence along the border, making interdiction and disruption far more difficult for law enforcement agencies.

Canada has several clear options to address Trump’s border concerns. It can increase the staffing of frontline CBSA officers, including border agents, inland enforcement units that actively investigate and remove individuals from Canada, international liaison officers, and customs processing staff. It can also create a plan for CBSA to take over enforcement between ports of entry. Currently, CBSA enforces entry into Canada at the ports of entry and the RCMP are responsible for the areas in between. Having a single agency manage the border builds capacity and expertise, avoiding inter-bureaucracy competition and confusion.

Canada can also work to better integrate law enforcement, intelligence units, and border services at all levels of government and across international boundaries. Cross-border crime operations are often planned and execute far from the border.

Some of this already takes place, as noted above, but it needs to go much deeper and be more supportive at both institutional and individual levels. This process must also include private sector stakeholders: companies such as FedEx, UPS, and Amazon, as well as freight forwarders, trucking companies, and customs brokers, are all involved in cross-border trade. Their participation as partners in reducing cross-border criminal activity is essential.

Finally, the government needs to designate laws specific to cross-border crime and include meaningful penalties as a means of deterrence.

Hyper-focusing on the border while ignoring other aspects of cross-border crime may be good political optics, but it is a bad strategy. What we really need is functional enforcement – including an integrated process extended vertically and horizontally across all sectors of border stakeholders, at and away from the border, supported by strong policy and legislation. This is the path forward to better cross-border crime enforcement.

Dr. Todd Hataley is a professor in the School of Justice and Community Development at Fleming College. A retired member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, he worked as an investigator in organized crime, national security, cross-border crime, and extra-territorial torture. He is a contributor to the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

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Canada can – and should – crack down on trade-based money laundering

Published on December 8, 2024

Todayville

From the Macdonald Laurier Institute

By Jamie Ferrill for Inside Policy

Neglecting to take decisive action enables organized criminal networks whose activities cause significant harm on our streets and those of our international partners.

Financial crime bears considerable political and economic risk. For the incoming Trump administration, the threat that transnational organized crime and the illicit financial flows pose to global financial stability is a top priority. The threat of tariffs by the Trump administration makes the costs to Canada in enabling global financial crime all too apparent. In addition to the cost of tariffs themselves, the associated reputational risk and loss of confidence in Canada’s financial system has implications for investments, credit, supply chains, and bilateral co-operation and agreements.

Canada’s proximity to major international markets, stable economy, high standard of living, and strong institutions and frameworks make it an attractive place to do business: for both legitimate and criminal enterprises.

Trade is a key contributing sector for Canada’s economic security. It represents two-thirds of Canada’s GDP, and exports alone support nearly 3.3 million Canadian jobs. Trade is also highly vulnerable to criminal exploitation. Ineffective oversight, regulatory complexity, and lagging technology adoption, coupled with a lack of export controls, make it possible to move vast proceeds of crimes, such as those from drug trafficking, human trafficking, corruption, and tax evasion through the global trade system.

These vulnerabilities are well-known by transnational organized crime groups. They are able to effectively move billions of dollars of dirty money through the global trade system every year, a method commonly referred to as Trade-Based Money Laundering (TBML).

While any statistics must be interpreted with caution, evidence shows that TBML is a prevalent method of money laundering.

What is it?

There are several types of Trade-Based Financial Crimes such as terrorism financing through trade, sanctions evasion, and simply trade fraud. However, the TBML definition is necessarily specific. Essentially here, TBML is a money laundering method: the processing of criminal proceeds to disguise their illegal origin. TBML involves the movement of value through the global trade system to obfuscate the illicit origin. This is usually done through document fraud: undervaluing, overvaluing, phantom shipping, or multiple invoicing. Different techniques employ different aspects of the supply chain. And TBML may be just one method used within larger money laundering operations.

By way of example, US authorities allege that two Chinese nationals living in Chicago laundered tens of millions of dollars for the Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels. Drugs were smuggled into the United States and sold throughout the country. The proceeds from these sales were collected by the Chinese nationals. Those proceeds were used to purchase bulk electronics in the United States, which were then shipped – with a falsified value – to co-conspirators in China, who sold them locally. The legitimacy provided by the electronics sales and the trade transaction provide cover to “clean” proceeds from precursor crime.

Either the importer and/or the exporter of the goods can shift value. Chances here are the electronics shipped were undervalued: on leaving the country, they are declared at a (much) lower value than they are actually worth. The importer in China pays the undervalued invoice, then sells the goods for what they are worth. The profit from those electronics now appears clean, since it was used for a “legitimate” sale. The ensuing value gap can be transferred informally or stored as illicit wealth. The value has now shifted, without fiat currency leaving the country of origin.

But the cycle does not stop there. The value and money itself continue to traverse around the world, through various intermediaries such as financial institutions or cryptocurrency exchanges. It then goes right back into the system and enables the very crimes and organized crime groups that generated it in the first place. It is, in short, the business model of organized crime.

The Canadian problem

Ultimately, the proceeds of crime that have been legitimised through TBML (and other money laundering methods) supports the criminal enterprises that generated the value in the first place. In the example, these are prolific cartels who have been behind the fentanyl crisis, migrant trafficking and abuse, corruption, and widespread violence that destabilizes communities and undermines governments across North America and beyond.

With new actors, drug routes, and ways of doing business, the cartels are very much active in Canada. The Sinaloa cartel in particular has established a significant presence in Canada where it controls the cocaine market, manufactures and distributes fentanyl, and is embedded in local criminal networks. This increases Canada’s role as a strategic location for drug trafficking and a base to export abroad, notably to Europe, the US, and Australia.

Hells Angels, Red Scorpions, ’Ndrangheta, and other organized crime groups are also exploiting Canada’s strategic location using their transnational links. These groups are active in criminal activities that generate proceeds of crime, which they launder through Canadian institutions. From drug trafficking to extortion to human and sex trafficking, the foundation of organized crime relies on generating and maximizing profits. The proceeds generally need to be laundered; otherwise, there are direct lines back to the criminal organizations. They are, without a doubt, exploiting the trade sector; the very sector that provides so much economic security for Canada.

Canada’s regulation, reporting, and prosecution record for money laundering is notoriously weak. Its record for regulation, reporting, and prosecution for trade-based financial crimes, namely here TBML, is even weaker.

As financial institutions and other regulated entities face increased scrutiny following the TD Bank scandal and the Cullen Commission’s inquiry into money laundering in BC, more criminal activity is likely to be displaced into the trade sector and the institutions it comprises.

TBML is difficult for financial institutions to detect, especially given that 80 per cent of trade is done through open accounts. It exploits established trade structures that are meant to protect the system –like documentation and invoicing processes – by manipulating transactions outside traditional payment systems, which requires more sophisticated anti-money laundering strategies to address these hidden vulnerabilities.

Addressing the problem

Trade is a gaping vulnerability. Yet, it attracts minimal attention in countering transnational financial crime. Containing the fentanyl crisis for one requires a collaborative effort to bolster supply chains and the trade sector against financial crime. This means global cooperation, technological advances (such as blockchain technology), appropriate resourcing, more scrutiny on high-risk countries and shippers, and regulatory innovation.

But political will is in short supply. The federal government’s Budget 2024 and the resulting proposed Regulations Amending Certain Regulations Made Under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorism Financing Act will grant CBSA new authorities to counter TBML, but limited resources to make good on them. And CBSA cannot do it alone.

Transnational organized crime and the illicit financial flows that support it poses a threat to global financial stability. The enabling of financial crime hurts Canada’s reputation abroad. With a new political regime emerging in the US, Canada cannot afford to be seen as a weak link. Loss of confidence in a country and its financial system has implications for investments, credit, supply chains, and bilateral cooperation and agreements.

By neglecting to take decisive action, we inadvertently enable organized criminal networks whose activities cause significant harm on our streets and those of our international partners. With profits as their primary driver, it is imperative that we scrutinize financial pathways to disrupt these illicit operations effectively.

Organized crime groups are not bound by privacy laws, bureaucracy, political agendas, and government budgets. They are continually evolving and staying many steps ahead of what Canada is equipped to control: technologically, geographically, strategically, logistically, and tactically. Without appropriate regulations, technological advances, and resources in place, we will continue to be a laggard in countering financial crime.

More systematic change is needed across regulatory frameworks, law enforcement coordination and resourcing, and international partnerships to strengthen oversight, close loopholes, and enhance detection and disruption. It would be a low-cost signal to the Trump administration that Canada is committed to upping its game.

Jamie Ferrill is senior lecturer in Financial Crime at Charles Sturt University and co-editor of Dirty Money: Financial Crime in Canada.