Canada’s foreign bribery fight effort ‘shockingly low’
Falls well below major allies in new report
OTTAWA • Canada’s efforts to fight foreign bribery are “shockingly low,” particularly when compared to key allies such as the U. S., United Kingdom and France, a new report says.
“There’s unfortunately a persistent belief that corruption is not something Canadian companies need to think about, either because some companies just don’t understand the risk, or worse, some companies think they won’t get caught,” said James Cohen, executive director of Transparency International Canada, in a statement.
“The truth is that Canada needs to drastically step up its efforts in ensuring we are not the source of corruption, or the place to hide the money from corruption.”
The organization on Tuesday published its biannual study assessing how nearly 50 major exporting countries have fared when it comes to enforcement against foreign bribery.
It also assesses how well many participating countries have implemented the OECD’S Anti- Bribery Convention, which requires them to criminalize bribery of foreign officials and put in place measures to sanction such crimes.
The study, which covers 2016 to 2019, concludes that only four countries actively enforce against foreign bribery: the U. S., the U.K., Switzerland and Israel.
Canada, on the other hand, ranks well lower and is considered to be a country with “limited” enforcement since 2016. That puts us on par with Denmark, Costa
Rica, Argentina, Columbia, and well below other major allies such as Germany, France and Australia.
Over the past three years, Canada has only “opened two new investigations, commenced one new case and concluded four cases with sanctions. This is based on the limited information available, as there are no official publicly available statistics on the number of investigations commenced,” the report details.
“I’m not surprised by the findings, but I’m certainly disappointed,” Cohen said in an interview.
The report says the biggest step taken by Canada to fight corruption abroad between 2016 and 2019 was the creation of a remedial agreement, or deferred prosecution agreement ( DPA), regime in 2018, a move applauded by Transparency International at the time.
T hese agreements allow for countries to impose sanctions on entities suspected of corruption all the while avoiding potentially costly and lengthy court battles.
The report laments the fact that prosecutors haven’t once used a DPA since the regime was put in place.
It was immediately cast under the spotlight during the Snc-lavalin scandal that rocked the Trudeau government in 2018.
At the time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was accused by former justice minister Jody Wilson- Raybould of improperly pressuring her into pushing prosecutors to enter into a DPA with SNCLavalin. The Quebec company was then charged for fraud and corruption in Libya during the Gadhafi regime.
Prosecutors declined to offer SNC a remediation agreement, saying it was not appropriate nor in the public interest. The case ultimately came to a close when prosecutors negotiated a settlement with Snc-lavalin Construction Inc. that included a $ 280- million fine and a three-year probation period, but no ban from bidding on public contracts.
Now, Cohen fears that Canadians’ first exposure to the regime may have given them a bad impression about such agreements.
“Anecdotally, I’ve been hearing that it left everybody nervous about the regime. I certainly hope that enough time has already passed, and that our public prosecution service and the RCMP are professional enough to look past that first case,” he said.
Cohen thinks Canada is pass due for a public registry of beneficial ownership transparency, which would enable the public, governments and law enforcement to quickly know who is the real owner of an organization that would otherwise be considered an empty shell.
He also thinks that governments need to create new offences for organizations that fail to put in place measures to prevent against foreign bribery.
But before any of that happens, Cohen said politicians and the business community need to better understand the gravity of foreign bribery, and acknowledge that Canada is not immune to its perverse effects internationally.
Among the many negative consequences of foreign bribery are undermining government institutions of our foreign trading partners, slowing economic development, and even sustaining reputational damage for Canada in cases such as Snc-lavalin.
“It really disappointed me last year to see that, at a national level, the conversation was still around the question: ‘ what does it matter if bribes are paid overseas?’ That is incredibly frustrating,” Cohen said.