Reported by RITA TRICHUR

Ottawa is an unlikely place to inspire increased international co-operation to fight financial crime.

After all, the Canadian government has spent decades being blasé about the transnational risks posed by money laundering, terrorist financing and sanctions evasion. Hence, it was surprising to learn from U.S. officials that the “spirit of collaboration” captured our comatose capital city late last week.

Ottawa was the setting for the first-ever financial crime symposium jointly hosted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.

This inaugural FinCEN-FinTRAC summit also included officials from financial intelligence units in Australia, the Netherlands and Britain. Representatives from U.S. and Canadian banks joined the confab, too.

It’s curious that it took decades for FinCEN and FinTRAC to team up in this way.

FinCEN highlighted the importance of “close collaboration” between Canada and the United States. It also stressed “the power of reporting by financial institutions and the sharing of that information between governments.”

FinTRAC appeared deferential, reposting FinCEN’s statement on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter. It then added “partnership has become a real strength of Canada’s regime.”

This new unity of purpose between FinCEN and FinTRAC is the latest sign that Washington will no longer tolerate Canadian passivity on financial crime in the wake of Toronto-Dominion Bank’s money-laundering scandal in the U.S.

American regulators have lost confidence in their Canadian counterparts – and with good reason. The only way for Ottawa to redeem itself is to close the yawning gaps between the U.S. and Canadian anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorist-financing regimes.

Ottawa must mirror Washington’s approach.

The U.S. is the main growth market for major Canadian banks. That means FinCEN, along with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Board, are the de facto regulators for our domestic banks.

For all those reasons, the Canadian Bankers Association’s proposals to overhaul this country’s financial crime reporting regime make sense.

Read full report: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-washington-has-ottawa-pegged-as-the-weakest-link-on-financial-crime/