Corruption in Canada
The government of Canada is part of the multilateral Open Government Partnership initiative. The First Nations Financial Transparency Act was created in 2013 by the Harper Conservative government, with the purpose of increasing financial transparency in First Nations Communities. The First Nations Financial Transparency Act requires First Nation bands to publicly disclose their financial statements, including salary information of their councillors. Disclosure of this information has highlighted relatively high salaries of many chiefs, in comparison to extreme poor living conditions of their members. Canada joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) in 2011. Canada was a supporting country to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, and it intends to implement the EITI.
The Charbonneau Commission was established in 2011 to investigate corruption in Quebec. It has uncovered long running, widespread corruption including “price-fixing schemes among construction companies bidding on municipal governments”, “illegal donations to the province’s major political parties from some of its biggest engineering firms” and links between the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec, the Quebec Federation of Labour (FTQ), the province’s biggest federation of unions, and organized crime.
Corruption represents an increasing issue across Canada. On Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, Canada scored 74 on a scale from 0 (“highly corrupt”) to 100 (“highly clean”). This score continues a slow decline from Canada’s 2012 score of 84. For comparison, the global average score in 2021 was 43. When ranked by score, Canada ranked number 13 among the 180 countries in the 2021 Index, where the country ranked number 1 is perceived to have the most honest public sector.
Federal Accountability Act is a major anti-corruption legislation passed in 2006 by the Harper Conservative government. The act “provides a confidential process for employees in Canada’s federal public sector to come forward with any information about possible wrongdoing within the federal government and state corporations”, except the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) and the Canadian Forces. It introduced several mechanisms to combat corruption including Commissioner of Lobbying, Parliamentary Budget Officer, Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, Ethics Commissioner, limits to election donations and enhancement of lobbying rules. Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act is a whistleblower protection act.
Canadian for Tax Fairness. Financial Post. The Financial Post. Marco Chown Oved (April 27, 2016). “Canadians put $40 billion in tax havens last year: The Panama Papers revelations of widespread use of tax havens are corroborated by Statistics Canada data”. The Globe and Mail. Greenwood, John (2012). “Canada among top countries for anonymous shell companies”. Alyshah Hasham (January 25, 2016). “Forcillo guilty of attempted murder in shooting death of Sammy Yatim”. The Globe and Mail. The Law Society of Upper Canada. Thomas Walkom (April 6, 2016). “Homegrown loopholes cost Canada more than Panama tax havens: Walkom”.
In March 2017, Andrew Potter, academic and former director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, wrote an article critical of Quebec civil society. A firestorm of criticism against Potter soon ensued, mostly focusing on the fact that he was a publicly paid academic at a provincial university and thus it was improper for him to have said these things, but the facts remained undisputed. In arguing that Quebec suffered social malaise, he used evidence showing that the province has the largest underground economy in Canada and that many citizens regularly avoid paying taxes by illegal but widely common practices. Typically, tax-shelter firms hook up with a little-known charity that becomes a sort of tax receipt mill, suddenly writing millions of dollars in bogus receipts and making grandiose claims of saving the world.
