On Parliament Hill this week, Canada’s political class finally said the quiet part out loud: the country’s financial system is a comfortable playground for criminals, professional enablers, and offshore tax cheats and the people running it have no idea, or won’t say, how often anyone is actually held to account.
The House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance reconvened its study on the use of offshore tax havens Monday, grilling senior RCMP officials about money laundering, tax evasion, fraud, and the role of Canada’s own institutions. What unfolded was part confession, part deflection, and part political damage control by a Liberal government desperate to present cosmetic “solutions” to a problem it has clearly failed to contain.
The witnesses were Chief Superintendent Michael Saghbini, director general for financial crime with the RCMP’s federal policing criminal operations, and Acting Staff Sergeant Chad Babin, a subject-matter expert on financial crime. From the outset, Saghbini framed financial crime as a core RCMP priority, stressing their mandate to “protect Canada’s economic integrity” and their supporting role alongside the Canada Revenue Agency.
He reminded the committee that the CRA, not the RCMP, is the “lead department responsible for investigating tax evasion related to offshore tax havens,” with its own Criminal Investigations Directorate. The RCMP, he said, “plays an important support role on this issue,” getting involved when tax matters intersect with broader criminal activity such as money laundering, fraud, and corruption.
The message was unmistakable: if you’re looking for someone to blame for the lack of high-profile offshore prosecutions, don’t start with the Mounties.[…]
The Government of Canada’s own 2025 National Risk Assessment, Saghbini noted in his opening statement, lists tax evasion as a “high money laundering threat” to the Canadian economy. Proceeds of crime “are routinely wired through tax haven jurisdictions whose opaque financial structures, such as offshore banks, shell companies, trusts [and] law firms, decouple illicit wealth from its original owner,” he said.
In other words: the very architecture of the global financial system, banks, law firms, anonymous companies, is being used to hide the identity of the people moving dirty money. Yet in Canada, a government that claims to be cracking down on this has been conspicuously reluctant to name names or produce results.
