Back in February I blogged about the Canadian Dept. of Finance's discussion paper which called for suggestions for changes to our anti-money laundering and terrorist financing. The review period is over and the department has released proposed amendments to the relevant regulations, which can be found here. There is a 90-day period open for comments, and it's expected that the bill will be brought forward in the fall session of Parliament. A good write-up by two lawyers at Osler's can be found here.
As usual, I'm most interested in jurisdiction, and note that the new regs extend their applicability to money service businesses (MSBs) which have no physical presence in Canada but carry on business here, primarily via the internet. This is one of those changes that will likely be called "extraterritorial" but in fact is an application of the "extended territorial jurisdiction" principle under customary international law, under which states can prescribe laws over conduct that occurs partly outside and partly inside Canada. This kind of jurisdiction is increasingly used in the anti-money laundering regulatory sphere, and as Professor Scassa and I wrote (in the Georgetown Journal of International Law) some years ago, is seeing increased use over "cyber" activities of many sorts.