Uncertainties Collide: Lawyers and Money Laundering, Terrorist Finance Regulation,

Michelle Gallant, University of Manitoba School of Law

Abstract

The tasking of Canadian lawyers with anti-money laundering, anti-terrorist finance obligations is a project fraught with uncertainty. It is not clear that the strategy of pursuing criminal finance, the underlying reason for the conscripting of lawyers into the war on criminal finance, works to deter crime. Whether there is space within Canadian legal norms to accommodate any conscription of lawyers is uncertain. And whether a new emergent model, regulation through professional governance, is an effective vehicle through which to deal with the conjunction of lawyers and criminal finance is uncertain. In charting the course of Canadian developments, this article demonstrates the problematic nature of the convergence of lawyers and anti-criminal finance regulation.