Open Ownership response to consultation on strengthening corporate beneficial ownership transparency in Canada
Re: Consultation on strengthening corporate beneficial ownership transparency in Canada
Attn: Beneficial Ownership Transparency Consultation
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
C.D. Howe Building
235 Queen Street, Room 1043A
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H5
30 April 2020
Re: Consultation on strengthening corporate beneficial ownership transparency in Canada
OpenOwnership drives greater corporate transparency across the world by making it easy to publish and access high-quality, linked data about who owns companies. We work exclusively on beneficial ownership (BO) transparency and are engaged with nearly 40 countries across the globe, helping them to implement or improve their beneficial ownership registries and data. We are pleased to be able to draw on this implementation experience across different contexts and include our findings in this submission on the public consultation over strengthening beneficial ownership transparency in Canada. (We also confirm our consent for this submission to be disclosed publicly and in its entirety.)
At OpenOwnership, we are highly supportive of moves by states to produce public registries of beneficial ownership. We recognise that this is an emerging policy area and that, as such, there can be implementation challenges associated with such efforts. In order to promote learning and information sharing between governments working to improve beneficial ownership transparency, we convene, together with the Open Government Partnership, the Beneficial Ownership Leadership Group. A range of governments – including Armenia, Kenya, Latvia, Mexico and the Slovak Republic – have already joined this group, and we believe that Canada would also be able to contribute and benefit substantially from the initiative. More information, including on the process for joining, is available here: https://www.openownership.org/what-we-do/the-beneficial-ownership-leadership-group/.