Host: Salvatore Cusumano is the executive director of Transparency International Canada, and he joins us in studio. How are you doing?

Cusumano: Great. Thank you for having me.

Host: Great to have you here. Let's start off with we're here to talk corruption. So I think it's fair that we start the conversation with corruption scandal that's taken the headlines here in Toronto and broader. But what's your take on the Toronto police corruption scandal right now?

Cusumano: I mean, I think it shows us it's a really elegant, if unfortunate illustration of how corruption works in Canada. Of course, the allegations haven't been proven yet. And anything I say today, of course, is really respectful of the due process that exists and the investigations that are continuing. But I think it shows you that with corruption, it takes two to tango. What I mean by that is that on the one hand, when we talk about corruption, you do have public officials who have to be willing to engage in the behaviour, people who are going to use their position of power or authority to personal, private or potentially criminal benefit. On the other hand, you have just that, which is an actor or a party that motivates the corruption in some cases, maybe coerces the corruption. And, you know, in this case, we see, unfortunately, allegations of public officials serving the public who may have been tied up in behaviour by actors who were looking to exploit a public institution for some very nefarious purposes.

Host: You use the word elegant. Help explain that?

Cusumano: Well, I think it's elegant because, you know, at Transparency International, we're the Canadian chapter of a of a global organization. And what's elegant is that it's a really, really clear illustration. If it's proven of the vulnerabilities that our institutions face in Canada. On the one hand, you know, I think the investigations hopefully will point to some of the sort of systemic tendencies that we could improve in our institutions. But on the other hand, it does show a rising concern with organized crime in Canada and the way that organized crime can, can really impact the integrity of our institutions. And so it's elegant in that sense because it's come out in public. We're fortunate to see it. And we do applaud the investigators who brought it to light. There's elegance in that too, that we see the impact of the resources we put into these types of investigations. But unfortunately, the downsides are evident as well.

Host: How corruption in policing is that, is that rare in Canada? These are the institutions that would sort of be investigating corruption cases on their own. So we flip that case is it rare to see.

Cusumano: That's a good question. And I think that, you know, on the one hand, I hope that the investigations that are going on will tell us, hopefully, that this is an isolated incident in the Toronto police and in Toronto police, Toronto Area police services. But no, we've seen cases of corruption in police services in Canada. We've also seen issues of other types of misconduct that exist. Sometimes the two are linked. But I think the real takeaway here is that I think there's a sense sometimes in Canada that that corruption or the word corruption refers to something that happens elsewhere, that it refers to something that happens in countries that are not democratic. I think I think what we see here is a real reminder that it is these types of public institutions that in this case, are supposed to be identifying, prosecuting this type of behaviour. Criminal organizations are targeting those, those, those entities as well, because they need to carry out the types of activities they're doing. These are vulnerable institutions. And if we let our foot off the gas, as these groups become more sophisticated, this type of behaviour could become more common as well. But it does exist in Canada. It has existed, and we hope in this case it's isolated. But we'll have to see what comes out.

Host: All right. Well, let's switch gears a bit and I want to zoom out and talk about the Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perception Index for people who aren't familiar with it. What is it? What's the methodology?

Cusumano: That's a great question. So the Corruption Perceptions Index is sort of it's probably the most discussed index on corruption in the world right now. Transparency international has been doing it for, for about 20 years. And what it basically shows is the perceptions of experts and business leaders vis a vis the perceived levels of corruption that exist in a country. Now, when I say perceived, it's not a direct measure of how many police scandals took place in the country. It's it's more a measure of what is the confidence and what is the degree of certainty that people have about what kind of place is Canada to do business? What kind of place is Canada to be a citizen and to expect accountability from its institutions? Now, what we saw on the rankings this year, 182 countries were ranked. Canada was 16th from the top. So you could say 16th best. I think if we're looking to Milano Cortina right now, we're not going to settle for 16th.

Host: In hockey.

Cusumano: Fair enough. But you know, I think it shows again, this it's sort of what you see in the police scandal is that when I say 16th, that's a downward trend, the lowest ranking ever for Canada since we started the index. And since we were able to kind of standardize the scores in 2012, it could still be a good score in a global context. You know, top 10%. But it's that trend we're worried about because we think it also reflects and tracks with declining public trust in our institutions and a perception that things aren't working in some way when it comes to prosecuting these types of crimes. And as an aside, you know, the fact that business leaders are involved in the types of indices that feed into our index, it should be a cause for concern at a time when Canada is trying to diversify its trade and investment partnerships. You know, if our country, if our financial systems are not deemed to be secure, clean, it does increase costs for investors in terms of due diligence, in terms of checking where their money is going. And, you know, we really think on all aspects public trust and investor trust. Frankly, we need to do a much better job and turn the ship around.

Host: I don't want to make the same analogy of the Olympics here, but, you know, it's hard not to compete or compare ourselves when we're looking at this. How do we compare to other Democratic peers?

Cusumano: So one of the interesting things that came out this year is we saw a sustained trend of a similar decline among what you might call Canada's peer democracies, countries in the G7, some of its NATO partners, and so on. Now, again, on the one hand, you might be tempted to say, oh, well, what's happening here is not that exceptional. I think when you think back to, for example, what our Prime Minister talked about at the World Economic Forum, you know, you do see, in a sense, a threat that exists across many countries, a similar trend of declining public trust that we hope doesn't signal something deeper about how democracy in general is performing. We we believe that Canada can be a leader in in this community of countries. Our prime minister has certainly said he hopes that we can be he intends for us to be. And I think this is one area where democracies really have to come together and identify what is it about our institutions that is not keeping the public trust, and how can we change that?

Host: When we look at sort of from that zoomed out perspective from the global side, you talked about perception versus actual corruption. Can you give us some examples in terms of what a perception would look like versus actual? When we look at maybe down that index, when we get down to the bottom half of these countries.

Cusumano: Sure. Maybe one thing I can talk about is the financial sector in a country. Another thing I could talk about is the type of corporate ownership transparency that exists. And these two things can go hand in hand sometimes. For example, one of the things that that we can really see in the index coming through is what kind of confidence exists in who are people doing business with, and where does money come from when it's flowing into Canada, through Canada and out of Canada? Now the Corruption Perceptions Index is about public sector institutions. That's important to mention. But these kind of broader questions around how, how well is it known, what companies are doing business with the Canadian government or with the Ontario government, for example? We are fortunate at Transparency International to have been able to work with government at various levels to have a registry now of companies that are registered at federal level and in a couple of provinces, who's behind them, what data exists? We think that still there could be room to roll this out across all provinces, an issue that you'll see come into public sector corruption in Canada is that it is a complicated environment. You've got regulations at federal level, provincial level, even at some, in some cases municipal level with these things. And because Canada's complex people need an additional level of certainty sometimes to be able to, to, to have, have trust. And we certainly see that in Canada from a citizens perspective as well.

Host: With that, what steps has Canada taken to shore up confidence that our system has safeguards against corruption? Obviously there's work to be done, but what have we done so far?

Cusumano: Sure we have. We have the fortunate opportunity right now, a global body that looks at the integrity of our anti-money laundering framework in Canada, the Financial Action Task Force, they're actually wrapping up a review right now that's going to look at how far has Canada come over the last five and ten years in, in strengthening a framework that there had been some deficiencies identified. Now Canada has done a couple of things that we think could be stronger in practice. One is opening up that corporate black box numbered companies at the federal level. Now they're they're available for viewing on a public registry, B.C. and Quebec as well. Ontario has announced they're going to do it as well. You know, this is a really good opportunity to show a body like this, but also our citizens that you can't hide behind a numbered company. You've got to you've got to do business openly. So we could see that we hope that will spread out across Canada. But it's a good step. Another one is we just saw Canada announce the government announced in the budget 2025 budget, the creation of a new financial crimes agency, which might look into that sort of supply side. I talked about where you have organizations trying to corrupt our institutions. This agency should theoretically help improve the coordination between bodies like RCMP, provincial level police, Fintrac, the financial intelligence unit. That's a good step. It's been named in the budget, but we would want to know what kind of resources are behind it. How is it going to harmonise those those entities rather than add another one to the mix? Those are two things that they have great potential, but it's kind of the story. In Canada. We see good announcements. We have to really make them effective now.

Host: All right. Prime Minister Carney's government passed the Building Canada Act to expedite infrastructure projects deemed in the nation's interest. When we see expedite, we think things are going to speed up there. There might be some things that are missing there. Are there any risks that this would create opportunity for corruption?

Cusumano: Certainly. I think that we at Transparency International Canada know through our international network that when you speed up the way you do business, the way you make investments, the way you spend public money, if at the same time you're not increasing transparency and increasing oversight at a similar rate, public money is going to be misspent. We could look at what happened during Covid, for example. I think that everybody knows some of the public misspending that took place, the name Arrivecan, while it should have been a source of pride for something that secured our country and improved our public health, it's now become an infamous name in terms of how our money is, is, is spent that incident could be multiplied many, many times over. If we don't manage this critical moment the right way. And so when we see the creation of things like, for example, a new Defence investment agency, you know, that can be a very good way of helping improve our country's defence. But we need to make sure that when you do create these kind of channels, that there is an opportunity to, to be open with the public as much as you can with something as sensitive as defence about where the money is being spent, that it's being spent competitively, and that it is actually, at the end of the day, improving our defence. Because that's the bottom line. If we spend money and it doesn't improve our defence, that will undermine public trust. Same goes with infrastructure and many other priorities.

Host: Very quickly. When we're talking about Canada, it's hard not to have a conversation about the US as well. To some, the US has been the world's policeman to some extent. How have they been doing at policing corruption under this administration?

Cusumano: Well, they've announced the rollback of certain of the enforcement of certain laws that were instrumental in bringing people to justice, both in the US and abroad. Now, I think what we'll see, it's still early to tell, if you can imagine a year in, we have seen so much. But on this front, I think it's still early to tell where it will go. It's again a reminder that these things can be weaponized. It's a reminder that you don't want to make yourself a target. We need to be impeccable on all of these things. It's not just the potential of rolling back enforcement, it's the potential of using it in ways that suit pretexts. We have seen this administration use, you know, the justification of, of Fentanyl flowing across the border into the US as a reason to apply tariffs. It's just a call to say whatever is happening south of us, there are so many things we can do to get better. Let's not give anyone a reason to point the finger.

Host: All right. We're going to leave it there. I really appreciate your insights. Thank you so much.

Cusumano: Appreciate your time. Thank you so much.