Good afternoon, honourable Chair and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for the invitation to speak today.

My name is Dina Mainville. I am the founder of Collisionless, a consulting and advisory services firm based in Toronto.

I started my blockchain career in 2016, and have spent much of my tenure in regulatory compliance. From one angle, I've been fortunate to work with government and regulators across five continents in educating them on virtual assets and advising on regulatory policy. I have trained hundreds of law enforcement professionals, including in Canada, to help them understand how to read blockchain-based data and how to conduct forensic investigations to combat child exploitation, financial crime and terrorist financing.

Since 2020, I have contributed to the work of Canada's largest and most active industry association, the Canadian Blockchain Consortium. I am the former chair of their Fintech Committee, and I am now building a regulatory committee that seeks to make meaningful contributions to the voluntary development of industry best practices rather than waiting for inherently coercive solutioning by regulators.

From another angle, I have also worked strategically with financial institutions globally as their interest in cyptocurrencies has expanded and contracted. I have witnessed, both personally and professionally, Canadian banks implementing policies to restrict their clients from accessing cryptocurrencies and threatening innovation at home by refusing to bank blockchain businesses. I have also worked with blockchain companies that seek to build alternatives to the gatekeeper plumbing of the incumbent financial system. Their tools help democratize finance and unlock individual economic prosperity for Canadians.

I stand before the committee today with three humble recommendations compiled from a unique vantage point.

Recommendation one is that Canada should consider how the low barrier to entry for new value creation will stimulate the Canadian economy.

Blockchain is an expression of advancements in computer science, game theory and cryptography that are changing the fundamental structure of the Internet itself—the merits and utility of which are widely understood. Many, however, underestimate the implications of these changes on how information is processed and owned, and the value dynamics within that. In this era of the new Internet, monetization pathways are being forged that unlock unseen potential for Canadians. These include owning and monetizing your digital footprint, being remunerated for the value you create inside decentralized autonomous organizations and participating in the fractionalized ownership of traditional assets that are becoming increasingly out of reach for Canadians, like real estate. Blockchain will unlock revenue generation opportunities for more than 92% of the Canadian population who are currently Internet users. That's approximately 35 million people.

This dynamic industry also offers uniquely low barriers to entry for more traditional forms of value creation—i.e., jobs. Academic institutions like Princeton and Berkeley provide free online blockchain courses that can be used to enhance digital literacy skills and to support remote work.

According to Glassdoor, the median salary for a blockchain developer in Canada is $92,000 per annum, the requisite tools for which are highly available, pending an Internet connection and a will to learn. York University reported in 2020 that demand for blockchain developers had increased by 374% in the greater Toronto area alone.

Recommendation two is that for Canada's blockchain economy to prosper, collaboration between government stakeholders and industry practitioners is required to develop a national regulatory framework. In the absence of such a framework, Canadians will continue to lose money to bad actors operating unregulated or poorly regulated exchanges in foreign jurisdictions. Good actors will continue to leave Canada in favour of building companies in places with better regulatory clarity, intercepting a major potential growth engine and causing massive brain drain across many sectors.

The realized market capitalization of Ethereum is approximately $240 billion. Binance grew to become the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume only eight months after its launch. Both projects have Canadian ties.

In 2014, FINTRAC amended the PCMLTFA to ensure that crypto assets were adequately covered with respect to financial crime, but we have more progress to make. Canada has an opportunity to leverage our international standing and trust in leading global regulatory harmonization. We should take a nuanced approach to regulation by differentiating between types of crypto assets, by creating appropriate provisions for those assets and by regulating only the parts of this industry that make sense.

The Government of Canada should also communicate that regulation does not equate to endorsement, and that Canadian investors should still think for themselves.

Recommendation three is that this committee should advocate the dismantling of the Canadian banking sector's discriminatory policies against blockchain businesses.

The banking industry in Canada has classified blockchain businesses as high risk because of a perceived lack of adherence to traditional rules and concerns related to money laundering. Cryptocurrency businesses in Canada are required by law to register with FINTRAC and to meet the regulatory requirements of other money services businesses. The auditable transaction history offered by blockchains combined with the on-chain analytic capabilities of private companies have made transaction monitoring easy; in fact, when contextualized, blockchains offer greater transparency than any other financial instrument we've had. These concerns are no longer reasonable arguments for cutting the Canadian blockchain ecosystem off from financial services.

As a Canadian who is deeply involved as a member—

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