Royal Bank of Canada was there, too.

Canada won a distinction last month that most of us would rather we had lost: We had the most companies on a list of firms banned from doing business with the World Bank over corruption. All but a few of the Canadian companies banned from doing World Bank business were actually subsidiaries of one company: SNC-Lavalin. You would think a company that has brought so much bad publicity to Canada's name around the world, whose alleged corruption comes within a whisker of touching Canadian politicians, would be a toxic hot potato no government in Canada would want to touch. Well, you'd be wrong.