44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 28, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise today and speak to Bill C-42. There is a lot of talk in this place about government gatekeepers, and rightly so. There are a lot of important decisions made within government that have an impact on Canadians' lives, and Parliament is a place to hold the decision-makers to account and to press for better decisions. Elections are the place to press for better decision-makers. This is the place to press for better decisions.
I think the case that the New Democrats have been trying to make throughout this Parliament and many others is that there is not just the problem of government gatekeeping; there are actually a lot of private sector gatekeepers. Too often, the leader of the Conservative Party and this government are either ignoring them or working with them behind the scenes to try to create more room for their power and their influence, which is not regularly held to account by a democratically elected Parliament, and to allow their power to flourish. If we look at our economy, there are a lot of ways in which they are able to do that, including a lot of rules around commercial secrecy and other ways. There are people who own significant chunks of our economy, whether that is our land, our real estate, our manufacturing or our resources, and we do not actually have a good way of knowing who those people are.
That creates a lot of problems for Canadians, who feel the pinch of that power acting in the economy, through unjustified price hikes, for example, the likes of which we have seen a lot of in the last few years in Canada. A significant contributor to inflation has been outsized price increases in a number of industries. There are also people who are hiding behind corporation numbers and making important land-use policy decisions because of the power of their own ownership. Yes, municipalities have a role to play in zoning but we also know that ownership matters a lot and people can choose to do a lot of things with their property. In some cases that has a real impact on communities, and we do not even know who is doing the work. That is why something like a public beneficial ownership registry is so important, because it will actually allow us to put names to the people who have an important controlling stake in certain parts of our local economies and our national economy.
That is important for any number of reasons. One is that we know that Canada is known internationally as a place where a lot of money gets laundered. I think it is a sad fact about Canada's reputation and Canada's actions in the world that we have allowed ourselves to be a place that people look to in order to launder the proceeds of crime. That is something that has been going on for a long time. In fact, the Canadian banking industry had an important role to play in setting up tax havens in other places.
Canadian bankers could go to places like the Bahamas or the Caicos Islands, where it was advantageous to say, “Oh, we are not like those Americans; we are allied with the Brits.” They could do that and get their hands into the local economy there and set up a banking infrastructure that would serve their interests and the interests of their clients, when it suited them better to say, “Oh, well, one cannot bank directly with the Americans but one can bank with us and we are buddy-buddy with them.” They did that too, and they actually helped create the international infrastructure of tax havens that is now costing Canadians anywhere from $30 billion to $40 billion a year in lost taxable income because they are pushing it out of the country. As I say often, it has been hard even to know who some of the beneficiaries of these things are. When it comes to money laundering, if we want to get serious about taking action, it is important to be able to identify the beneficiaries of various corporate holdings. A public beneficial ownership registry would help with that.
When it comes to Russia's completely unwarranted and illegal invasion of Ukraine, we saw Canada come out of the gate quickly with a lot of strong words about sanctions, but the follow-up, in terms of enforcement, has been rather pathetic. There is no evidence of Canada actually doing a lot of meaningful work to follow up on those sanctions and to make Russia hurt. One of the reasons why that is the case, and I think there is more that the government can do under the existing rules, is that it needs tools like a public beneficial ownership registry in order to be able to effect that work well. That will help identify the natural persons behind the corporate persons and make it easier for us to pursue those folks in the appropriate way.
I talked a bit about tax havens already, and I have talked about the problem of money laundering. The fact of the matter is that when we talk about the people at the top, who make the most money, we are not just talking about salaries. Usually the wealthiest do not make most of their money through an annual salary. They make most of their money in rent off various kinds of assets, whether real estate assets or other kinds of assets. They get dividends; that is a form of rent on the capital that they invest in companies. That is how they make their money.
If we accept the findings of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, from a year and a half or two years ago, about wealth distribution in Canada, this follows a trend for a lot of western countries. The Parliamentary Budget Officer says that now 40% of Canadians are sharing 1% of Canada's wealth, and 1% of Canadians own and control 40% of Canada's wealth. If members think that is completely out of whack, I agree completely.
That is part of what is driving many of the problems that most Canadians, who are not in that top 1%, are experiencing. Those are the folks who are really struggling with inflation. Those are the folks who cannot find a home. Those are the folks who do not know how they are going to get to work because they cannot afford the car they have.
That is not just a function of the carbon tax, which the Conservatives would have people believe. What is wrong with accepting that narrative is that it does not appreciate the problem, so it does not offer a real solution. Cutting the carbon tax is not going to fix those structural deficits. It is not the carbon tax that has led to massive wealth inequality, and it is not the way we are going to solve it.
One way we might solve it is by having a tax, not just on high income, but on high wealth. In order to do that, we need to be able to track the wealth of the 1% that owns and controls 40% of Canada's wealth. The way to do that is through a public beneficial ownership registry, which would make it easier to identify the real people, who are far fewer than the many corporate personas across the economy. If we could trace it back, we would find that it is a much smaller number of people who are behind and who are the recipients of so much of Canada's wealth and resources. A public beneficial ownership registry is important in that respect.
Partly because of the conflict and the illegal war in Ukraine, many of our international partners are moving forward quickly on public beneficial ownership registries. This legislation is important because it keeps Canada well within the international norm, which, on this issue, is moving in the right direction. This is not something Canada should be falling behind on, so I am pleased with the bill.
Folks at Publish What You Pay Canada have done some excellent work, first of all, suggesting what a public beneficial ownership registry should look like, and then following up and providing useful feedback on the legislation. The good news is that they are largely satisfied, and I think a lot of folks who follow this kind of issue feel that this is pretty good legislation.
There has been discussion in the debate so far in the House about how so-called stacked ownership structures or different corporate ownership structures could be used to evade the public beneficial ownership registry. I think that is an important thing for us to look at in committee.
New Democrats are certainly open to discussions about how to improve the legislation, but I feel it is important that we do keep this moving at a good pace so that we keep up not only with our international partners, who have accepted the wisdom of having this kind of registration, but also with many provinces within Canada, which have seen the wisdom of that and have been acting in their own jurisdictions to implement a public beneficial ownership registry.
One of the good components of the design of this federal registry is that it is meant to be a registry that can be compatible with provincial efforts and allow provinces to onboard at different times as they have their own debates and pass their own legislation in their provincial legislatures. I understand the government is working on this. I commend it for that effort; I think that is a good thing. The hope is that we will eventually have a registry in every province and territory that will contribute seamlessly to the public beneficial ownership registry of Canada, and that is a very good thing.
With all those reasons for having a public beneficial ownership registry in mind, and some optimism about the course that this bill has taken and the good work done so far, I am very much looking forward to voting in favour of this at second reading and sending it to committee, so that we can enhance the bill where possible and ensure that Canada quickly joins the ranks of countries across the world that have public beneficial ownership registries.
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