44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 19, 2023 11:00AM
- Jun/19/23 6:45:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would encourage the member to go back a little further in terms of Canada's involvement in money laundering. Donald Fleming, a former Conservative finance minister, was instrumental in setting up the Cayman Islands as an international tax haven, and he set up many others, in the Bahamas and elsewhere. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that Canada is known for money laundering, because Canada helped set up some of the financial centres of the world where money laundering takes place, and, through various taxation treaties to avoid so-called double taxes, made it possible for money to move very easily between Canada and these other jurisdictions. That is why we lose tens of billions of dollars in tax revenue from legitimate sources of income, in addition to the damage that is done in Canada through money laundering.
I wonder if the member perhaps has some reflections on the way that a certain kind of anti-tax rhetoric has been used over decades now to position Canada as a world leader in money laundering.
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- Jun/19/23 7:15:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there are a couple of themes I have heard in Conservative speeches about this bill. One is that the ownership threshold is too high at 25%. I think one of the awkward tensions with another line of Conservative argument is that the 25% standard is actually present in most of the provincial registries that currently obtain. I think part of the goal of starting with a 25% ownership threshold was to have more congruence with existing provincial systems.
My concern is that, as we try to resolve these tensions between, as the member rightly pointed out, the importance of collaborating with the provinces and some of the things we might like to see as more stringent requirements in the legislation but that are not congruent with the existing provincial situation, the clock is ticking. There are folks, like Putin's buddies, who are hiding money here in Canada and whom a public beneficial ownership registry would help pursue.
It is not perfect legislation, but can we get the legislation passed before summer in order to ensure that we can begin doing the work to bring those folks to justice?
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- Jun/19/23 8:31:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on this same point, I would say that this interoperability is really important. The provinces that already have a public registry have set the threshold at 25%. The member mentioned 10% before, but, for the bill to be compatible with the laws of the provinces that already have a public registry, it seems to me it would be important to start with a 25% threshold and to then have some conversations with the provinces, instead of legislating something in the House that is incompatible with the provincial registries.
How can we address this and make sure we create laws that allow the federal government to have an important tool it can use to go after the Russians who are hiding their assets in Canada?
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- Jun/19/23 8:45:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in the pandemic there were folks who were in quite desperate financial situations.
One group was foster kids graduating out of care in the spring of 2020. There were no jobs available. They were told by the provincial government that they could not access social assistance unless they applied for CERB. The provincial government knew very well that it was a no-fail application. That is how those kids, at the time, got money to support themselves, as they were striking out on their own at the age of 18.
Now, the government is calling in all of those debts, and many of those Canadians are still in a desperate financial situation. The government said it was going to take a compassionate approach, but recent media coverage has said it just cancelled the $5- and $10-a-month payments, so people cannot access that anymore. The government is clawing back benefits.
If the government is really committed to a compassionate approach, at the very least it should know how many CERB debtors fall below the low income cut-off. Has it done the analysis, and if so, what is the number?
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- Jun/19/23 8:49:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a compassionate government would proactively assess the financial situation of people it was trying to collect a debt from and then have that assessment inform the debt collection strategy. That is not what this government is doing, and it has recently cancelled a lot of the measures that it claimed were part of its so-called compassionate approach.
I have been asking for almost two years now how many people who owe CERB debt fall under the low-income cut-off, and I think it is pathetic from a government that wants to claim it is compassionate that it still does not have an answer to that question.
One more time: Of the people who owe CERB debt, how many of those folks have an income that falls below the low-income cut-off?
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