- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Bloc Québécois
- Joliette
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $132,165.46
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- Feb/1/24 4:09:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, would my colleague agree that the Conservative motion we are currently debating erroneously suggests that the federal government is generating revenue from carbon pricing? We know that the Alberta government puts $23.7 billion in oil royalties into its coffers every year, the cost of which is passed on entirely to the consumer. However, the federal government does not generate any revenue related to this policy. Ottawa actually pays it back to households and provincial governments where applicable, excluding Quebec.
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- Jun/21/23 6:35:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank and commend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue. It was an immense pleasure and privilege to work with him at the Standing Committee on Finance. He is doing great work in his new job.
We do not agree with every argument presented in the motion. What we find there is disingenuous. The motion asks that “the House call on the government to table a plan to return to balanced budgets” without specifying a date.
To us, governing means being responsible and presenting projections. We support this desire for transparency.
I will offer some solutions to my colleague, since he works in the revenue department. In the fight against the use of tax havens, there is a lot of money to be recovered. That is something that would help in returning to balanced budgets.
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- May/3/23 7:41:32 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-6
Madam Speaker, Canada is lagging behind when it comes to dealing with tax evasion and tax avoidance. In the United States, the equivalent of the Canada Revenue Agency, or the IRS, has taken legal action. There have been criminal judgments and sentences have been imposed. This has never been done in Canada for tax evasion. More needs to be done.
The government says it has more means. Now, we are going to have better laws, but it also takes political will. We are still far from seeing results.
In the latest leaked “papers”, Radio-Canada reported that Revenu Québec had recovered more money than the Canada Revenue Agency, which had recovered 20 or 30 times less than its friends in Europe such as England, France and Germany.
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- Apr/28/23 12:28:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very interesting speech. I think we share rather similar points of view on this bill.
His colleague from Sarnia—Lambton, who spoke before he did, brought up the Panama Papers scandal in her speech to illustrate the fact that the government is not doing enough.
I would like to remind the House of some of the figures from that scandal. While the government brags about how much it is doing, the Canada Revenue Agency has recovered less money than Revenu Québec has. By way of comparison, the United Kingdom recovered more than $317 million; Germany, $246 million; Spain, $209 million; France, $179 million; Australia, $173 million and Canada, $21 million. That is 10 times less than the others.
Does my colleague agree that the government needs to be doing a lot more?
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- Oct/6/22 11:59:27 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we need a tax system that is fair and equitable. The system should be progressive, with the wealthy contributing more to support public services. Obviously, that should apply to corporate profits too.
To achieve a fair and equitable tax system, I urge parliamentarians to do much more to fight tax evasion and tax avoidance. Tax havens are becoming increasingly popular because of lax legislation. Companies open subsidiaries that are nothing but empty shells. They do not do anything. They exist solely for the purpose of tax evasion. By recording revenue in empty shells, profitable corporations declare next to no profits in countries with normal tax rules. That is how they avoid paying tax. These despicable schemes carried out with the help of unscrupulous experts are usually perfectly legal. That is what we call tax avoidance. We need to change the laws and regulations as soon as possible.
Wealthy individuals usually opt to shelter their fortunes and their income in tax havens where information is less transparent so they can cheat the tax system. That kind of fraud is tax evasion. It is also important to note that organized crime and terrorist groups use tax havens.
According to the World Bank, in 2016, tax havens held more than $36 trillion U.S. Yes, I said $36 trillion U.S. The situation is probably even worse today.
According to economist Gabriel Zucman, in 2017, no less than 40% of international financial transactions involved tax havens in some way.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that the use of tax havens costs governments $600 billion a year in lost corporate income tax revenue and $200 billion in lost individual income tax revenue, for a total of $800 billion.
As expert Alain Deneault notes, everyone else has to make up this shortfall, either by paying higher taxes or by enduring austerity policies.
Considering their impact on government finances and operations, tax havens are a major political issue. The public wants them to disappear, but those profiting from them want them to stay. As the IMF concluded, “the wealthier the individual and the larger the multinational corporation...the more deeply they are embedded in the offshore system and the more vigorously they defend it”. That has to change.
Statistics Canada reports that Canadian corporations invested $381 billion in the top 12 tax havens in 2019. That is nearly one-third of all Canadian foreign investment.
In a 2019 report, the Parliamentary Budget Officer found that “financial flows between Canada and certain jurisdictions are disproportionately large compared to their GDP”. This proves that those amounts are not genuine investments, but rather accounting manoeuvres aimed at evading taxes.
Also in 2019, the CRA estimated that the use of tax havens by Canadian companies could be costing the treasury up to $11.4 billion in lost revenue, more than three-quarters of which would be from large corporations. That is four times more than the CRA had estimated that it was losing to individuals' use of tax havens in a report published the previous year. That amount is undoubtedly vastly underestimated.
In fact, the CRA was only considering schemes that were fraudulent or dubious, not those that were perfectly legal, as “its report does not estimate the gap resulting from ‘legal’ tax avoidance through profit shifting”, which is much greater.
The federal government is complacent with respect to the fraud and abuse that takes place with the use of tax havens. Parliament allocates ever higher amounts to help the agency tackle the problem, but nothing happens and we are not seeing results. Not only is the government complacent in going after fraudsters but it has essentially legalized the use of tax havens.
Unlike the NDP motion, which only condemns the greed of bad companies and accuses them of causing inflation, the Bloc Québécois's more constructive approach specifically targets the problem of tax avoidance with the use of foreign tax havens. We are proposing six possible solutions.
First, amend the Income Tax Act and the Income Tax Regulations to ensure that income that Canadian corporations repatriate from their subsidiaries in tax havens ceases to be exempt from tax in Canada.
Second, review the concept of permanent establishment so that income reported by shell companies created abroad by Canadian taxpayers for tax purposes is taxed in Canada.
Third, require banks and other federally regulated financial institutions to disclose, in their annual reports, a list of their foreign subsidiaries and the amount of tax they would have been subject to had their income been reported in Canada.
Fourth, review the tax regime applicable to digital multinationals, whose operations do not depend on having a physical presence, to tax them based on where they conduct business rather than where they reside. Progress is being made in that regard.
Fifth, work toward establishing a global registry of actual beneficiaries of shell companies to more effectively combat tax evasion.
Sixth, and finally, use the global financial crisis caused by the pandemic to launch, or relaunch, a strong offensive at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development against tax havens with the aim of eradicating them for good.
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