Committee
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Add search criteria
Results: 1 - 15 of 1571
Sujata Dey
View Sujata Dey Profile
Sujata Dey
2019-06-18 10:00
Good morning.
I am the head of the international trade campaign at the Council of Canadians.
I will make my presentation in English, but it will be my pleasure to answer questions in French.
The Council of Canadians has been keenly interested in issues of free trade since the initial agreement between the U.S. and Canada.
With over 100,000 supporters, we believe strongly that trade agreements cannot be the exclusive domain of industry representatives. Trade agreements impact our regulations, our public programs, our democracies and our ability to protect the environment.
With the rise of global inequality and a looming environmental crisis, our trade agreements unfortunately are often complicit in promoting corporations' rights over our democracies. This is why, during the NAFTA negotiations, over 30,000 of our members wrote MPs to share their concerns about what should be in a NAFTA agreement. Our honorary chairperson, Maude Barlow, wrote 10 guidelines for what should be included in the new NAFTA. Some of our guidelines have been met; others haven't.
First, the good news: In the new NAFTA, the chapter 11 investor-state provisions are no longer in effect between the U.S. and Canada. This provision has cost us $300 million. It has hurt our ability to develop social and environmental policy. Since Canada has been the biggest loser under chapter 11 and the U.S. the largest litigant, this is an important development.
Going forward, this should be the new standard for all our trade agreements. Unfortunately, this is not the case for the recently adopted CPTPP or CETA. As well, the mandatory energy proportionality provisions mandating us to export a quota of energy to the U.S. has been removed from the new NAFTA. That will give us more policy space to meet our G8 and Paris commitments.
However, the fact remains that this agreement gives disproportionate power to corporations. Chapter 11 may be gone, but now a whole host of new rules puts industry voices, or so-called interested persons, at the regulatory table before any of us—the public or politicians—can see the actual regulations. Under so-called regulatory co-operation, regulators have to follow a new series of stringent practices to make rules.
While industry folks may see safety, food, environmental or labelling regulations as red tape, those of us who are concerned about the safety of our products or what we put on our plates or in our bodies may see things differently. Regulators now face industry-positive criteria that hamper their ability to translate our collective will into rules.
Much has been written about the attacks on the family farm and the allocation of an additional 3.59% in Canadian market share for American dairy products. At the Council of Canadians, we are worried about the standard of this new U.S. milk that will be coming over the border. In the 1990s, we successfully campaigned to end the licensing of bovine growth hormone in Canada. This hormone makes cows produce 25% more milk, but at the expense of cows' health. BGH is used in the U.S. and is not labelled.
The new NAFTA also gives protections that can raise the cost of prescription drugs. The deal gives biologics, a new class of drugs made from human or animal tissue, 10 years of data exclusivity. Currently in Canada, we only give eight years of data exclusivity. Biologics are very important. They include drugs like insulin, or drugs that treat cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer said the cost would be $169 million just in the first year this agreement would be in effect. Just at the time when the Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare is recommending a universal single-payer system for drugs, the new NAFTA would raise the cost of such a program. Recently, a number of MPs signed a declaration asking for these provisions to be taken out of the new NAFTA. Luckily, Democrats in the U.S. are trying to get rid of these drug provisions, as well as demanding improved and enforceable environmental and labour provisions, which are currently lacking.
U.S. Democrats have the vote, and as history has shown, the U.S. has reopened the last four enacted trade agreements after they were signed. It is simply premature to ratify the agreement in its current form. Many important changes still need to be made. The idea that this deal is finished is an illusion.
Thank you.
Joseph A. Cannataci
View Joseph A. Cannataci Profile
Joseph A. Cannataci
2019-05-28 15:42
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and members of the grand committee, for the invitation to speak.
I will try to build on what Mr. Therrien has said in order to cover a few more points. I will also make some references to what other witnesses presented previously.
First, I will be trying to take a more international view, though the themes that are covered by the committee are very global in nature. That's why when it comes to global...the previous witness spoke about an international treaty. One of the reasons, as I will be explaining, that I have decided in my mandate at the United Nations to go through a number of priorities when it comes to privacy is that the general framework of privacy and data protection in law insofar as an international treaty is concerned, who regulates this, doesn't happen to be specifically a UN treaty. It happens to be convention 108 or convention 108+, which is already ratified by 55 nations across the world. Morocco was the latest one to present its document of ratification yesterday.
When people meet in Strasbourg or elsewhere to discuss the actions and interoperability within an international framework, there are already 70 countries, ratified states and observer states, that will discuss the framework afforded by that international legal instrument. I would indeed encourage Canada to consider adhering to this instrument. While I am not an expert on Canadian law, I have been following it since 1982. I think Canadian law is pretty close in most cases. I think it would be a welcome addition to that growing group of nations.
As for the second point that I wish to make, I'll be very brief on this, but I also share preoccupations about the facts on democracy and the fact that the Internet is being increasingly used in order to manipulate people's opinions through monitoring their profiles in a number of ways. The Cambridge Analytica case, of course, is the classic case we have for our consideration, but there are other cases too in a number of other countries around the world.
I should also explain that the six or seven priorities that I have set for my United Nations mandate to a certain extent summarize maybe not all, but many of the major problems that we are facing in the privacy and data protection field. The first priority should not surprise you, ladies and gentlemen, because it relates to the very reasons that my mandate was born, which is security and surveillance.
You would recall that my United Nations mandate was born in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations. It won't surprise you, therefore, that we have dedicated a great deal of attention internationally to security and surveillance. I am very pleased that Canada participates very actively in one of the fora, which is the International Intelligence Oversight Forum because, as the previous witness has just stated, oversight is a key element that should be addressed. I was also pleased to see some significant progress in the Canadian sphere over the past 12 to 24 months.
There is a lot to be said about surveillance, but I don't have much left of my 10 minutes so I can perhaps respond to questions. What I will restrict myself to saying at this stage is that globally we see the same problems. In other words, we don't have a proper solution for jurisdiction. Issues of jurisdiction and definitions of offences remain some of the greatest problems we have, notwithstanding the existence of the Convention on Cybercrime. Security, surveillance and basically the growth of state-sponsored behaviour in cyberspace are still a glaring problem.
Some nations are not very comfortable talking about their espionage activities in cyberspace, and some treat it as their own backyard, but in reality, there is evidence that the privacy of hundreds of millions of people, not in just one country but around the world, has been subjected to intrusion by the state-sponsored services of one actor or another, including most of the permanent powers of the United Nations.
The problem remains one of jurisdiction and defining limits. We have prepared a draft legal instrument on security and surveillance in cyberspace, but the political mood across the world doesn't seem conducive to major discussions on those points. The result is that we have seen some unilateral action, for example, by the United States with its Cloud Act, which has not seen much take-up at this moment in time. However, regardless of whether unilateral action would work, I encourage discussion even on the principles of the Cloud Act. Even if it doesn't lead to immediate agreements, the very discussion will at least get people to focus on the problems that exist at that stage.
I will quickly pass to big data and open data. In the interests of the economy of time, I refer the committee to the report on big data and open data that I presented to the United Nations General Assembly in October 2018. Quite frankly, I would advise the committee to be very wary of joining the two in such a way that open data continues to be a bit like a mother with an apple pie when it comes to politicians proclaiming all the good it's going to do for the world. The truth is that in the principles of big data and open data, we are looking at key fundamental issues when it comes to privacy and data protection.
In Canadian law, as in the law of other countries, including the laws of all those countries that adhere to convention 108, the purpose specification principle that data should be collected and used only for a specified or compatible purpose lives on as a fundamental principle. It also lives on as a principle in the recent GDPR in Europe. However, we have to remember that in many cases, when one is using big data analytics, one is seeking to repurpose that data for a different purpose. Once again, I refer the committee to my report and the detailed recommendations there.
At this moment in time, I have out for consultation a document on health data. We are expecting to debate this document, together with recommendations, at a special meeting in France on June 11 and 12. I trust there will be a healthy Canadian presence at that meeting too. We've received many positive comments about the report. We're trying to build an existing consensus on health data, but I'd like to direct the committee's attention to how important health data is. Growing amounts of health data are being collected each and every day with the use of smart phones and Fitbits and other wearables, which are being used in a way that really wasn't thought about 15 or 20 years ago.
Another consultation paper I have out, which I would direct the committee's attention to, is on gender and privacy. I'm hoping to organize a public consultation. It has already started as an online consultation, but I am hoping to have a public meeting, probably in New York, on October 30 and 31. Gender and privacy continues to be a very important yet controversial topic, and it is one in which I would welcome continued Canadian contribution and participation.
I think you would not be surprised if I were to say that among the five task forces I established, there is a task force on the use of personal data by corporations. I make it a point to meet with the major corporations, including Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, but also some of the non-U.S. ones, including Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, etc., at least twice a year all together around a table in an effort to get their collaboration to find new safeguards and remedies for privacy, especially in cyberspace.
This brings me to the final point I'll mention for now. It's linked to the previous one on corporations and the use of personal data by corporations. It's the priority for privacy action.
I have been increasingly concerned about privacy issues, especially those affecting children as online citizens from a very early age. As the previous witness has borne witness, we are looking at some leading new and innovative legislation, such as that in the United Kingdom, not only the one on digital harms, but also one about age-appropriate behaviour and the liability of corporations. I am broaching these subjects formally next with the corporations at our September 2019 meeting. I look forward to being able to achieve some progress on the subject of privacy and children and on greater accountability and action from the corporations in a set of recommendations that we shall be devising during the next 12 to 18 months.
I'll stop here for now, Mr. Chair. I look forward to questions.
Andrew Van Iterson
View Andrew Van Iterson Profile
Andrew Van Iterson
2019-05-16 11:16
Mr. Chairman and honourable committee members, thank you for inviting the Green Budget Coalition to speak to you today about Bill C-97.
Lisa Gue, aside from being the co-chair of the Green Budget Coalition, is the senior researcher and analyst, science and policy, for the David Suzuki Foundation.
The Green Budget Coalition, active since 1999, brings together the expertise of 22 of Canada's leading environmental organizations, collectively representing over one million Canadians, to identify budgetary opportunities to advance environmental sustainability in Canada.
Today I will provide brief feedback on the 2019 budget, and then focus on the investment in zero-emission vehicles, as well as proposed changes to the Pest Control Products Act in Bill C-97.
The Green Budget Coalition was particularly pleased that budget 2019 increased funding to address climate change by including $1 billion in support of building energy efficiency and four measures to support zero-emission vehicles. The budget also provided some details on the peer review process with Argentina of federal fossil fuel subsidies, and we are hopeful that this peer review process will assist the government in finally eliminating subsidies and non-tax support to fossil fuels.
In addition, we were pleased to see renewed funding for contaminated sites cleanup, and new funding for food policy, energy data and first nations water and waste-water infrastructure.
Turning to zero-emission vehicles, or ZEVs, approximately one-quarter of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions originate in the transportation sector. The Green Budget Coalition recommended investments to accelerate the transition to ZEVs. We need a smart strategy that helps more people buy clean cars, not only to reduce harmful emissions but also to strategically position the entire auto manufacturing industry to grow with the global transition to electric vehicles.
We were pleased to see the commitment to national targets for zero-emission vehicle sales ramping up to 100% by 2040, backed by a $300-million investment for a three-year purchase incentive program. We expect this to immediately make purchasing electric vehicles more affordable and appealing across Canada. However, it is not clear that $300 million will be sufficient over a three-year period; additional funding might be needed in budget 2020 or 2021.
We also appreciated the $130-million investment in charging stations and the proposal for businesses to be able to write off 100% of the ZEV purchase price in one year, a strong incentive for high-distance businesses such as delivery and taxi companies and school bus companies to buy more zero-emission vehicles.
However, I would highlight that the Green Budget Coalition recommended a two-pronged approach, combining purchase incentives with mandatory sales targets for zero-emission vehicles. The budget announced that Transport Canada will work with automakers to secure voluntary sales targets. We believe regulated sales targets will be necessary to complement budget 2019's funding measures to ensure a sufficient supply of ZEVs for Canadians.
Finally, I would draw your attention to proposed amendments to the Pest Control Products Act in part 4 of Bill C-97. The Green Budget Coalition has highlighted the need for increased investment to enable Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency, the PMRA, to deliver on its legislative obligations for post-market review of pesticides in Canada, to ensure risks to health and the environment are not unacceptable. Unfortunately, budget 2019 does not adequately address the budget crunch at PMRA. While we understand these proposed legislative changes to the Pest Control Products Act are intended to improve efficiencies, it is important that this effort not undercut the environmental and public health purposes of the act or interfere with sound decision-making.
GBC member organizations are concerned that the proposed provisions as drafted could limit public participation and reduce transparency, potentially leading to unacceptable health or environmental risks. To address this, these Green Budget Coalition members have proposed discrete amendments to maintain existing legislative guarantees of consultation and accountability and prevent further erosion of public confidence in federal pesticide regulation.
To conclude, thank you again for inviting the Green Budget Coalition to appear today. We look forward to your questions.
Stewart Elgie
View Stewart Elgie Profile
Stewart Elgie
2019-05-16 11:29
I have a few slides that I will pass around in case anyone wants to see them. There are some pretty slides. I apologize; they're only in English.
I'm going to speak in English today.
I am a professor of law and economics at the University of Ottawa and also a member of the federal government's economic strategy table for the resource sectors.
Today I am here as the chair of Smart Prosperity Institute, wearing two hats. It is Canada's largest environment economy research network, doing world-class research on clean innovation, resource efficiency and ways to drive both environmental performance and boost competitiveness at the same time. I am also the co-chair of a leaders initiative that has 28 CEOs from all sectors across the economy, including oil, mining and banking, who have put out a vision to make Canada a world leader in clean growth and innovation and a road map to get there.
The premise of my remarks today is that clean growth and innovation is a vital economic opportunity for Canada, but don't take my word for it. Radical environmentalists such as the Mackenzie Institute, the OECD, the World Economic Forum and the Business Council of Canada have put out reports in the last few years saying that. Countries that are leaders in energy efficiency, low-carbon production and innovation will be the most competitive in the decades ahead. It's a $35-trillion global economic opportunity across all sectors of the economy that we can't afford to miss.
That was also a finding of Canada's economic strategy table. It found that clean growth is a major opportunity for all parts of the economy because markets and investors are demanding it and it's where profits will lie. This was not just for clean tech, which we hear a lot about. There is indeed a fast-growing market which will be $2.5 trillion soon, and Canada is well positioned for it if we can overcome barriers. Also for the resource sectors, Canada's core economic strength, clean growth is a $3.6-trillion opportunity for them.
Turning to the budget, how can it advance clean growth and capture these opportunities? I have three points.
The first is transportation. It accounts for 24% of our greenhouse gas emissions and is also a big part of our economy. The budget invests in electric vehicle adoption through a $5,000 consumer incentive, a 100% tax writeoff for businesses, and the building of charging stations. One should always question whether a subsidy is a smart economic investment. In this case I think there is a good argument that it is. The government has historically provided incentives to support promising new technologies as their cost curves come down. We did this with the oil sands, and investing in the vehicles of the future seems like an equally good investment.
I have included a couple of charts to show that experience in three different provinces shows that incentives are effective. In Ontario, B.C. and Quebec they have more than doubled demand for electric vehicles.
I have two cautions. One is, don't overspend. You can provide too much of an incentive and you get diminishing marginal returns. I think $5,000, which is lower than the one we've seen in Quebec and Ontario, is right, given that the technology costs are coming down and getting closer to cost-competitiveness. Update it to make sure that as battery costs come down, your incentive is appropriate.
My second point is reforming how we regulate to drive competitiveness and innovation. This was the number one recommendation of the Barton growth council and the economic strategy table.
Canada ranks middle of the pack for developed countries in both the efficiency of our regulations and our environmental performance. That's not good. This is the low-hanging fruit for driving clean growth and competitiveness, the economic strategy tables found. The fall economic statement and the budget announce some of the recommendations: the external advisory committee and a centre for regulatory innovation. Those are good, but it falls short of what the Barton committee and the economic strategy tables recommended.
They recommended that we need an independent council with its own expert capacity to drive Canada toward world-class regulation for competitiveness and innovation. I would encourage you to go further and create that kind of independent capacity, which is different from simply putting more capacity in government. We need both. Reforming regulations is vital, but it's hard.
Tax incentives for clean growth were also a key recommendation of the economic strategy table both to keep pace with the U.S. cuts and also to spur investment in clean technology, at two stages: early-stage growing firms and also with adoption of technology by mature, large firms.
The fall economic statement had 100% accelerated capital cost allowance for clean technologies, which builds on the carbon tax by adding a tax cut for the same firms that are investing in low-carbon technologies. That's good. It doubles the effect and helps competitiveness. The problem is it's limited to just 19 specific clean technologies. It misses most of Canada's clean technology firms.
What you should do is expand it to cover all low-carbon technologies. Firms like Nova Scotia's CarbonCure, which is reinjecting carbon back into cement, for example, isn't captured by these 19 specific technologies, so expand it to cover all low-carbon technologies and, indeed, all clean technologies. If you want our resource sectors to be leaders in water efficiency and air pollution reduction, let's roll the incentive out to all those things, as the U.K. and the Netherlands have done.
I would add that the part of the budget bill about fossil fuel subsidy reform, which is a G7 commitment and is good, needs to be careful to distinguish those incentives for the oil and gas industry that support cleaner production. We don't want to be phasing those out. You actually want incentives to support cleaner production. They tend to all get rolled together when people put these lists out. Don't eliminate incentives for the oil industry to support clean production.
Last, the one big gap in terms of tax credits is that the economic strategy tables also recommended an investor tax credit to support early stage clean-tech innovative firms. This is what's known as the valley of death in terms of technology investment start-up. New Brunswick, B.C. and Alberta all have 30% investor tax credits for small growing firms and they work really well. We recommended the same federally. It hasn't made it into the budget yet.
The other advantage is that we've put $2 billion to support public investment through BDC, EDC and SDTC in these firms. This will pull in the private capital to leverage those public dollars, which is the end game you want. I would recommend that as a priority for budget 2020.
Clean growth is an opportunity we can't afford to miss. The government has a key role to play, as we've done in other areas like free trade and deficit reduction.
Thank you for the efforts you're making, and keep going.
Chris Roberts
View Chris Roberts Profile
Chris Roberts
2019-05-07 11:07
Thank you very much, Chair, and good morning, committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
The Canadian Labour Congress is Canada's largest central labour body advocating on behalf of three million workers across Canada. In the brief time I have, I will focus on divisions 5, 6 and 7 of part 4 touching on the guaranteed income supplement, the Canada pension plan, changes to insolvency rules and amendments to the Canada Business Corporations Act. I will also touch on the Canada training credit.
I want to begin, however, by commending the government for a budget measure that is not contained in Bill C-97, namely its initial steps toward the implementation of a national pharmacare plan for Canada. Canada's unions are eager to see a universal single-payer system introduced in this country to address significant coverage gaps and the drug affordability crisis facing Canadians.
Turning to retirement benefits, Bill C-97 allows the proactive enrolment of CPP contributors aged 70 and over. The CLC welcomes this initiative as a very positive step. The bill also amends the Old Age Security Act to make improvements to the guaranteed income supplement and allowance for low-income seniors.
Extending the GIS earnings exemption to self-employment income, increasing the full exemption and introducing an additional partial exemption are important improvements that will make a meaningful difference in the lives of low-paid working seniors.
However, the GIS clawback will continue to apply to the first dollar of CPP and pension income, RRSP income, EI benefits and other income in retirement. On these income sources, a 75% or higher effective marginal tax rate continues to apply. For this reason, the CLC urges the government to undertake a comprehensive review of the GIS clawback in the context of all income sources in retirement.
With respect to changes to insolvency rules, in our view, Bill C-97's amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and Companies' Creditors Arrangements Act are inadequate and represent a missed opportunity to prevent the injustice of defined benefit plan members and retirees suffering benefit cuts when sponsors enter insolvency.
Bill C-97 will amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to allow a bankruptcy court to determine whether a share redemption or a payment of dividends in the year prior to the date of bankruptcy was made by an insolvent company or had the effect of making the corporation insolvent. If so, the court can now allow the trustee to recover these amounts. However, this would not have prevented the $1.4 billion in dividend payments approved by the directors of Sears Canada in the years prior to entering insolvency and liquidation in 2017, despite the windup deficit in the pension plan.
There is still no requirement for corporations to notify the pension regulator, much less seek the regulator's authorization if a sponsor with a pension deficit makes a dividend payment or engages in a share repurchase that represents a risk to benefit security.
To address this risk, Ontario introduced the disclosable event regime last year, and regulators in the United States and the United Kingdom have similar powers. The federal government can and must do far more to protect plan members in insolvency. Labour movement has been urging the government to either grant pension claims superpriority status in bankruptcy or introduce mandatory pension insurance in conjunction with provinces and territories.
Turning to continuous learning, Bill C-97 enacts the Canada training credit, part of the new Canada training benefit. The CLC welcomes this lifelong learning benefit; however, we are concerned that the four-week limit on training programs, the 600-hour eligibility requirement and low replacement rates of the EI training support benefit and the fact that the training credit can cover no more than half of tuition and training fees will limit the benefit's effectiveness and reach for low-paid precariously employed workers who most need training opportunities.
With respect to pay transparency, Bill C-97 amends the Canada Business Corporations Act to require federally registered public companies to disclose prescribed information regarding the well-being of employees, retirees and pensioners and the diversity of directors and senior management.
The CLC believes that this information should include the ratio between director and senior management compensation and median employee earnings. It should also include total employee compensation and median pensions and pay received by pensioners as well as the funded status of the pension plan.
Thank you, Chair. My time is up. I welcome any questions the committee might have.
View Pierre-Luc Dusseault Profile
NDP (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to shift gears, although the discussion is interesting.
First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Roberts and all the other witnesses who are testifying before us.
Mr. Roberts, my first question is related to what you mentioned. I would have liked you to have provided some clarification on the issue of the proposed amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act.
You said that the proposed amendments would not have changed the way Sears' bankruptcy was settled. We know that many pensioners of this company have been penalized. This includes pensioners from Canada, and even from my region in Sherbrooke.
Can you clarify this statement that the new provisions of the act wouldn't have changed anything at all? That's sort of the argument of the government, which is saying that these amendments are being proposed in response to what happened at Sears.
Chris Roberts
View Chris Roberts Profile
Chris Roberts
2019-05-07 11:58
The relatively modest amendments in Bill C-97 with respect to the CCAA and the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act would have had little impact in the case of Sears.
The problem in the Sears Canada fiasco was that despite the pension plan having a funding deficit since 2007, the directors of that company authorized a series of very significant dividend payments. While the company was within the requirements of solvency funding rules with respect to its pension plan deficit, there were no other restrictions, and indeed, no requirement on supervisors, that is, pension regulatory and superintendent bodies, to track what was occurring and intervene, despite the fact that the company was clearly being put at risk and the ability of the sponsor to make good on the pension deficit was being placed in question.
That's a long answer, but the short answer is no, I don't think any of the very modest amendments being proposed in this bill would have addressed that situation.
View Pierre-Luc Dusseault Profile
NDP (QC)
What would have really changed the situation in a significant way would have been a change in the order of priority of creditors.
A large majority of the people and experts consulted, including those from the union movement, like you, supported this measure. Are you disappointed that it isn't part of the provisions of Bill C-97 that amend the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act?
Chris Roberts
View Chris Roberts Profile
Chris Roberts
2019-05-07 12:00
That's certainly the position of the CLC and many unions, that this was a missed opportunity. Even if the government had been unwilling to grant straight-out superpriority status for the pension deficit claim, there are many ways in which the government could have entertained an evidence-based discussion about what changes to the order of priorities, the hierarchy of claims in bankruptcy and insolvency, might have been sufficient in future cases to have a meaningful impact on pensioners and plan members.
Given that there are private members' bills on this, namely Bill C-384 and Bill C-372, and a bill from the Senate as well, there's an opportunity to get the evidence on the table to really understand what opportunities exist within the existing statute, even short of superpriority, but we haven't seen that debate occurring.
View Pierre Poilievre Profile
CPC (ON)
Yes.
Thank you to the witnesses here from MNP. You serve a lot of small businesses. I understand your firm is, if not the biggest, one of the biggest tax accounting firms serving small business in this country.
Have any of your clients seen an impact as a result of the 2017 changes to the tax treatment of Canadian-controlled private corporations? If so, can you describe those impacts?
Mark Schaan
View Mark Schaan Profile
Mark Schaan
2019-05-06 16:08
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The first issue in this bill concerns changes in insolvency.
Licensed insolvency trustees must renew their licences and pay fees on December 31, annually. This deadline creates unnecessary administrative burden or pressure for many trustees, because it may fall during the end-of-year holiday period. We are proposing, as part of this, two changes.
The first is to change the deadline. The proposed amendment would allow for a licence renewal date that is more convenient. It would be prescribed in regulation. It wouldn't conflict with the end-of-year holiday period or other inconvenient periods.
Right now, trustees are required to keep the original signed copy of specified documents, notably minutes, proceedings and resolutions passed at any meetings of creditors or inspectors, whereas all other estate documents can be kept in digital form. As a function of a long-standing complaint from the trustee community that this requirement is out of date and causes unnecessary administrative burden, the government will allow for digital office practices by licensed trustees.
Mark Schaan
View Mark Schaan Profile
Mark Schaan
2019-05-02 11:36
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Today the changes we're discussing are related to the Canada Business Corporations Act. They follow on from changes that were part of budget 2018, related to beneficial ownership transparency. In budget 2018, we introduced changes to the Canada Business Corporations Act to require corporations to hold information related to beneficial ownership and those who exercised significant control over privately held corporations registered under the Canada Business Corporations Act.
That was part of a broad federal-provincial-territorial agreement that was reached by ministers of finance in 2017 as a commitment from all jurisdictions to be able to proceed with the same agreement arrangements within their own corporate statutes. The change we're introducing here is a further clarification of the rules we set out in those amendments, which is related to who can access that initial information.
In particular, the changes specify that an investigative body would be able to access these records upon request. Notably, those investigative bodies in question are police tax authorities and any investigative body added by regulations, so we've left ourselves some flexibility in the future.
The investigative body can make a request if it has reasonable grounds to suspect that the information would be relevant to an investigation of one of the offences set out in the schedule and at least one of the requested corporation itself, a CBCA corporation sharing, an investor of significant control with the requested corporation, or another entity over which one of the requested corporation's investors of significant control has investor of significant control-like control.
It establishes penalties for non-compliance and it also sets out some safeguards for the usage and request of that register of significant control, notably that an investigative body must file an annual report to the director of Corporations Canada on aggregate use of the request power. It also sets out that investigative bodies must keep records when they use the request power.
View Greg Fergus Profile
Lib. (QC)
That's why I'm asking the following question.
Mr. Schaan, is the $5,000 fine enough to encourage private companies to keep their information up to date?
Mark Schaan
View Mark Schaan Profile
Mark Schaan
2019-05-02 11:39
Thank you for the question.
There are two aspects of the penalties set out in the bill.
First, the $5,000 fine is only for administrative errors made by a company that doesn't comply with the details described in the bill.
Moreover, the bill includes an additional fine of $200,000 and a prison term of up to six months for non-compliance with the provisions of the bill.
It's a distinction between the two types of penalties. There are administrative penalties for an organization that simply makes an administrative error in their registry of beneficial owners or for failure to do so in an administrative manner. Then the second type of penalty is for a clear contravention of the spirit of the law, which is when you knew of information related to a beneficial owner that you failed to include. That can be up to $200,000 and up to six months in prison.
We do think that balance is right in terms of administrative burden for the vast majority of these private corporations that are small and medium-sized enterprises, but there's also the significance of a significant fine and prison time for those who are bad actors using corporate shells.
View Greg Fergus Profile
Lib. (QC)
For those bad actors—and thank you for making that distinction—is it up to $200,000 and up to six months in prison per error, or is it in general for being a bad actor?
If someone is purposely trying to falsify information, if they're laundering money and the extent of that.... Is that a maximum or is there some discretion involved there for the prosectors?
Results: 1 - 15 of 1571 | Page: 1 of 105

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
>
>|
Export As: XML CSV RSS

For more data options, please see Open Data