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Results: 1 - 15 of 1569
View Rachael Harder Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you.
Minister, you and Minister Anand have talked a lot about the importance of our relationship with indigenous people. Originally in her mandate letter, it was set out that she would allocate 5% of all procurement contracts to indigenous-led businesses. You've talked about the importance of that, even here today.
Unfortunately, when it comes to procuring anything, really that rate is actually only 2%. It's 2% of all procurements that is being allocated to indigenous-led businesses, which is a tremendous failure in comparison to the 5% set out in the original mandate letter. In the meantime, a sole-source contract was awarded to China for PPE.
Why wasn't there a competitive process, and why wasn't opportunity given to indigenous-led businesses?
View Rachael Harder Profile
CPC (AB)
Why was a sole-source contract given to China instead of an indigenous-led business? They were deliberately ignored.
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
First, Mr. Easter, over this time that we've been working together, I have detected a farmer's heart in you, and I'm very thankful for that. When you were going to make an announcement, I thought that maybe you were going to cross the floor and come to the good side.
Voices: Oh, oh!
Mrs. Tamara Jansen: It has been a pleasure to work with you. Thank you very much.
Now I'll go back to the matter at hand. Mr. St-Jean, we are here to evaluate the CRA's progress in regard to tackling tax evasion. I want to go back to 2015, when Prime Minister Trudeau said that the wealthiest Canadians were using small business tax rates to reduce their tax bills. He was basically calling small business owners tax cheats.
At the time, I was one of those people out there delivering flowers to customers in the heat of the summer, sweating it away in the old Hino truck with no air conditioning, which was, according to him, nothing more than a clever tax haven. I have to say that I was really insulted, as I believe many other small business owners were.
Now here we are in 2021, and the Liberals have thrown billions of dollars at the CRA to expose these supposed small business tax cheats. I know that the CFIB said at the time that his assumptions were seriously flawed, and so far there appears to be no evidence whatsoever that he was right. Does it make any sense for the Liberals to have developed this tax policy and hired so many new staff based on those assumptions, especially when we see that the CRA makes deals with the big tax cheats but keeps going after the little guy?
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
I couldn't agree with you more. I know that we've been very thankful to have accountants who were honest and wanted to help us make sure we could sleep at night because we did the right thing.
Last week at the finance committee, I asked the CRA's Ted Gallivan why they were continuing to target small business owners with audits during a pandemic, and he proudly told me they had initiated a six-month pause on those audits. Considering that this pandemic has been going on for more than 15 months, would you say that aggressive audits are just another way of going after the easy target rather than the big tax cheats?
View Pierre Paul-Hus Profile
CPC (QC)
When you have a contact, it can work, but when you don't, you're left spinning in the void.
In the beginning, the government [Technical difficulty—Editor]; we understand that. The situation was urgent.
However, when the government asked everyone in Canada to make an effort, everyone did. When we realized that they were buying products from China or elsewhere in the world, we didn't understand why, since Canada has products to offer. It's problematic, obviously.
Mr. Dyck, you mentioned on December 11 that it was obscene. That's what we read in an article. You mentioned that everyone had set up their equipment, their production and you had kept your staff instead of asking for subsidies.
In your opinion, did the government fail to help SMEs? On the one hand, some SMEs closed down and applied for subsidies and waited. On the other hand, and this is your case, you made a big effort, but you lost out?
Is that how you see it?
View Majid Jowhari Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be splitting my time with MP Drouin.
Let me start by thanking both witnesses for their commitment to Canada and Canadians and for making sure that they kept all of us safe. Thank you very much.
I have a quick question. I'm going to follow the line of questioning that Ms. Sahota started.
Mr. Guitor, can you share with me whether you had the opportunity to work with the office of small and medium enterprises, which helps with soft landing for a lot of organizations with Public Services and Procurement Canada?
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
Yes. Thank you.
You were just mentioning that we have grown by 15%, but we haven't seen any actual increases, which is disappointing.
Debi Daviau, President of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, suggested at the finance committee that CRA's focus should be on wealthy individuals and powerful corporations who do the majority of the cheating.
I had asked her why CRA appears to be aggressively focusing on small mom-and-pop shops for audits during COVID and ignoring the wealthy individuals. She identified this actually as a real problem. Her response was the following:
I just don't think the Canada Revenue Agency is up—
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
I'm going to quote her:
...I just don't think that they have the same capacity to address international taxes that they do to address local taxes. ....certainly employees at the Canada Revenue Agency are up against, as I said, tax giants. These are people who have immense skill, technology, expertise and other big companies on their side.
It's interesting to hear how your testimony today asserts the complete opposite on how well CRA is doing on chasing down wealthy overseas tax cheats.
With the number of dollars that CRA has invested over the last years, why didn't you invest in the tools you need to go after the big guys rather than focus on those little mom-and-pop shops, especially during a pandemic?
View Robert Kitchen Profile
CPC (SK)
I call the meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number 36 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. The committee is meeting today from 5:44 Ottawa time to hear witnesses as part of its study of businesses owned by under-represented groups. We have the full two hours to do the meeting and we look forward to hearing from our witnesses.
I'd like to take this opportunity to remind all participants at this meeting that taking screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted.
To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.
Interpretation in this video conference will work very much like in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either “Floor”, “English” or “French”. Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you are ready to speak, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. To raise a point of order during the meeting, committee members should ensure that their microphone is unmuted and should say, “Point of order” to get the chair's attention.
The clerk and the analysts are participating in the meeting virtually today. If you need to speak with them during the meeting, please email them through the committee email address. The clerk can also be reached on his mobile phone.
For those people who are participating in the committee room, please note that masks are required for all staff at all times. MPs may remove their masks only when they are seated.
I will now invite the representatives of Aksis Edmonton's Aboriginal Business and Professional Association, Mr. Sinclair or Ms. Suitor, to make their presentation.
Mr. Sinclair, we can't hear you.
View Kelly McCauley Profile
CPC (AB)
Thanks, Mr. Chair.
To our witnesses, thank you for your patience and for sticking with us. I know that staring at a blank Zoom screen for two hours is probably not the highlight of your day, so thank you.
I want to thank everyone for their opening statements. It pains me that we have to invite witnesses here today for this study, because we went through an almost identical process three to three and a half years ago in the last Parliament, when we heard different people from the indigenous communities say basically the same things we're hearing today—big promises, no follow-through, and on and on. I'm glad you were able to come and reinforce what we've heard before.
One thing that's always stunned me about procurement from the indigenous community is that when we had the last set of committee meetings on this issue, we heard from indigenous people that they were getting no help from the government side, no real results. Then we heard witnesses say that they were getting great help from the energy industry, especially in Alberta. Then, when we brought the procurement bureaucrats in, they almost threw their shoulders out patting themselves on the back so hard. There's a complete disconnect between what you're telling us and what the bureaucrats will end up telling us.
One of the things I'm really glad you brought up was the part about tracking and setting goals. We've seen procurement for three straight years now, with two to be decided as their goal for achieving the set-asides. I think it's important for accountability and achieving results that we have these things.
For everyone here, Mr. Metatawabin, you mention how we're qualifying indigenous businesses. It's always a question of whether we are better off with a contract going to a non-indigenous-owned company that employs a very large number of indigenous people or whether the set-aside is for an indigenous-owned business that does not perhaps employ a large number of indigenous people. What delivers the best results for the community, and where do you see the balance between those?
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