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 384
View Wayne Easter Profile
Lib. (PE)
I will call the meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number 58 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, April 27, 2021, the committee is meeting to study the Canada Revenue Agency's efforts to combat tax avoidance and evasion.
Today's meeting is taking place in the hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of January 25 of this year. Therefore, members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. I think we all know here that only the person speaking shows up when we're in session.
With that, we are fortunate today to have here the Minister of National Revenue, the Honourable Diane Lebouthillier. She'll have a few opening remarks for about seven minutes, I gather.
Thank you, Minister. Not all ministers give us their remarks the night before in both official languages. We appreciate that.
With the minister is Ted Gallivan, assistant commissioner, compliance programs branch, who has been here many a time. We welcome him, as well.
We will start with the minister—
View Pat Kelly Profile
CPC (AB)
I have a point of order. I'll be really quick, Mr. Chair.
I agree with you. I do thank the minister for providing her remarks ahead of time. That was thoughtful of her to do so. I have read them. I'm sure everybody else has, as well.
I wonder if we might dispense with having them read into the record and go straight to questions.
View Wayne Easter Profile
Lib. (PE)
No, I don't believe so, Mr. Kelly. I find that the ministers do like to have an opportunity to make their statement. I think it's one of the reasons we don't get them if we take that opportunity away from them.
On this one I'm going to allow the minister to make her statement and thank her for her courtesy. It gives us, as members, time to better prepare questions.
Madam Minister.
View Philip Lawrence Profile
CPC (ON)
I can agree with the chair. I would certainly like to see more Liberals retire.
Thanks very much.
My question, obviously, is for the minister.
The inability to collect revenue from tax evaders—which is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $10 billion to $25 billion a year—has real consequences. Our debt now, Minister, is over a trillion dollars, the government's debt-to-GDP ratio will exceed 50% and the government has shown little, if any, ability to control spending. Despite raising taxes on many hard-working Canadians and business owners, it has shown also a very poor record of increasing revenue. In fact, it has zero record of it. No doubt that's partially due, as I mentioned, to billionaire evaders and Liberal friends avoiding taxes.
Will the minister finally come clean today and announce when the Liberals will be putting a tax on one of the few tax shelters left to middle-class Canadians—that being their homes? Otherwise, why would they be tracking the sale of principal residency, if not to eventually tax it?
View Philip Lawrence Profile
CPC (ON)
Thank you, Minister.
I just want to ask some questions. As I said, not getting income from tax evaders has consequences. I have a couple of questions that I would just like numerical responses to.
How many CERB recipients have you identified as ineligible? How many millions of dollars have you collected from fraudulent CERB benefits?
View Pat Kelly Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you for being here, Minister. It's nice to see you again.
In 2018, the Auditor General reported that the manner in which your agency treated tax filers with offshore accounts was different from its treatment of Canadians without offshore accounts.
Is that still the case at your agency?
View Pat Kelly Profile
CPC (AB)
I'm sorry, Madam Minister. That wasn't my question.
Minister, I asked you whether your agency still treats Canadians with offshore accounts differently from tax filers without offshore accounts?
View Pat Kelly Profile
CPC (AB)
Do you think it's fair for a Canadian without an offshore tax avoidance plan or offshore accounts to automatically lose a deduction if they can't produce documents within 90 days, whereas a Canadian with an offshore account is given months or years to comply with a request for information?
This is right from the Auditor General. I'm not making this up. It was three years ago that this report came out. I want to know if that's still the practice. Based on your last answer, I would really like you to comment and tell us whether you think that's fair.
View Pat Kelly Profile
CPC (AB)
The Auditor General observed that this was actually unfair, that Canadians who didn't have offshore accounts were automatically denied a claim or deduction if they couldn't produce documents in 90 days.
What I would like to know is whether there has been any progress on providing more fairness to Canadian taxpayers who will automatically lose their deduction in 90 days, compared with offshore filers who can defy with impunity a request for documents from the CRA.
View Julie Dzerowicz Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
I offer a warm welcome to the minister for being here today.
Mr. Gallivan, welcome to you in returning to our committee.
There's a false narrative put forward by the opposition that our federal Liberal government has done nothing to tackle evasion and tax avoidance. We heard from Mr. Gallivan that we've actually made a significant investment since 2015 in terms of tackling tax avoidance and tax evasion. There has been $444 million invested in 2016, $523 million in 2017, $90.6 million in 2018, $150.8 million in 2019, and an additional $304 million in this year's budget.
Minister, we also heard, as you mentioned, that this significant investment of over $1 billion has resulted in over $5 billion of identified additional tax avoidance coming into our coffers.
We've also heard that there's the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who do a bit of a ranking. They're the ones who broke the Panama papers and they've ranked Canada nine out of 80 in the world. We're among the top in terms of actually being able to tackle these issues on a global scale. Therefore, I want to give a huge thanks to you for your leadership, and a huge thanks for the leadership at the CRA, for the extraordinary efforts and work that they have done. Thank you for that.
To truly appreciate our efforts and how far we've actually come, can you take a few moments to add a little context to our government's efforts to fund the fight against tax evasion, by describing the situation at the Canada Revenue Agency when you took over as minister in 2015, after nearly a decade of Conservative cuts?
View Julie Dzerowicz Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you so much, Minister. My next question is the following.
As we speak here today, the Conservative Party is filibustering budget 2021. They're not only putting the continuation of COVID emergency support programs in danger, but they're also putting in danger a lot of the additional dollars.
I mentioned the $304.2 million allocated in budget 2021. They're putting all of that at risk in our fight to continue to tackle tax evasion and tax avoidance. Can you go into detail about why passing budget 2021 is critical and how the fight against tax evasion would be harmed if the Conservatives continue to hold it up?
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
I raised a point of order, Mr. Chair. The Conservatives have not been in power for six years. We would like the minister to answer our questions rather than making partisan speeches.
View Wayne Easter Profile
Lib. (PE)
Mr. Julian, that's not a point of order. That's debate.
You have about 50 seconds left between the two of you.
Ms. Dzerowicz.
View Julie Dzerowicz Profile
Lib. (ON)
Maybe based on that question, as was already mentioned, over $1 billion has been invested into taxing tax avoidance and tax evasion, and that is recent.
I would give an opportunity in the remaining seconds to ask the minister to describe the impact of our government's investments in the fight against tax evasion.
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Like the minister, I too want to wish you a happy birthday, Mr. Chair.
I am going to start with a statement. Then I will ask my questions.
Hello, Minister. Thank you very much for being here this afternoon.
The committee has already been working on the problems of tax evasion and tax avoidance for some time, in particular on the tax schemes put in place by KPMG, providing a financial vehicle to enable certain of its clients to reduce their tax payable. In light of the internal documents relating to this plan provided to the committee by KPMG on May 17, 2016, this could be a form of tax evasion, so of something illegal.
All these problems are extremely complex, as you acknowledged and pointed out in your speech. Today, for example, we can read in La Presse that data from the Canada Revenue Agency show that its recent efforts to combat tax evasion by the richest Canadians have not led to any charges or convictions. The same kind of article can be read on CTV.
Experts have appeared here to tell us that there is a feeling of impunity toward the government and the CRA, among the users of the tax havens and the tax law experts who create their schemes. We have been told that to put an end to this kind of behaviour, the United States brought out the heavy artillery to deal with KPMG: investigations by the Internal Revenue Service, threats of searches and of charges of obstructing justice, penalties, criminal charges of fraud and conspiracy against the firm and its officers, and threats to charge the firm with being a criminal organization. Here, there has been none of that. Instead, the CRA has proposed voluntary disclosures and still nothing has been resolved with the clients who did not agree.
The experts reminded us that it is not possible to control what we can't see. Unfortunately, as you said in your testimony, the Canada Revenue Agency does not have access to all the information for doing these audits. For example, KPMG keeps going to court so it doesn't have to share its information with the CRA. The experts denounce the appearance of impunity and unfairness for the rich clients and the companies that create these schemes. They conceal their information from the CRA and contest the requests in court. At the committee, it is extremely difficult to get answers to our questions, to shed light on this entire matter. There are even witnesses who refuse to appear, in spite of the summons issued by the committee. These are no jokes!
I repeat: it is important to shed light on this entire matter and get to the bottom of things. We have to be able to put in place laws, regulations, processes and guidelines to prevent any form of tax evasion. That is why I am asking you, as Minister of National Revenue, to initiate a public inquiry into the matter of the schemes created by KPMG that enabled Canadian taxpayers to collect money in the form of gifts or otherwise, money that was not included in the tax returns of the recipients, from companies in the Isle of Man or any other country, as section 231.4 of the Income Tax Act empowers you to do. I believe the committee could also adopt a motion to that effect a little later.
Do you want to initiate a public inquiry, Minister, please?
Thank you.
Results: 1 - 15 of 384 | Page: 1 of 26

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

For more data options, please see Open Data