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Results: 61 - 75 of 179
View Chrystia Freeland Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Chair, let me commit to two things.
First of all, our priority absolutely is to support workers. That's what we're doing.
Second of all, companies getting support through the LEEFF program absolutely will face restrictions on dividends, share buybacks and executive compensation.
View Jagmeet Singh Profile
NDP (BC)
Mr. Chair, will the Prime Minister commit to fixing the proposed plan to help big businesses so that if a business hides its money in an offshore tax haven, cheating the public, it will not get help, and instead help will be directed towards people, workers, and those who need the help right now?
View Justin Trudeau Profile
Lib. (QC)
Mr. Chair, directing help to workers and people who need help right now is what this government has done since the beginning of this pandemic. With the Canada emergency response benefit helping over eight million Canadians, with the wage subsidy helping millions more, we are moving forward in ways that directly help workers. For large enterprises, the financing facility—
View Jagmeet Singh Profile
NDP (BC)
Mr. Chair, currently, there is no provision in the plan that the government has announced that would stop public money from going to a company that is purposely hiding its funds in an offshore account to not pay its full share of taxes.
Will the government commit to making sure money goes to workers, not to a company that is not paying its fair share of taxes?
View Justin Trudeau Profile
Lib. (QC)
Mr. Chair, the honourable member knows that we have taken significant measures as a government to ensure that we're cracking down on tax avoidance and evasion, and have invested significant amounts in the Canada Revenue Agency to do that. The member opposite likes to speak in generalities, but if he has specific companies whose workers should not be helped, please, he should bring those names forward to the government.
View Jagmeet Singh Profile
NDP (BC)
[Inaudible—Editor] company that has their money registered in an offshore tax haven should not get help, every single one.
View Justin Trudeau Profile
Lib. (QC)
Mr. Chair, can he name one company where he thinks its employees should not get help from the government?
View Alexandre Boulerice Profile
NDP (QC)
Madam Chair, I want to congratulate the leader of the NDP for his excellent speech.
In my introduction, I will be talking about health care, a topic he addressed at the end of his speech. He in a way opened the door for me by saying that, as New Democrats and progressives, we think that health care shouldn't be a business that seeks to make profits and money. We don't want long-term centres that care for our seniors serving mainly to line the pockets of their executives or shareholders.
People will say we're exaggerating, that we should be more flexible and that there could be exceptions, rules and a framework. I don't know whether everyone has heard this story, which goes back a few weeks. Many things are happening now, and we tend to forget them these days.
I want to go back to the case of the private Herron CHSLD, in Dorval, where an absolutely horrific crisis occurred. Montreal's public health authorities had to take over management of that private institution. People entered the facility at one point and realized that seniors had died and that their bodies were still in their beds. Bodies lay on the floor because they had fallen and no one had been there to pick them up. Patients had not been washed in weeks. Some had not eaten for days and were dehydrated because they hadn't been given water. Workers were so underpaid and their working conditions so poor that they left the premises when the crisis began. As a result, there weren't enough staff to care for the seniors and elderly patients.
It cost between $3,000 and $10,000 a month to live at the Herron CHSLD. These people had paid thousands of dollars every month, and some were injured or ill or had died in a total absence of dignity. As a community, we must ensure that this kind of thing never occurs again.
The situation in Quebec is worrying, although we've recently seen a glimmer of hope. People are beginning to come out of confinement, there has been a certain amount of economic recovery, and businesses are reopening. We hope it'll all go well. I encourage everyone to continue exercising caution and to abide by the rules. It must nevertheless be understood that more than 3,800 deaths have occurred in Quebec since the COVID-19 pandemic began, a figure that represents more than 50% of cases in Canada.
Once again, I want to thank and congratulate all the workers in our health care system who are making enormous sacrifices and displaying incredible courage. They do not stint on the number hours they must work. However, legitimate demands are emerging, in particular, from nurses, lab technicians and other health professionals. These people are getting tired and are entitled to a vacation this summer. I also hope that, in the next few years, they will be entitled to better working conditions, higher wages and more protective medical equipment.
Talking about courage, I'd like to tell the story of Marcelin François, one of the people who answered the call and was involved in providing care to seniors. He worked in a factory five days a week and in CHSLDs on weekends. He had registered with an employment agency that assigned people from one CHSLD to another, a practice that was already quite risky and that ultimately led to his death. Mr. François contracted COVID-19 while working at a CHSLD and died in mid-April.
I mention Mr. François because you should know that his wife, family and he arrived in Canada a few years ago by a route that made the headlines and was the subject of much discussion in the House: Roxham Road. Mr. François was in fact a refugee, and asylum claimant, who did all he could to give his family a new chance and a new life.
His is a dramatic story, but one that also explodes some myths and prejudices. Here in the House, refugees and asylum-seekers have often been described as people who pose a danger to our society, who want to take advantage of the system and take our place. At times, we have even heard parties further to the right than ours say they were potential criminals.
One realizes from this true-life example that this man and his wife had come here to participate in our society, to help our society. This man wanted so much to help society that he went to work in the riskiest possible place and paid for it with his life.
Remember that all these asylum-seekers, most of whom come from Haiti but also from African and Latin American countries, have actually come here for a new life, to escape oppression and misery. I think we should be able to reconsider the way certain columnists and even certain media view the contribution these people make and the way we should treat them.
What we of the NDP want is for the process to be expedited for all these workers who currently provide essential services to the public and who have no status because they are asylum-seekers so that they can be granted a status, at least permanent resident status, which would afford them a degree of protection and confidence in the future. We're talking about a few hundreds of individuals. I think that, if these people put their health and safety at risk to care for and protect our seniors, the least we can do would be to recognize that contribution by affording them a little more security of status in Quebec and Canada.
With respect to essential workers, I want to signal the work done by all the individuals in our cities and towns, all the municipalities, who maintain our services so we can still enjoy potable water, garbage collection and buses that run in our cities to ensure our communities operate properly.
As I said a little earlier today, municipalities unfortunately receive no assistance from the federal government. The municipalities are currently an administrative creature of the provincial governments. We are well aware of that fact.
We of the NDP are convinced that, in a crisis such as this, we can sit around the table, discuss issues and find solutions. This wouldn't be the first time a special federal-provincial-municipal program was introduced. That has occurred tens of times with respect to infrastructure. We could repeat the process now because the municipalities are truly in a bind and increasingly ringing alarm bells.
At a press conference just yesterday, the mayor of Montreal issued a heartfelt statement about the coming fiscal abyss, wondering where she could find $500 million.
The municipalities, which are not allowed to run deficits, have two remaining options: either raise property taxes, which would be catastrophic in the current situation, or reduce public services.
Considering a figure as impressive as half a billion dollars, what municipal services do you think can be cut? The situation is impossible and unmanageable. I think the federal and provincial governments must cooperate because neither the transit corporations nor the municipalities currently have access to programs such as the emergency wage subsidy. They are genuinely left to their own devices.
Unfortunately, the federal government is also dragging its feet on another issue, and this is absolutely incomprehensible. I'm talking about the asymmetrical bilateral agreement between the governments of Quebec and Canada on social housing. We've known this was coming for months now. The first time we discussed the need for a social housing agreement between Quebec City and Ottawa was two and a half years ago, in 2017.
We'll be running into a wall in July, when a housing crisis will occur. With rising rents and lost jobs and reduced incomes for people, they'll no longer be able to stay in the housing they now enjoy and will be forced to find other accommodation.
The rental vacancy rate in Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie is 1%. What other housing can these people find? Will they have to move to other neighbourhoods? Will they have to relocate their families, and will their children no longer be able to attend the same schools in September?
We've been dragging our feet for years now and we'll feel the consequences this summer, in July. If we could at least reach an agreement, we could start work to provide social housing and affordable housing for next year, for 2021 and 2022, to avoid making the same mistake again.
One federal government minister warned us in February that this was coming. Nothing has happened yet, and it's now past mid-May.
Is this because we're engaged in a petty squabble over who'll decide on standards and money and what flag will fly over the building?
I consider these squabbles utterly appalling, at a time when lives are at stake. I discussed a simple solution a little earlier: that we send Quebec the $1.5 billion that it's owed and that has been sitting here in Ottawa for two years. Quebec has a good program, AccèsLogis, on which there has been virtually unanimous agreement. We could use it to begin new housing construction.
Among the somewhat odd things the Liberal government is doing, there is its tendency to turn a blind eye to tax havens while falsely arguing that we want to set workers against each other. No, we don't want to set workers against each other. We're simply saying that a person who doesn't pay his fair share of tax, for example, shouldn't expect to receive taxpayer assistance.
This lax government turns a blind eye and overlooks the fact that businesses cheat by sending their money to the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and Barbados. By maintaining the status quo, this arrangement enables them to take the public's money and avoid paying their taxes, while this costs us tens of billions of dollars every year. This is utterly unacceptable.
I'm going to discuss another Liberal government shortcoming. Large companies receive money, and that's fine, because the crisis has hit everyone. They have a lot of employees and we want them to continue their operations. The Minister of Finance has announced a new assistance program for large businesses in addition to the 75% wage subsidy. Companies can rely on two programs, which is promising. However, could we request commitments or demand guarantees in some instances that these amounts actually serve Canadian workers?
The NDP very much suspects that this money will be used instead to pay bonuses to officers or dividends to shareholders or to provide employment for people who do not work in Quebec or Canada. For example, Air Canada is a company that benefits simultaneously from the two programs. And yet it continues to lay off employees. The machinists union contacted us to discuss some absurd situations.
Several aircraft in the Air Canada fleet operate around the world, but especially in the United States. Those aircraft require daily maintenance. Air Canada, which is receiving assistance from Quebec and Canadian taxpayers, currently leaves its aircraft in the United States, and American workers are maintaining them. Given the billions of dollars provided to Air Canada, we could demand that it repatriate its aircraft to Quebec and Canada so they can be maintained by Quebec and Canadian workers. That's unfortunately not the current situation, and we find it utterly deplorable.
We're also concerned about Internet access. The present crisis clearly shows the extent to which the Internet has become a vital public service for economic activity, communications and our ability to continue working via telework and videoconferencing.
Two federal funds have been established to cover more territory and serve more communities that do not have Internet access. One of them is managed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, and the other, the $1.7 billion universal broadband fund, is managed by the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. One of our fears is that contracts may be awarded to telecommunications giants and that they will parcel the work out to subcontractors, who will take a percentage of the profits and outsource to other subcontractors.
Ultimately, how will the regions and territories covered be selected? Will authorities act in the interests of the telecommunications giants and their subcontractors or in those of the public, of the people who currently don't enjoy this absolutely vital service? We will continue asking questions on this subject.
I would like to take this opportunity to say that I very much appreciate the opportunity to have five-minute discussions with the ministers during these plenary committee meetings. However, this subject is a good example of an issue for which the debate parameters should be slightly expanded so that we can discuss matters that concern people but which are not necessarily related to the pandemic or the current crisis.
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Canadians are suffering during this pandemic, but some very wealthy are profiting. During World War II, there were laws against profiteering, but this government seems to be providing incentives for profiteering. First, we talk about the corporate bailout program, LEEFF. It is open to companies that use tax havens, which is over 90% of Canada's largest publicly traded companies.
Why didn't this government shut the door to LEEFF to all companies that use tax havens?
View Justin Trudeau Profile
Lib. (QC)
Mr. Chair, as a government, we have increased substantially the resources available to Revenue Canada to go after tax avoidance and tax evasion in the billions of dollars. We will continue to do exactly that. We have no patience for those who don't pay their fair share of taxes as a government or as a country.
At the same time, we need to make sure that we are supporting workers across the country, whether they work for large companies or not. Perhaps the NDP is willing to put aside the tens of thousands of workers in 90% of Canada's largest companies, but we are not. We will continue to be there for Canadians.
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
Mr. Chair, not a single company listed in the Panama papers or the Paradise papers and not a single company involved in the Isle of Man scam have ever been charged with, let alone convicted of, tax evasion. They can all get the Prime Minister's corporate bailout.
Demark, France and other countries have banned tax-haven companies from getting bailouts. Why hasn't this government done the same?
View Justin Trudeau Profile
Lib. (QC)
Mr. Chair, as a government, we have taken very seriously the responsibility of cracking down on tax avoidance and tax evasion and ensuring that everyone pays their fair share. If the NDP really wants to continue on this approach, they should start naming companies that they feel should not be eligible and explain to their workers why they don't qualify for the help that other Canadians get.
We need to work first and foremost on supporting workers, but if the NDP wants to start listing companies whose workers shouldn't be helped, please go ahead.
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
I would disagree with your answer regarding how what we are doing compared to what other countries are doing and best practices, but I'll move on to another issue.
Other countries have actually limited the use of public funds to companies that use overseas tax havens. With the rollout of the LEEFF we have seen this week, you said specifically it is only those companies convicted of tax evasion. I'm tempted to ask very cheekily how many companies involved in the Panama Papers, in the Paradise Papers, or in the Isle of Man scam have actually been convicted of tax evasion. But we know the answer. It's absolutely zero. Over 90% of Canada's largest companies use overseas tax havens, companies like Cargill, that have been involved in the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the country. Cargill uses an overseas tax haven.
Many of the companies in the Paradise Papers and the Panama Papers use overseas tax havens. Can you confirm that if those companies, like Cargill, meet the other criteria, despite this open practice of using overseas tax havens, they will qualify for use of the LEEFF?
View Bill Morneau Profile
Lib. (ON)
Well, I think it's important to consider the aspects of this program that will guard against these challenges. You just pointed out one. Of course, companies that are convicted of tax evasion will not be eligible. But we've also been working together internationally to make sure the ability of companies to move money around, what's called base erosion and profit shifting, is more limited. That's actually reducing the scope for people to do the things without actually causing themselves to run afoul of the laws. That has been an important part of what we're doing.
Also, the condition in this new large enterprise facility will be that the money that goes is actually required to be used for Canadian operations, Canadian investments and protecting Canadian workers. That's an explicit condition of what we're doing here.
We've guarded against this, Peter, in multiple ways. Obviously, the work we've been doing for years has been reducing the ability of firms to do this. We're limiting it to those firms that have not run afoul of the law, and we're also focusing the investments, so they must be in Canada, for Canadian investments and for Canadian employees. Fundamentally we're trying to make sure that Canadian employment at these large organizations stays vibrant as we go through this challenging time.
View Richard Cannings Profile
NDP (BC)
Mr. Chair, the new support package for large employers apparently excludes companies that have been convicted of tax evasion. The problem there is that most tax avoidance by Canadian companies is completely legal. Companies like Cargill that shelter their profits in Luxembourg and have been convicted of tax evasion in the U.K. don't have a conviction in Canada. Has Cargill requested taxpayer help in this pandemic?
Results: 61 - 75 of 179 | Page: 5 of 12

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