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Results: 16 - 30 of 138
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you so much.
Mr. Poloz, you talked about growing out of World War II debt. Of course, in World War II, we had strong measures against profiteering, a wealth tax and a 100% excess profits tax at the end of the war, as you well know.
We have a government that has done absolutely nothing about the revenue side—no wealth tax, no pandemic profits tax, no cracking down on overseas tax havens. Do you feel it's important that we start to address tax fairness and the fact that we have billionaires and big corporations making money hand over fist and so many Canadians are struggling at this time and need resources and support?
Stephen S. Poloz
View Stephen S. Poloz Profile
Stephen S. Poloz
2021-05-18 13:56
Perhaps the question is offered in a very abstract way, but I can just say that Canada has, if not the fairest, one of the fairest tax structures across the OECD. There is an easily available summary of statistics on the OECD website of its cross-country analysis. I'm not saying that it's perfect—of course it's not.
Should the government be considering other things? Well, as I indicated in my opening remarks, whether you believe that stopping the rise in government debt and having it gently decline as a share of national income is sufficient to prepare us for another rainy day, that is more of a political consideration than an analytical one. I'm not going to express an explicit view on it. What I said was that technically it is sustainable in the way it has been presented, but I would listen to someone who thought that it was not good enough for the next crisis that might come along.
For that you would need some other measures, I guess, but I believe that putting those efforts into boosting economic growth is the fastest and the best way to do exactly that—adding to our future resilience. I don't know why we would raise taxes when you have all of those other great opportunities to boost economic growth. That's my position.
Michael Geist
View Michael Geist Profile
Michael Geist
2021-05-17 15:02
Sure.
I would start by noting that I think we've seen the flaws. Even Mr. Cash acknowledged that it's a flawed piece of legislation, and we now have the government contradicting its own departmental officials again and again on things that were directly included in government memos from the heritage department to the minister with advice on some of these issues.
It's a flawed piece of legislation. The concerns are real and legitimate, raised by an incredible number of people, including people who have been some of the biggest critics of tech companies in the country.
I would suggest that we need to get this right, because we don't change our legislation that frequently. Clearly, it runs sometimes for decades. At the same time, we need to ensure that there is money for creators for precisely the kinds of reasons Mr. Cash identified.
What I would say is that the starting point is tax dollars. The government has already announced it wants to increase the taxes on tech companies. It should take some of that tax money and allocate it directly to the various creator programs. In doing so, there could be money this year, at a time when there really is that need for money, as opposed to the way it will play out with this bill. It is undoubtedly going to take years before the CRTC finishes with the litigation that is inevitable to ensue. Nobody is going to see a dime coming out of this legislation for years. There's a mechanism both to get the legislation right and to ensure that creators get money and get it quickly.
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
Thank you.
I'm going to ask some questions—I probably don't have a ton of time—of Mr. Geist.
Mr. Geist, my colleague Mr. Champoux has just asked what we could do to make Bill C-10 something that you would be able to support. You speak about taking out that proposed section 4.1.
My concern is that we need to find a way to do this broadcasting legislation. We know it's 30 years overdue. What are the things, aside from that one, that you would like to see us do to ensure this legislation does what we've asked it to do in terms of levelling the playing field, protecting our artistic sector and our broadcasting sector, and also in terms of protecting freedom of expression?
Michael Geist
View Michael Geist Profile
Michael Geist
2021-05-17 15:56
As I mentioned earlier today, my view is that the legislation is flawed on a number of levels. Frankly, if the goals you just articulated are important ones, my view, especially on the finance side, is that the best thing we can do is make sure that money is made available quickly. We can do that through things like the digital services tax and other related tax measures.
I think that in many ways we have to go back and take a harder look at some of the approaches that are contained in this bill. I'm struggling a little bit with even some of the comments that I've heard today.
On this notion, for example, of net neutrality, which is a core principle that ought to be protected, we've had now both Ms. Yale and Professor Trudel say it has nothing to do with that. Their own report specifically notes that there are other emerging issues that go beyond classical Internet access and have much in common with the goals of net neutrality. I don't know if that was written by some of the members who aren't standing with them anymore and have broken away from the BTLR, but nevertheless it's clear that these are issues we need to be thinking about.
Janet Yale
View Janet Yale Profile
Janet Yale
2021-05-17 15:59
All right.
What I've tried to do is draw that distinction. Maybe I haven't done it clearly. The later amendments make it clear that the only thing that will be regulated with respect to platforms.... Let's keep the streaming services aside, because I think the controversy now seems to be more about the social media platforms than the streaming services.
Streaming services, as curators, purchase and create the content that they then package and make available to you. If a producer creates a show that is then offered on Netflix, it's generated by a creator, but I don't think we're talking about that in the same way as what we think of on YouTube as user-generated content where people make things—podcasts, songs, dances, whatever—and then post them to a platform. They're user-generated. They're not contracted directly by a streaming service. The platforms are available to people to put things on at their discretion.
That discretion doesn't change. People can post whatever they want on social media platforms. There's no regulation. The more recent amendments that Minister Guilbeault spoke to said that there would only be three things that could be done vis-à-vis those platforms—only three. There's been a real contraction of the regulation-making power of the CRTC vis-à-vis those platforms.
The three things are that, first, they have to provide information about their revenues, whether advertising or subscriptions. Two, those revenues are used to calculate what their levy will be, or their spending requirement, as the case may be. It's just how much you are making in Canada and what the appropriate amount is to make as a contribution. The third piece is what we've been calling discoverability, which is how to make the Canadian creative content visible.
That's it. I have a hard time seeing how that's regulation of the content. It just isn't.
View Martin Shields Profile
CPC (AB)
View Martin Shields Profile
2021-05-17 16:14
You refer to a simple tax to support our cultural industries, and you would like to see it done. As a mechanism, could we do it quickly?
Michael Geist
View Michael Geist Profile
Michael Geist
2021-05-17 16:14
The government has already announced it. It has said that it's going to implement a digital services tax starting next year. There are some concerns about moving forward in that regard without an international consensus, but the government has made it clear that it wants to move forward with it.
They've talked about the revenue it's going to generate. It seems to me there is nothing to stop the government from saying that it is going to take a portion of those proceeds and put them into the very funds we're talking about right now to support the creators and ensure that there is money right now, as distinct from the Bill C-10 approach, which is going to take, as I say, years to sort out through the courts and the CRTC.
View Heather McPherson Profile
NDP (AB)
Then it's the definition, but you're supportive of the idea of making Canadian content, making it more available, promoting it, ensuring that our stories are being told or whatnot.
When these web giants do not pay their fiscal fair share, I feel like it is a gift from the government to these web giants at the expense of our cultural sector, at the expense of our cultural enterprises and our cultural sovereignty.
How would we fix this so that we're not giving the web giants the gift and instead are giving our cultural sectors these gifts?
Michael Geist
View Michael Geist Profile
Michael Geist
2021-05-17 16:26
It's tax. The obvious way that we ensure that these companies contribute into the Canadian economy if they are as successful as we've been seeing is by ensuring that we tax them appropriately and have the revenues coming out of that taxation to use as we see fit. That's obvious.
The reality is that some of these companies are major investors in the country. Former heritage minister Mélanie Joly went out and got a $500-million commitment over five years to ensure that there was investment in production in Canada. It's not as if they produce nothing. Jusqu'au déclin is a good example, and Trailer Park Boys or others for Netflix. We can cite many of these kinds of examples.
I don't think it's correct to say that they don't contribute anything or that they aren't producing in Canada. They quite clearly are, but it is fair to ask whether they're paying their fair share from a tax perspective. There's evidence to suggest that because of the way the system has been structured, they have not been, and we need to fix that. With that tax revenue, we can do all of this without blowing up the Broadcasting Act in this manner and directly implicating the free expression of users.
Michael Geist
View Michael Geist Profile
Michael Geist
2021-05-17 16:27
Absolutely not. I would like us to update our broadcasting law to be a forward-looking law, not one that seeks to have a false equivalency and say that the only way we can do this is to look backwards and treat Internet companies the same as conventional broadcasters, which is what we are seeking to do, and we are increasingly finding a myriad of problems when that's the regulatory approach you take.
Let's get the Broadcasting Act right, for now and for the future, and let's at the same time ensure that there are revenues there through taxation.
View Tamara Jansen Profile
CPC (BC)
I think this might be in the same vein, but you'll have to forgive me if it's not.
Foreign-owned companies employ two million Canadians and are responsible for about half of Canada's exports. Attracting foreign investors is a high priority, yet our tax system makes it difficult for multinationals to transfer funds among its subsidiaries, making our country less attractive for investment.
In 2016, the Conference Board of Canada estimated that the withholding tax costs Canada up to $2.6 billion in foreign investments per year. Shouldn't we be tackling that issue head-on when we're desperately trying to grow our economy?
Trevor McGowan
View Trevor McGowan Profile
Trevor McGowan
2021-05-13 16:53
I don't know whether my colleague Maude Lavoie could speak to the economic side of it. I can speak to the legal and technical impacts of this measure.
What it does is it affects an existing rule in subsection 212(3) of the Income Tax Act that is aimed at addressing these foreign affiliate dumping transactions.
As I said earlier, it extends the application of these rules to situations where a non-resident individual or trust is investing into Canada. It does not in and of itself introduce a new obligation for corporations resident in Canada that are controlled by foreign corporations; rather it extends the application of an existing set of rules. It's not imposing it; it's extending it.
Also, it ensures more of a level playing field. We have a withholding tax, as was mentioned, on dividends coming out of Canada, and it ensures that, where withholding tax is intended to apply, that it actually does apply.
View Peter Julian Profile
NDP (BC)
I would just like you to run through those provisions, those changes, so that we can completely understand the impacts.
Results: 16 - 30 of 138 | Page: 2 of 10

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