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 72
Andrew Casey
View Andrew Casey Profile
Andrew Casey
2021-05-21 12:20
Yes, but also be careful. If you look at the TRIPS waiver, which has been in the news lately, there's a classic example of something that feels good, that feels like it's going to address a problem but I would argue that it won't. The reality is that's a really significant threat to a lot of our companies because it's essentially sending out the message that, look, if whatever you're working on becomes so valuable to the world that we all need it, we're just going to take it from you. That then becomes a disincentive to investors, so we have to be very careful about how we look at the treatment of IP. IP, at its very core, is essentially the asset. It's the mine. It's the forest. It's whatever other industry you want to use as an analogy. IP is the core of that company, so we have to really be careful of how we treat intellectual property in this country.
With tax incentives, finding different ways to commercialize.... The patent box would be good. The SR and ED tax credit is one of the best tools that we have in this country, but other countries are looking at it and going, “Hey, we can do better”. If you look at Australia, they're trying to get ahead of us. We have to keep it as competitive as possible with other jurisdictions so that they don't get ahead of us.
Ann Collins
View Ann Collins Profile
Ann Collins
2021-05-20 15:25
Thank you, Mr. Julian, for your well wishes. They are very gratefully accepted on behalf of the CMA.
I'm not an economist. I'm not a tax expert, but I am a family physician and I think that there is no question that the pandemic has fully laid bare the many deficiencies that exist in our health care system. Again, 5 million Canadians are without a family physician. In my province of New Brunswick and in neighbouring Nova Scotia, 100,000 people are on a no-doctor list.
I don't think Canadians are going to let this rest. The importance of health care is so critical. Good health care is critical to a strong and robust economy, and so again we applaud the government for the measures taken in budget 2021 and we look forward to honouring the commitment to primary health care teams and family physicians, who are so critical to the life of a good health care system.
Michael Villeneuve
View Michael Villeneuve Profile
Michael Villeneuve
2021-05-20 15:26
Thank you very much, Chair.
I'll just add quickly that, again, I'm not an expert on what the tax system should be, but of course we would support a fair, equitable tax system.
What we would put on the table is a reminder that we want to provide the best possible care for the best value, and many of the things that we do costs more than they need to. If you think about those 63,000 people who didn't have a long-term care bed because there were only 200,000 beds and there were 63,000 more people, it's not like they don't get care. They go to emergency. They go to the hospital.
Dr. Collins was talking about people who don't have a doctor. They go to expensive places to get that care and they're often sicker and it takes longer, so we believe that a different sort of look at funding health care systems could ensure that we, in a sense, keep people steps back from moving to the more expensive places and use the tax dollars more wisely.
I hope that is helpful.
Angella MacEwen
View Angella MacEwen Profile
Angella MacEwen
2021-05-20 12:34
Thank you very much. It's nice to be here with all of you.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees is Canada's largest union, with over 700,000 members. Our members work in a broad cross-section of the economy such as health care, education, municipalities, libraries, universities, social services, public utilities, emergency services, transportation and airlines.
With regard to this budget, we want to reiterate that investment in the care economy, including health care, child care and social services, will have social and economic returns far higher than the current cost of borrowing. A vibrant, accessible care sector ensures that everyone can participate in the workforce, which will be essential throughout the economic recovery. Government investment in care improves labour market outcomes for women and overall productivity, allowing governments to recoup the upfront costs at the end, so we're very glad to see the investment in child care that was proposed with the provinces.
To make sure this reaches its full potential, we need to see a strong workforce development plan alongside the proposed child care spending to make sure that we have enough trained workers and to ensure that the lower costs of child care we want to see for parents is not being subsidized by pushing the wages of workers even lower than they already are.
In terms of employment insurance, CUPE has long asked for some of the reforms to employment insurance that we see temporarily implemented here such as the lower-paying Canadian entrance requirement and the extra five weeks in high unemployment locations.
We were disappointed to see that the promised extension of EI sickness benefits to 26 weeks has been delayed until the summer of 2022, because that leaves a substantial number of long-haul COVID patients without the economic supports they'll need. They will have exhausted all other benefits, and implementing the EI sickness benefits right now would have been a way to kind of bridge that gap for a lot of people.
We are happy that there is substantial money for training; however, nearly all of it is being targeted for employer-led and employer-developed training. There is no direct support for workers themselves and no support for worker-selected training. The need for training supports and flexibility on training will only grow more urgent as Canada's economy transitions to create more green jobs.
On the minimum wage, CUPE is happy to see the federal government establish a federal minimum wage of $15 per hour. We recommend that the federal minimum wage be adjusted upward annually faster than CPI for the first five years, recognizing that the costs of essentials such as food, water and shelter are increasing faster than the overall rate of inflation, and the $15 rate is what was proposed several years ago and has already been eaten away by several years of inflation.
In terms of tax fairness, this budget was a big disappointment. Tax cuts since 2000 have reduced federal revenues by over $50 billion annually, and the major beneficiaries of these tax cuts have been large corporations and the wealthiest Canadians. These cuts have left a huge hole in federal budgets and have had a ripple effect across provincial budgets as the federal government stepped back from funding essential public services.
The federal government could have increased revenues by over $50 billion without increasing tax rates on middle- and low-income Canadians with fair tax measures like restoring the federal corporate tax rate to 21%; eliminating wasteful and regressive tax loopholes; changing how we tax capital gains deductions, the benefit of which goes to the top 10% of income earners; cracking down on tax avoidance in ways that we know will make a difference rather than just continuing consultations; and introducing a wealth tax on estates over $20 million. The federal government should also still consider introducing an excess profits tax that could raise up to $8 billion, even if it's only on 15% of excess profits for one year.
In terms of transparency and accountability for public supports, unions asked the federal government, when it was implementing supports such as the wage subsidy, to make sure the rules for this program were fair. What we've seen is that did not happen, so lots of very profitable companies have taken public money at the same time as they were paying out big bonuses to executives and dividends to shareholders, laying off or locking out workers and using the wage subsidy as a way to push workers to accept lower working conditions and wages.
There's substantial room for improvement in terms of the transparency of corporate support to ensure the effectiveness and fairness of public spending. CUPE has recommended several ways in which the government could strengthen these conditions and improve transparency and accountability. These include clauses that mandate labour protections for workers, including protection of benefits and health and safety protocols, and ensure protections for whistle-blowers. When there is a union in the workplace, include them in the negotiations for wage subsidies and other supports. For a year after a corporation receives public subsidies or loans, implement prohibitions on dividend capital distribution and share repurchases.
As well, make information about all of this, about how public money is being spent, clear and publicly available.
Thank you.
Chris Aylward
View Chris Aylward Profile
Chris Aylward
2021-05-18 17:12
My home department is the Canada Revenue Agency, and a lot of the inequities we see in the country are economic inequities. Until we get a good grasp of that and make sure that all loopholes are closed, the wealthy are going to keep getting wealthier and, unfortunately, those who are struggling will continue to struggle.
A wealth tax is long overdue in this country. It would ensure that the wealthiest pay their fair share. They're not right now, and until we get a good grasp of that, unfortunately it's going to continue that way. The numbers will continue to go in the opposite direction, which is not going to be good for the economy, nor for Canadians.
Kim G. C. Moody
View Kim G. C. Moody Profile
Kim G. C. Moody
2021-05-18 17:25
No. The only exception to that would be the compliment I gave in my opening remarks, which was a bit of a surprise, for the immediate expensing of certain capital assets. That was unexpected and welcome, but outside of that, no.
Toby Sanger
View Toby Sanger Profile
Toby Sanger
2021-05-18 11:07
Thank you very much, Chair, and good morning members.
There are a lot of positive measures in Bill C-30, and I'd like to commend the government for introducing them. These include the $15-an-hour minimum wage, extension of COVID and EI benefits, funding for child care, funding for infrastructure, funding for health care and much more. We're glad the federal government will finally apply the GST, starting July 1, to imports of digital services, short-term rentals through digital platforms and goods supplied through fulfillment warehouses like Amazon. This is long overdue but still appreciated, and it is one step towards levelling the digital playing field.
For far too long, Canada has given foreign digital giants—some of the largest companies in the world—generous tax preferences at the expense of Canadian companies and producers. This has contributed to hundreds of business closures, thousands of jobs lost and billions in revenue foregone. Since the pandemic began, it has only gotten worse, as sales by companies like Amazon have exploded while main street businesses across Canada have suffered enormously. The government should eliminate the tax deduction for advertising on foreign Internet platforms. This has contributed to billions in advertising flowing to Google and Facebook, and loss to Canadian media outlets.
We're glad to see the government commit to introducing a digital services tax on the revenues of foreign e-commerce giants starting next year, but the proposed tax will only apply to a small number of companies in specific sectors. Because a digital economy can't be ring-fenced, the Canadian government must also support fundamental international corporate tax reforms at the OECD negotiations now taking place, including support for a global minimum corporate tax at 21% or higher, as U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed; treating multinational enterprises as unitary enterprises for tax purposes; and allocating the profit of multinational enterprises among countries using real economic factors, just as we do among provinces in Canada.
We're glad the government has also finally taken some action on restricting a number of corporate tax loopholes and the stock-option deduction loophole. However, we believe the stock-option deduction loophole should be completely closed instead of just partially closed.
This government should also take inspiration from U.S. President Joe Biden, who is planning to eliminate lower tax rates on capital gains for the wealthiest. It's unconscionable that the wealthiest in society pay a lower tax rate on their investment income than ordinary working people pay on their employment income. This is something that wealthy investors, such as Warren Buffett, Bill Gross and Bill Gates agree with eliminating.
Speaking of the wealthy, inequalities of wealth have only gotten worse during the pandemic, with Canada's billionaires increasing their fortunes by about $80 billion over the past year. A mildly progressive wealth tax on fortunes of over $10 million could raise about $20 billion a year. I'm glad that this government has committed to identifying ways to tax extreme wealth in its throne speech, but disappointed that there was nothing about it in the budget. A large majority of Canadians, including Conservative supporters, support having a wealth tax. Even the IMF and OECD both recently called for countries to introduce and expand inheritance and wealth taxes. I hope to see them in a number of different election platforms soon.
Just as Canada's billionaires have become much wealthier during the pandemic, many large corporations have made record profits. The study we released yesterday revealed that 50 of Canada's large corporations made record profits last year, with a number of them also collecting the CEWS wage subsidy and paying low rates of tax. When the CEWS program was first introduced more than a year ago, I was the first to call for much stronger conditions. This would have prevented the type of misuse and wastage of public funds that we've seen with this program. We should now do what we did during the world wars and what the IMF recently suggested and introduce an excess profits tax and pandemic surtaxes on those who have profited excessively during the pandemic, to recover some of those public funds.
We're glad the government is making carbon incentive payments more visible. We've advocated for this for many years. However, the federal carbon pricing framework also needs to be significantly strengthened by ensuring that large emitters pay the full carbon price and by applying carbon tariffs and rebates on imports from and exports to countries without carbon pricing so that Canadian industry and jobs aren't adversely affected. We also need to finally eliminate the federal fossil fuel subsidies. It's long overdue that we end this climate hypocrisy.
Finally, I'd like to commend the finance Minister for committing to introduce a public registry of the real owners of companies. This will help reduce money laundering, tax evasion, and other criminal activities.
The federal government should also increase transparency and accountability in other ways, including strengthening whistle-blower protections, and requiring that large multinational corporations publish country-by-country reports of their sales, profits and taxes paid.
Thanks very much, and I look forward to a further discussion and questions.
Toby Sanger
View Toby Sanger Profile
Toby Sanger
2021-05-18 11:59
Absolutely, there is a cost. We came out with a tax fairness recovery plan before the budget in which we outlined a number of ways the federal government could generate over $70 billion in additional revenues. These could then be used both for paying for the pandemic by helping to fund the recovery and by introducing new programs such as those.
I do want to say that, after hearing the testimony of others, I really do want to commend parliamentarians and the government for bringing in really important programs. I do think that Canada's programs were some of the best in the world, but I do get concerned when some of them are not that well targeted, which then undermines confidence in government programs. Not only does it cost more, but it also undermines confidence in government programs.
The method of moving forward with things like the CEWS program can be problematic in that way. It would be better if it were targeted at those who really need it, and funds then don't go to things like hedge funds or highly profitable businesses, as we have outlined.
Then there are also different ways that the government could recover some of those funds, such as through an excess profit tax or through other things. We have really seen increasing inequality during this pandemic, and I think people are really compassionate and understanding about what's happened.
We do need to move forward, and there are a lot of ways that the government, which has very large deficits, is going to have to pay for these. There are a lot of ways that government can move forward by taxing the highly profitable corporations and the wealthy who have done very well not only over the past decade but over the pandemic as well.
David Macdonald
View David Macdonald Profile
David Macdonald
2021-05-18 13:26
Thanks, Mr. Julian, for the question.
Certainly, the tax system can play the role of equalizing or creating a more equal society in an after-tax sense, which is to say taking that money and redistributing it, but also restricting the maximum gains you get at the top end.
In terms of raising the revenue, of course, what this does is it provides us with fiscal room for additional programs. For instance, if we wanted to further expand the child care program or provide much better standards of long-term care from new transfers to the provinces, this is the sort of thing that would give the federal government more flexibility in doing so.
The present federal government's take of the Canadian economy in terms of revenue to GDP is relatively low. It has been much higher in the past. We're nowhere near all-time highs in the revenue take on either the revenue side or the expenditure side of the federal government. The points that you mention about a wealth tax or an excess profits tax are additional things that I think are worth examining in the context of COVID-19. That's in addition to other measures—for instance, some way in the short term of clamping down on profit-shifting as we wait for the BEPS committees at the OECD to work through international proposals on how we do that in a more coordinated way.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Results: 1 - 15 of 72 | Page: 1 of 5

1
2
3
4
5
>
>|
Export As: XML CSV RSS

For more data options, please see Open Data