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Results: 1 - 15 of 1133
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 Jean-Yves Duclos Profile
Lib. (QC)
Thank you, Ms. Harder, for asking the question.
I suppose and suspect you were there at the beginning of the meeting when we talked about the importance of thinking about procurement in a broad way, taking into account both the important advantages of providing services and goods to Canadians through appropriate procurement and also the economic advantages, the fact that we want procurement to be increasingly green procurement—
View Jean-Yves Duclos Profile
Lib. (QC)
That's exactly where I was going, because past the green procurement supply chain that we want to build, there is the social impact of procurement and supporting indigenous—
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.
Roger Ermuth
View Roger Ermuth Profile
Roger Ermuth
2021-06-16 17:05
Mr. Chair, in terms of procurement strategy and what was purchased in PPE, especially during the early days of the pandemic and so on, I would defer to our colleagues at PSPC in terms of what the rationale was there.
In terms of the social procurement, obviously a lot of work is going on and obviously a lot more work still needs to be done. There has been, in terms of the Nunavut agreement, some work done up north, some really big steps up north. Ongoing work with Indigenous Services Canada, PSPC and indigenous reference groups is going on to look at how we can move this forward.
Finally, I would note that the recently released Treasury Board directive on the management of procurement has also re-emphasized or refocused procurement planning to look at market access and allow socio-economic priorities.
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?
Charles-Antoine St-Jean
View Charles-Antoine St-Jean Profile
Charles-Antoine St-Jean
2021-06-15 17:00
Thank you very much for that question.
I think we saw that the last budget was talking about investing a lot more money in tracking the tax data, getting better systems and getting more legal firepower to the CRA to help combat tax evasion. This is the way we read the announcement from the government, which we support, but I will let my colleague Bruce Ball comment especially on the small business tax.
Bruce Ball
View Bruce Ball Profile
Bruce Ball
2021-06-15 17:01
Maybe I'll start with the first part of the question. I do know that a lot of businesses took exception, I guess, to the suggestion that they were somehow doing something wrong, and I'd agree that the majority aren't.
The issue is the underground economy. There are still business people and other people doing activities in the underground economy. Over the years we're working with CRA in trying to find ways to have these individuals or these companies come forward. Typically they're individuals, because corporations can be tracked, and there will be more of that with the registry, but it's to have these individuals come forward. We've been talking to them about education and taking advantage of the voluntary disclosure program and that kind of thing.
In addition to the money for verification, I think it's also important for the government to continue to try to get people out of the underground economy and to come forward and become compliant taxpayers.
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?
Bruce Ball
View Bruce Ball Profile
Bruce Ball
2021-06-15 17:04
I was listening to the conversation last week. I'm not sure that they were auditing small businesses generally.
What Mr. Gallivan said agreed with what I thought. They were doing reviews of the assistance programs, so maybe that was part of it. They were reviewing the wage subsidy applications and later the rental applications. I'm not quite sure what the audit activity would be if it wasn't around some of the support programs.
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