Finance Committee on Feb. 19th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

I have Monsieur Dubourg and then Monsieur Dionne Labelle.

[Emmanuel Dubourg, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll keep it brief.

First of all, I fully support getting an update on the situation for a number of reasons.

When I joined the committee, I was brought up to speed and told about the work the committee had done previously. It had reported on tax evasion and the use of tax havens. But a lot has changed since then, hence the importance of obtaining more up-to-date information.

To the point my colleague, Gerald Keddy, made about the great job CRA is doing dealing with tax evasion, I would say that all these numbers simply underscore the problem around transparency. How is it that we're getting that information now? Everyone knows that the Parliamentary Budget Officer formally requested the data but wasn't able to obtain it.

The member is claiming that CRA is doing a great job dealing with tax evasion, and yet the Parliamentary Budget Officer isn't even being allowed to evaluate that performance. Other countries have taken things further. If we want to show that the situation has improved, we have to know where we stand. Let's start by giving the Parliamentary Budget Officer access to the relevant information, and from there, we can determine how much progress has been made. We can't do that right now. We're forced to accept the figures Mr. Keddy is giving us.

As parliamentarians, we should, under normal circumstances, have access to that information.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Colleagues, it looks like we'll have to deal with Mr. Saxton's motion at the next meeting, but I would like to have a vote on this.

Very briefly, we'll hear from Mr. Dionne Labelle and then Mr. Cullen.

[Pierre Dionne Labelle, NDP, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Mr. Chair, you'd like me to make one last comment, so here it is.

I listened to the figures cited by the member. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists will obviously verify all those numbers because they don't entirely square with what was said.

What's more, the member is trumpeting a disclosure mechanism for international tax evasion, but we have nothing in that respect so far. In fact, the mechanism hasn't produced any results. And no charges have been laid in relation to the 264 cases in which agreements were made. Those individuals have intermediaries somewhere. You don't just throw $20 million or $30 million in a suitcase and travel to Switzerland. The money moves in certain ways through certain channels.

The purpose of the motion is to identify the strategies that were used. What were they? Who were the offshore companies involved? Were Canadian intermediaries involved? The member can't even name one. These things didn't just happen on their own, so we need to do this study.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Merci.

Mr. Cullen, do you need to add...?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I appreciate this. I had questions actually on what Mr. Keddy was saying because there was a mixing between the specific ones that Swiss Leaks pointed out and the general efforts of government for tax evasion, so I feel like what was offered back for the government not to approve this motion was a mixture.

I'm looking through the countries that have launched criminal investigations on this exact same file, which Canada has not, and they include Belgium, Britain, Switzerland, France, the U.S., Argentina and on down the list. So for a government that shows aggressiveness on this, they're not showing it. Voluntary is nice, but with this we were handed, as the British said in their case, 6,000 files ripe for investigation in Canada. Mr. Keddy is going to claim some number less, but there are apples and oranges being mixed in terms of how many of the Swiss Leaks accounts have actually been followed up and what is the actual amount the Canadian government has recuperated from this and mixing that with other voluntary disclosures on files that are not at all connected to the motion Monsieur Dionne Labelle put forward today.

I feel like the government is evading the question, not to use the term too much, as to our ability to get at this. For a government that is facing budget shortfalls, I would imagine that being aggressive on some of these things would be directly in the interests of making their promise to balance the books by going after some of the biggest tax cheats, who, by the way—and I'll end on this, Chair—may be very much connected to the international terrorism that the government seems consumed with right now.

That's what some of these exact accounts were used for. They were for funnelling money through legitimate accounts to illegitimate accounts then funding some of the worst and heinous acts going on around the globe. That's what the British and the French and the Americans have been finding. Why this Canadian government seems so interested in voluntary action is beyond me.

I know you want to get to a vote, and we can move on to Parliament.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

All those in favour of the motion...?

(Motion negatived)

That motion is defeated, so, Mr. Saxton, we'll do your motion at the next meeting.

Thank you. The meeting is adjourned.