Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1  The Conservatives ignored the Canadian chambers of commerce on the trademark provisions that were in this bill. There were also the intellectual property components; and FATCA, on which my friend from Victoria has done amazing work, exposing this travesty that over a million Canadians may be exposed to the IRS because the Canada Revenue Agency is going to play some sort of middleman role and pass on the private banking information of up to a million Canadians.

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1  Buried within the omnibus bill is a tax treaty, an intergovernmental agreement with the United States, our largest trading partner, on a piece of legislation that was pushed through Washington, much to everyone's disdain and anger. It is called FATCA, which would be used to try to grab money from Americans living overseas. Now Canada is obviously not a tax haven, and the Americans admit that, but lo and behold, Canada has to do something about this.

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1  Surely when we are looking at this 350-page budget document that would change everything from veterans to FATCA to all the other things that are in there, could we not have put one small regulation in place to prevent the anti-competitive practices being used by Visa and Mastercard and some of the banks and help our small businesses continue to grow?

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1  Canadians care very deeply about the privacy issue, but once again we are giving away valuable information through the IRS and FATCA. The justification is that because the government may suspect someone could be doing something, it has a right to surveillance without any kind of legal right to do so. The attitude is, “We are the government, and we now have that right”.

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1  The worst part of this closure motion, this time allocation motion, is the provisions of the bill. We are talking about FATCA, whereby a million Canadians of American origin would simply be flushed away by the current government. They would have no constitutional protections, no privacy protections. Even though we pushed for them at committee, the government refused to adopt them.

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1  We have been asking for that for a number of years, trying to convince the government that there is a problem with the temporary foreign worker program. Unfortunately, they have not addressed it. To answer the question on FATCA, yes, it is a huge issue in my community of Surrey North. There are many Canadian citizens who will be affected by it. This would affect their privacy, and I hope the government will take seriously some of the amendments we are offering in order to correct some of the problems with the bill.

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1  Speaker, at the finance committee, of which we are both members, an official from the Department of Finance confirmed that one million people in Canada, so-called dual citizens, would be affected by FATCA and the government's implementation of that. At the finance committee, the New Democrats moved two important amendments, one that would confirm that this bill would not override the Privacy Act and the charter and another requiring notice before personal financial information would be sent to the U.S.

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1  They cannot imagine why Canadian veterans and their spouses have to chase this Minister of Veterans Affairs down the hall just to be shown a modicum of respect. Regarding FATCA, I could do an entire speech on this agreement. The Conservatives said they wrestled hard with those Americans and they really brought them to their knees, and they got basically nothing.

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1  I am sure she will vote for it happily without even understanding it. I want my friend to expand a bit on not just the process, but on the issue of FATCA, this agreement with the U.S., and how little information has gone forward to Canadians, how there is no legislative rush that the government has put on this, that it is ramming something through that would affect up to a million Canadians and their private banking information, sending it on to the IRS.

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1  Flaherty spoke up compassionately against these accidental Americans who would be caught in what I call the FATCA web. There are a million of them and the government is standing by and waiting for an inevitable lawsuit because it did not stand up for our sovereignty when this was before us initially.

Privacy  Speaker, there is no clearer example of Conservative disregard for the privacy rights of Canadians than their rush to hand over personal financial information to the American IRS under FATCA. Last night, Conservatives even voted against an NDP amendment that would ensure compliance with the Charter of Rights and with the Privacy Act. They have refused to fix even a single comma.

Finance committee  It would require our banks or financial institutions to provide 60 days' notice to those people who were caught in the FATCA web. There can be no doubt as to the constitutionality of this. Banks are federally regulated. This is a requirement of those institutions to provide notice. That would, I think, alleviate some of the concern of so many of our fellow citizens who are going to be caught in this law.

Finance committee  We have heard testimony from him and from some others, that maybe in the process of a bank inquiring after a client's information, that may not tip them off, but give them the indication that they may be in this FATCA net. That seems a passive way to go about this. If privacy laws are of any interest, and sovereignty is of any interest to my friends across the way, then this simple notification measure here requiring the banks to notify somebody, it's not....

Finance committee  I'm bringing this up somewhat in assistance to Mr. Keddy as he was talking about if the U.S. side of FATCA is terminated, there is a consequence obviously on this side. Why would we uphold an agreement that we were forced into somewhat unwillingly and maintain it except for this one section of XVIII where six years of reporting is held by the banks?

Finance committee  Is this completely exclusive of FATCA? This is just statutes under Canadian law and the tax act.