Finance committee  This is fairly recent research that has been done, and I think it does point out what should be of concern to all of us. This is of concern, as I pointed out before, not only for tax evasion but also for money laundering, organized crime, financing terrorism, and so on. Even if

Finance committee  When I had information from reliable sources in the U.K. about Canada's objection to the proposed beneficial ownership rules under the G-8, I was scratching my head in trying to figure out why this could be. One of the possible reasons is that some of the practices in some juri

Finance committee  Thank you for the opportunity to share my views on Bill S-17. The tax conventions and agreements included in Bill S-17 will be of very limited use in improving the recovery of taxes from those hiding their money in tax havens unless some key elements of the tax havens action pl

Finance committee  There are a couple of things. One is that there is a problem of a race to the bottom in corporate tax rates, and this is a global problem. Canada is actually contributing to that problem. When I was in Washington last year, congressmen there were complaining that Canada is beco

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  I have talked with some CRA staff on an informal basis. The stories I hear would confirm that the situation has not changed. I've heard stories that CRA is so understaffed that it can't even open up some of the automatic information they get from the information exchange with oth

Finance committee  Could I just respond to one question here? I don't question that Canadian banks are probably pretty careful in terms of beneficial ownership accounting in Canada, but I would question what they do in their subsidiaries in tax haven countries. Even if they conform to the rules in

Finance committee  Yes. The problem with the bilateral information exchange agreements—

Finance committee  The problem with bilateral information exchange agreements is that you have to know a lot of information first before you can ask for information. Because of secrecy, it just doesn't allow the Canadian government to get very far, in a practical way, with these bilateral informati

Finance committee  It's mandatory disclosure, not just of companies but of individual accounts. The secrecy is a particular problem, more than just the low tax regime in some of these tax havens. So—

Finance committee  And this is—

Finance committee  I agree fully, and particularly in terms of curbing crime.

Finance committee  There has been a discussion of evasion and avoidance. One of the problems here is that as there is more and more aggressive use of tax planning and so on, it means that financial institutions start doing things that are legal but really shouldn't be, in my view. CRA continually n

Finance committee  Oh, it's essential. That's the next step, as the witness from Finance said last week.

Finance committee  Okay. The third main point I want to make is that the capacity of the CRA to go after tax cheats using tax havens needs to be increased significantly. While tax havens will require a concerted international effort, there is much more that Canada could be doing itself. The CRA in