Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-53, the settlement of international investment disputes act.
Should this bill pass, it will bring Canada one step closer to becoming a signatory country of the 1965 World Bank convention on the settlement of investment disputes. The convention is designed to facilitate the settlement of investment disputes between governments and foreign investors, thereby improving the conditions for international investment, which is what has been discussed today and certainly has been reflected in the questions that hon. members have posed to the government.
Any such disputes are argued before a tribunal at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes or ICSID, as members have been referring to it. Canada signed the treaty last December in Washington and in so doing, as has been mentioned, became the 143rd country in the world to sign on.
It will not come into effect until all the provincial and territorial governments have also signed on. Five have already done that, including Ontario in 1999. It is my understanding and the government's representation that the remaining provinces and territories have expressed approval in principle and interest, and are hopefully going to be signing in the near future.
Essentially, what the ICSID convention does is ensure that the domestic courts and any of the signatory countries have the power to enforce any arbitration amounts awarded by this tribunal. Although agreeing to the hearings is voluntary on the part of each party, once they have agreed to a hearing neither one can unilaterally withdraw from the process or refuse to pay any damages awarded by the tribunal.
In order to ensure an unbiased hearing, the arbiters are selected by contesting parties themselves. The ICSID then provides the hearings with a venue and the administrative support required to facilitate them.
At this time we in the official opposition will be supporting this bill. We believe it will help to provide recourse for Canadian investors who are sometimes hurt by the actions of foreign governments when those actions violate existing trade or investment treaties.
It will also let investors around the world know that Canada is committed to honouring its international treaties on trade and investment. This sentiment was expressed by the Minister of International Trade who said in his press release of March 30:
The ICSID Convention will contribute to Canada’s prosperity by providing additional protection to Canadian investors and reinforcing Canada’s investment-friendly image abroad.
With regard to the last part of that quote, the Conservative government has kept itself very busy over the past year doing just the opposite and in fact tarnishing Canada's investment image abroad. The most glaring example was the broken promise on income trusts. This particular event caused the largest meltdown in the financial markets in the history of Canada. There was $25 billion of investment value wiped out by a broken promise.
To remind members, it was the promise of the government not to tax income trusts. In fact, the Prime Minister himself said that the greatest fraud is a promise not kept. That promise was not kept to Canadians. During the election campaign the Prime Minister said that he will never, never, never tax income trusts.
That gave assurances to the marketplace and particularly seniors, 70% of whom do not have defined pension benefit plans and, as a consequence, were looking for investment instruments that would emulate a pension plan, and that was income trusts. That meant that they could receive regular cashflows from these investments in income trusts to pay their bills. On Halloween of last year, $25 billion worth of wealth was wiped out simply by that broken promise.
This has to do with the credibility of Canada. It has to do with foreign and bilateral investment. Investors feel secure dealing with a country when they know the rules of the game and they know they are not going to be arbitrarily changed at the whim of a government for whatever reason.
I had the opportunity to participate in the public hearings before the finance committee. It was clear that foreign investment issues were very key in this regard. The change of the rules of the game in the middle of the program had damaged the credibility of Canada in terms of foreign investment.
There is no question that there will be more on this subject. Over 2 million Canadians are very angry with the government.
The finance committee heard from some of the seniors. Some members would say that they were paper losses. However, that is like me saying I paid $50,000 for my house, which is now worth $300,000. However, if my property taxes go up 31% and my house value goes down that is okay because I still have the $50,000 value or more than that. The appreciation in the house price is not a paper gain.
Anyone who held an income trust lost that kind of money. One of my own constituents lost $125,000. An 82-year-old veteran has no way of recouping that lost investment value. The credibility of the financial markets of Canada is extremely important in terms of foreign investment.
There is also another angle to this issue that has not been discussed as much in the House. I am speaking of the damage that has been done to Canada's international reputation as a safe place to invest. In the weeks following the announcement many investors were likening Canada's Conservative government to a banana republic.
I realize the term “banana republic” gets thrown around a bit. If we take the time to consider it in this instance, there are some striking parallels. The term is considered to have been coined to describe Honduras in the late 19th century and the early 20th century. At that time the Honduran government was eager to encourage as much foreign investment as possible in its agricultural sector in the hopes of improving the nation's overall economy. In particular, the government sought out investment in its burgeoning banana sector and in new railroads to support that growth.
In 1893, in order to protect local farmers, the government unveiled a new tax on banana exports that caught all those foreign investors off guard. It was the new 2¢ tax levied on every banana exported from the country. That would be almost 50¢ per banana in terms of 2007 dollars.
Needless to say, investors, particularly American investors who had invested millions of dollars in the industry under one set of rules, were not very happy when the Honduran government changed the rules in mid-game. It is exactly what I described with regard to the income trust decision in Canada, a broken promise.
This is not the 19th century in Honduras. This is Canada and we have a 21st century G-7 economy. When the leader of a G-7 country promises never to tax something, a lot of people around the world will believe him and make their investment decisions accordingly.
When the Prime Minister promised arbitrarily that he wanted to levy a 31.5% tax hike on the trust sectors that affected particularly seniors. It undoubtedly raised questions about Canada's image as a safe and secure place to invest. That is the crux of this. It is nice to be part of treaties, but if people break their word, if promises are broken, if the rules of the game are changed in midstream, then their credibility and integrity certainly come into question.
That is one example of where the government has dropped the ball involving foreign investment.
Let us not forget the finance minister's ever changing story on interest deductibility. We can talk about relevant issues to the security of foreign investment and the implications to that investment, the credibility of that.
Earlier when I asked a question and I wanted to put a couple of quotes on the table. I should take the opportunity to do this now.
The question of interest deductibility is another flip-flop. It is to announce one thing, disrupt the marketplace and then all of a sudden change the story. It is a moving target. It is not will I tax it, will I allow the deductibility of interest on foreign investments or will I not. Now we are talking about double-dipping and double deductibility of interest in an offshore tax haven. We are talking about tower schemes.
There is more smoke and mirrors on the interest deductibility issue simply to confuse Canadians about the facts. The facts are the government, the finance minister particularly, did not do the homework. When we look at the reaction of the market and of the key leaders in the investment community, the retired senior partner of Ernst & Young and immediate past president of the Canadian Tax Foundation, Mr. Allan Lanthier, said, “this is the single most misguided proposal I've seen out of Ottawa in 35”.
Thomas d'Aquino, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives said:
—we are worried that the change announced in the budget may seriously undermine the competitiveness of Canada’s homegrown champions—the companies that are most active and most successful in building global businesses from head offices in Canadian communities. It may also damage Canada’s standing as an international centre for financial services.
Nancy Hughes Anthony, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said:
The proposal appears to be driven by revenue enhancement rather than a desire to build a competitive advantage....It's a real step in the wrong direction.
How about Len Farber, senior adviser at the law firm of Ogilvie Renaud, who said:
I thought this government was interested in Canadian companies having a competitive edge...This takes away that competitive edge.
What can I say? If members of Parliament cannot have their words accepted by the government, we have to look at the words of those who are responsible, the leaders within the business community, the leaders who look to having a competitive economy, to making Canada a real force not only domestically but certainly abroad.
In his March 19 budget, the minister said that he was intending to end the deductibility of interest incurred on loans to invest overseas. The budget was very clear that he meant all interest deductibility on foreign investment would come to an end by 2009.
We have gone through a litany of changes and the minister has flip-flopped on many occasions, saying that he is open to changes to the measure and the next day saying that there will not be any changes. At some point in time we have to take a decision, but when we keep changing direction, it makes it very difficult for the investment community to understand where we are.
On May 14, this past Monday, we saw the finance minister in full retreat in Toronto. He was taking advice in fact from the Leader of the Opposition. We even had an opposition day to encourage and to urge the government to fix this serious mistake that would damage competitiveness in Canada. He came up with a cute slogan. He said that today the budget was known as the anti-tax haven initiative.
We can keep calling things by different names, but the fact is there is back pedalling going on, and we need some clarity. That is really important in this issue.There has to be some clarity on these important matters on which Canadian businesses make decision.
There is something particularly interesting about how this issue has played out over the past six weeks. As legislators, we know that on every decision we can always find a number of interest groups or experts who are able to support a point of view or attack a point of view. In this case, however, everyone in the country, every serious commentator on this issue, were unanimous in their condemnation of the measure. In fact, as I read in some of the quotes, they basically said that this was the single most misguided policy Ottawa had seen in 35 years.
The chair of the task force, Jack Mintz, also backed away from the government on this one. As I indicated, the president of the Canadian Council, the chief executives and the chair of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce were quick to tell the government it made a mistake and to fix it before the damage is irreparable.
A minister stood alone defending the merits of the policy until last week when he said he would clarify his position. It turns out, according to the minister, that every CEO, every commentator and journalist in the country had simply misunderstood his intentions. It is hard to make that argument when the statement in the budget is as clear as clear can be.
I think it is pretty clear to all Canadians that the finance minister is in full retreat from his original plan, thanks largely to the efforts of the leader of the official opposition who saw this was a bad policy for Canada.
It is absolutely clear, once again, that the finance minister did not think things through before acting. He tried to change the very complicated area of tax policy with a very simplistic blanket solution.
This is key. There is a pattern of not thinking things through. There are consequences and they are not linear, they are multi-dimensional. When we get situations, for instance, on income trusts, where there is a gap between the tax paid by income trusts compared to dividend-paying corporations and we close that gap so there is some equity, we want to be sure that there are no other consequences. What were the consequences? It was to tax the income trusts and not only close that gap, but actually tax it so much that we had a $25 billion meltdown.
It even gets worse than that when we look a little further down the road. Ever since the Halloween massacre of income trusts, there have been 20 or more takeovers of income trusts by private equity, a couple Canadian, but mostly foreign. Why? Because the value of these income trusts were driven down enormously. Private equities can purchase these at fire sale prices. They can structure their affairs so they do not pay taxes to Canada.
Now it gets more complicated. In fact, those 20 income trust takeovers, because their structure permits them to no longer pay Canadian taxes, will pay in a foreign jurisdiction. What is the loss of tax revenue to the Canadian government, in fact, to the taxpayers of Canada? It is $6 billion per year of tax hemorrhaging, lost revenue to the Government of Canada. The problem the finance minister said he was trying to fix was that there might be about $5 billion of tax leakage over six years. This seems to indicate the minister did not think it through.
That is the issue. We cannot take a nuclear bomb to every problem. Sometimes it takes a little thinking and a little consultation before these snap decisions are made, which have such devastating consequences not only to Canadians, but to Canada's credibility and integrity in terms of foreign investor relations.
