Bill S-6 (Historical)

Canada–Madagascar Tax Convention Implementation Act, 2018

An Act to implement the Convention between Canada and the Republic of Madagascar for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income

This enactment implements the Convention between Canada and the Republic of Madagascar for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income and a related protocol.
The convention is generally patterned on the Model Tax Convention on Income and on Capital developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The convention has two main objectives: the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion. Once implemented, it will provide relief from taxation rules set out in, or related to, the Income Tax Act. That implementation requires the enactment of this Act.

Canada–Madagascar Tax Convention Implementation Act, 2018

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Madam Speaker, if I understand my opposition colleague's question correctly, he was talking about the importance of a good information sharing arrangement. That is the purpose of Bill S-6. That is also what we are trying to do with OECD member countries so we can really tackle tax evasion.

The NDP has had very little to say about one of the key elements. Let us not forget that the NDP wanted to run a Stephen Harper-style campaign on budget cuts and austerity. We are giving the Canada Revenue Agency the resources to do its job. That is important too.

Laws are one thing, but making sure the resources are available to enforce those laws is another. Our investments in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 gave the Canada Revenue Agency the resources to catch people who think they can get away with not paying their fair share of taxes in Canada.

As I said, that has always been a priority for our government, starting back when we raised taxes on the wealthiest 1% so we could cut taxes for the middle class. We are staying the course by giving the Canada Revenue Agency the resources to go after would-be tax cheats.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, there has been a great deal of effort by this government to talk about tax agreements and to deal with trade agreements and their impact on Canada's middle class, which has been overwhelmingly positive. I wonder if the member could provide his thoughts regarding the international approach we have taken as a government with moving forward on things such as tax treaties and trade agreements.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Madam Speaker, that is a very important question. Our world is so interconnected that the simple solutions that some are presenting, which involve Canada acting unilaterally and ignoring our trade partners, are rarely as straightforward as they seem.

Obviously, we need to work with our partners to come up with collaborative approaches to tax treaties, just as we do when it comes to trade. The trade agreements that were signed are another issue, I know, but they have helped and continue to help many Canadian businesses to develop, prosper and grow. A number of examples come to mind. For instance, under CETA, some businesses saw their sales explode overnight because they had access to the European market.

While I am on my feet, I would like to commend the efforts of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and all members of the House who took the time to speak to European parliamentarians to get this agreement in place. Canada is now the only G7 country that has trade agreements with every other G7 country. Access to those markets is an incredible advantage that helps Canadian businesses succeed.

The goal of our government's ongoing efforts is to increase prosperity. However, as I mentioned in my speech, unlike the Conservatives, we feel that, in order to be sustainable, all prosperity must be inclusive.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am glad to be joining this debate on the most exciting of subjects, tax and a tax treaty. For those constituents of ours who are tuning in on CPAC this early morning, or who have come to watch in the gallery, this is as exciting as this place is going to get, I think, until question period. I see the parliamentary secretary nodding his head, because he knows this too.

I am also glad his intervention covered so much subject matter beyond Bill S-6, because that now allows me to delve into the government's record on taxes, its management of different public policy issues like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, consumer confidence in Canada and business confidence in Canada, as well as how the government has approached Bill S-6.

I will start with an observation about this tax treaty and some of the comments made by the parliamentary secretary. He seemed to be placing Bill S-6 within the confines of trying to achieve greater tax fairness and doing other great things with the Government of Madagascar. He said the bill would make sure that Canadian companies and Canadian taxpayers who may be doing business in Madagascar would not be double taxed, and that it would increase trade and do all of these wonderful things.

However, when I asked officials a question at the Standing Committee on Finance, we heard there was such a small number of tax filers with tax filings in Madagascar that each instance raises confidentiality concerns. Officials from Finance Canada responded to me that these concerns are such that, “consistent with the taxpayer confidentiality protections in the Income Tax Act, the department is precluded from releasing these data”.

This may be why Bill S-6 comes from the other place, the Senate side. The department told me in this official letter to the Standing Committee on Finance that there are so few tax filers impacted by this that the department would not be able to release the data. I had asked which sectors of the Canadian economy and which sectors of the Madagascar economy would be affected, and whether there were any good examples. I did a quick Google and DuckDuckGo search, and I was able to find that Sherritt International was one of the companies in question. It is mostly a mining consortium. There was very little else that I could find.

To the credit of the Department of Finance, it did a pretty thorough review. It reviewed sources including the T1134 information return on foreign affiliates of Canadian taxpayers, the T1135 information return that collects data on specified foreign property holdings, the T106 information return on non-arm's length transactions with related non-residents, and Schedule 21 to the T2 corporate tax return on foreign income tax credits. The department examined all of the years to 2011 and then the subsequent years.

For those still able to follow, either in the public gallery or at home, Finance Canada did a thorough search to double-check how many of these filings would include Madagascar in some way, and they are actually very, very few. Perhaps the tax treaty will enable more business to be conducted by Canadians in that particular country, and there are opportunities yet to be found for this tax treaty and the consolidation of some of the rules to make it simpler for individuals to do business in both. I was unable to find an instance through any international organization or online that showed that Madagascar was behaving like a tax haven. I think that assuages some of the concerns individuals may have had.

I am sure the government knows that I will be supporting this piece of legislation as well. There was no concern about curbing tax evasion through Bill S-6, or about a potential increase in tax evasion. In fact, this is a very small piece of legislation that does not do what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance said. It is not part of a broader approach. If there are so few tax filers that the information cannot be released, then the impact is negligible. Therefore, it cannot be counted as part of the government's broader plan.

I am pouring out my heart here on what I believe about Bill S-6 and its contents, having spent several meetings at committee looking at this particular piece of legislation. I am feeling lighter. As the Yiddish proverb goes, when one pours out one's heart, one feels lighter, so now that the parliamentary secretary has poured out his heart about the government and what he believes its achievements are, I am going to do the opposite. I am going to poke holes in a couple of things he said. I am going to poke holes in some of the Liberal government's achievements, including in some of the statistics it likes to use.

At committee we asked both Global Affairs and Finance Canada for information on the specifics of Bill S-6 and who it would impact. We were told the bill would impact the mining sector. We were also told that detailed information could not be released because it would compromise the privacy of certain tax filers.

That is unusual. In prior cases, when we have done these tax consolidation treaties or signed up to multilateral international instruments with respect to taxes, such as Bill C-82, which was the tax treaty of tax treaties, it was always tens or hundreds of thousands of Canadians who would be impacted. That included Canadian-controlled private corporations in Canada. There would be many of them, so it was easier for us to estimate the impact.

The parliamentary secretary mentioned base erosion and profit sharing, which is not a fixed section in this particular piece of legislation. We have already had legislation to cover that off.

When I mentioned to my kids, who are very young, with my oldest being 10, that I debated an obscure bill called the Canada-Madagascar tax treaty, the first thing they wanted to talk about was King Julien and Skipper, Kowalski, Rico and Private, the famed characters from Penguins of Madagascar and the other movies in the Madagascar series. My kids were thrilled to watch that series when they were younger, and they are still thrilled to watch it today.

However, this piece of legislation is not about that. I am sorry to burst their bubble but this, unfortunately, is not about King Julien or those four little penguins.

The parliamentary secretary went off on a tangent at one point. He mentioned that the tax treaty in Bill S-6 would increase consumer confidence, and that it was part of a slew of policy decisions the government has been making to increase both consumer and business confidence. If he had bothered to check the latest statistics posted by different economic analysis bodies online, or if he had bothered to check the Conference Board of Canada, he would have seen that consumer confidence is just as low as it was in 2015. It has not improved since then. We can see that in our communities. I can see it in cities and towns all over Alberta.

However, there is more consumer confidence in Alberta now that we have Premier Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party in charge. A new cabinet has been sworn in, and on Tuesday of next week the members of the legislative assembly will be sworn in. I hope we will know the new plan for the province on Wednesday.

Some of that plan has already come out. The government of Alberta has already announced that it will get rid of the punishing provincial NDP carbon tax, which was far more punishing on Albertans and Alberta businesses than the federal backstop. That does not mean the backstop is any good. It does not mean the federal carbon tax is any better.

The Alberta government is basically proposing to return to the old system, which was working. It was the first system to put a price on carbon for the largest emitters, not directly on consumers. The system worked. It was lauded all across North America at the time. It did not punish consumers directly for their behaviour, but was specifically aimed at the largest emitters, who were making it part of their business plans. That is the difference. May 31 is the last day of the Alberta carbon tax.

We can really see consumer confidence returning in Alberta. People are more confident now that they have a government that is on their side and will back up the decisions of private businesses, everyday Albertans, the mom-and-pop convenience stores, the local dry cleaner and the small oil and gas servicing company that has somehow managed to just get by over the last few years.

Albertans are on the cusp. They know that prosperity might return with the right decisions being made by their government to get involved, not to make decisions for them but to support them in the decisions that will create new jobs, create more business investment and lead to higher returns in terms of corporate and personal income taxes.

That is how consumer confidence returns, not by having what we have seen from the federal Liberal government over the past four years. The Liberals created a situation here in Canada that made it impossible to build a pipeline. Energy east was cancelled because of regulatory red tape. Northern gateway was cancelled by cabinet order. There already is a functioning Trans Mountain pipeline, but the Liberals caused a situation in which Kinder Morgan saw no real means to get the expansion built. It was losing construction seasons to it, so the government expropriated it. The government bought it for $4.5 billion.

Now we know from the Parliamentary Budget Officer that the government not only overpaid for the pipeline project by $1 billion but will also need to extract another $8 billion to $9 billion from the taxpayer to build this pipeline.

There has been talk of legislation and there has been talk of an expedited process, but we are waiting until later in June to find out whether this pipeline will get perhaps half a construction season. We know that construction seasons in Canada are short. Basically, there is a construction season and then there is winter. These are essentially the two seasons we have in Canada. Most people who live in big cities know this, as they have experienced it. We are going to lose a second construction season, and this does nothing but reduce business confidence and reduce consumer confidence.

How can Canadians have faith in a government that purchases a pipeline, overpays for it, and loses money every single month operating it? When the interest being paid on the debt is subtracted from the tolls charged on the pipeline, Liberals are losing money every single month operating in the most profitable part of the energy sector, which is shipping.

I hear constantly from the Minister of Natural Resources, who is from Edmonton and should know better, as once the oil gets to the west coast, 99.95% of the product shipped out of the port of Vancouver goes to California. Those are not my statistics; I am not making them up. I asked the Library of Parliament to confirm them for me. This is from the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. The port itself has said that 99.95% of the product goes to California to feed the refineries there.

Therefore, this is not about reaching new markets on the current pipeline, and perhaps not even on the future pipeline. A series of public policy decisions led to a situation such that a private company felt unable to build a pipeline because of obstruction at the federal and provincial levels. Those obstructions are not gone; they have just become purely governmental. All the decision-making is on the government side.

When I knocked on doors in my communities and for my provincial counterparts, which I did during this past election in Alberta, I heard time and time again that people have no faith whatsoever in the Liberal government's ability to deliver on the construction of a pipeline and no faith in the government's ability to manage public finances.

The parliamentary secretary mentioned the Liberals' great plan to increase affordability for the middle class and that Liberals reduced the tax bracket from 22% to 20.5%. I remind the parliamentary secretary and all members of the House that the biggest tax break from those tax changes went to every single member of Parliament in this chamber. Those who were earning $45,000 or less got zero. They received no benefit whatsoever from that tax cut, but because of the way the progressive tax system works, every single member of Parliament in this chamber got over $800 off their taxes at the end of the day.

That is what the Liberal government did. Those of us in this chamber are not the middle class, but the Liberals did this and claimed it was for the benefit of the middle class. They gave themselves a bigger tax cut than they gave not so much to the working poor, but to people trying to get by and get ahead, people who are taking jobs that many people do not want to take. They work hard for the wages and salaries they earn.

Instead, they received higher payroll taxes. There has been a CPP increase as well, which is taking away from their income at the end of the day and taking away their ability to choose how they want to save.

The second part is that they have a carbon tax to pay. We heard the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance speak to this, and in the scenarios he noted, he gave OECD numbers. A colleague of mine mentioned that a family on the lower income scale with two kids would not be getting back all of that money. The parliamentary secretary's numbers only make sense if we include the child benefit, which is just a re-badging of the old universal child care benefit. It is the original Conservative policy that was introduced when the government wanted to introduce a universal, one-size-fits-all, cradle-to-old-age welfare system. Whereas the government would take care of our children directly under this system, the UCCB was meant to empower parents, and that is how we should be looking at it.

The government claims that if we look at all government policy together, the carbon tax is not so bad. However, that does not help the kind of family my colleague mentioned, which is not seeing these rebates.

As well, if we look more closely at the GGPPA, which is the acronym for the government's carbon tax bill that is over 200 pages long, and then if we look at this latest budget document and some of the implementation portions of it, including the algebra formula that implements the rebate program for the federal carbon tax, we see that there is a provision that would allow the minister of finance to exclude any money he or she wishes from the rebate. A finance minister could give it to any other minister he or she wants, for any program, infrastructure or purpose. It is right there in the formula. There is no guarantee in the legislation that Canadians would receive any sort of rebate on the carbon tax, and it will never replace the full amount.

It is absolutely illogical and irrational to say that 100% of the collected tax will be returned to those who pay it. There always is and there always will be an administrative cost in collecting a tax, unless people think that public servants work for free and they think the lights and the heating in this place come for free, and they do not. It has to cost a certain amount of money, which is why we say the government is misleading them. The way the government presents the facts around the carbon rebate and the carbon tax is ingenious, but it is not an environmental plan; it is a tax plan. It is as simple as that.

To return to the point of consumer confidence and how we have not seen it return, some of the facts on LNG speak for themselves. In the case of LNG, $78 billion worth of projects in Canada have been cancelled since 2015. Those are LNG projects that have been completely abandoned by the companies that were proposing them. Tens of thousands of potential well-paying construction jobs, many of them unionized, are gone. They will not be created, because that $78 billion to put people to work has been removed from the private sector. That is an important fact to remember.

The only large-scale project that I am aware of that is going ahead is LNG Canada's project. LNG Canada is a consortium. Mitsubishi is involved and Petronas is involved. The only reason that the consortium went ahead with the project is that it has an exclusion and an exemption from the carbon tax. Of course a company will go ahead and build a large-scale industrial project, as LNG Canada is proposing to do, when it gets an exemption to a tax.

I cannot imagine any regular, everyday, hard-working taxpayers being told by the Liberal government that CRA is going to give them an exemption this year so that they do not have to pay taxes because they are doing so well in producing jobs and growing their business or are earning a higher salary because they work hard. Nobody gets that type of exclusion or exemption.

I will spend my last two minutes on my favourite subject, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, because Madagascar, this country that we are signing a tax treaty with, is a member of this bank. As I said, the parliamentary secretary, by going on a tangent, has allowed me to go on a tangent here. Madagascar is a member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. As far as I know, it has not received any project yet. It has only spent $15 million to $20 million, which is a paltry sum compared to the nearly half a billion dollars that Canada has set aside. That same money is being used to build pipelines all over Asia, including in Azerbaijan, Bangladesh and the suburbs of Beijing.

I am pouring my heart out here. As my Yiddish proverb said, I am feeling lighter from being able to speak about the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. If we in Canada are unable to build pipelines, which are the safest way to move energy, it seems absolutely wrong to be giving a half a billion dollars to governments in Asia and to the China-controlled, Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

I support Bill S-6, a small piece of legislation coming to us from the Senate, but I do not support the government's agenda and its repeated failures to get large-scale energy infrastructure built in Canada. I do not support the government's policies that have undermined business confidence and the confidence of Canadians. October cannot come soon enough. The current Liberal government is not as advertised.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, there are many things that the member opposite has put on the record that I hope to be able to respond to when I have the opportunity to speak to the legislation.

The member, maybe through a guilty conscience, seems to have some remorse or regret in terms of voting against Bill C-2. Bill C-2 gave millions of Canadians a tax cut. The member opposite perhaps tried to justify his vote by saying that MPs were the beneficiaries of this tax cut. To try to sum it up in that fashion does a disservice to Canada's middle class.

When I think of Canada's middle class, I often think of our teachers, our nurses, our individual factory workers and those people who are working in financial institutions, all of whom are a part of Canada's growing middle class and all of whom were given a substantial tax decrease. Can the member explain to those individuals why he and the Conservative Party voted against that portion of our middle class?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to enlighten the member a little on how the tax system works.

Based on a 2015 assessment, a Canadian who earned $44,000 received zero dollars back from this so-called middle-income tax cut. A Canadian who earned around $60,000—for example, teachers, who earned an average of $65,000 a year—would have received $261.44 from this tax cut. However, a member of Parliament who earned $180,000, let us say, and is in an upper tax bracket, would have received $820.43.

That is wrong. I bring up this issue over and over because the Liberals do not understand how the progressive tax system works. It is debt-financed, and it is wrong to keep pretending that middle-class Canadians received something out of this when every single member of Parliament received a bigger tax cut.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, although my friend from Calgary Shepard and I have very different political perspectives, I value his friendship and I commend him on doing his homework.

He talked a lot about the carbon tax. As a British Columbian, we have had a carbon tax in place that has been very effective. We have had the fastest-growing economy in Canada. That money has been returned to our communities, and we have done really good work on lowering our impact on climate change.

To put things in perspective, in the last three years we have had the worst forest fires on record. For the last two years, British Columbia has literally been on fire in the summers. People with respiratory illnesses have had to wear face masks. For two weeks last summer, the skies were grey and we had had record floods. Here in Ottawa, there was a flood that caused a state of emergency until recently.

I do not know what it is going to take for the Conservative Party to see that a climate emergency is taking place. What is his proposition to deal with this climate emergency? Does he not recognize that there is a climate emergency happening right now on this planet and that we need to do our part?

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member and I work together on a group I co-founded called Parliamentary Friends of the Kurds, and he serves as the co-chair of the group.

To his point about the carbon tax in British Columbia, my understanding is that emissions have actually gone up and that the tax is no longer revenue neutral. It is used to raise revenue on the backs of British Columbians.

As well, we see pictures on social media, Google and DuckDuckGo that consistently show sky-high gasoline prices. That is not sustainable in the long term.

Going back to a point a parliamentary secretary made, consumer confidence is back to where it was in 2015 and business confidence is very low as well. If the government keeps raising the input costs for businesses to ship and deliver goods to people, we cannot help but expect that their confidence will go down. If at the end of the day and the end of the year they are paying far more in input costs just to conduct the regular business they did before, we really cannot expect anything else.

A carbon tax is a tax policy; it is not an environmental policy.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Madam Speaker, one of the advantages of 20-minute speeches is that they allow us to go into other areas. In introducing this bill, the member talked about what was happening in my province of Alberta, which is also his province. I agree with him that we have high hopes and that people are starting to realize that we are putting in place a foundation that will bring back investment but would also make sure we do what we can to clean up our environment.

The member talked about carbon pricing on large emitters. This is the way Premier Kenney suggested we would go forward. It has been done before, when the penalty large emitters pay went back into a research and development fund. Out of that, we have seen innovation in new and renewable types of energy. Whether it was clean coal, wind, solar or some of the others, we have seen money poured in to ensure that they are cleaner.

The government's plan right now is that every consumer, senior and single mom will be clobbered at the pumps or in heating their homes. The money invested back will make a difference. Could he talk a bit about how a tax regime helps grow an economy? We are seeing in this bill, the Madagascar—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I am sorry, but I have to allow the member to answer and allow for another question. Therefore, I would ask the individuals who are asking questions or making comments to keep their preambles a bit shorter.

The hon. member for Calgary Shepard.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, we have been looking at the carbon tax basically since 2015 in Alberta. Going back to my Yiddish proverb, “When you pour out your heart, it lightens the load”, I think the member lightened his heart. It has been a point of frustration for a lot of Albertans, because we had a system that worked before. Large emitters were paying for emissions above a certain level. The funds from that were going to a climate emissions innovation fund. There were organizations and groups of companies that were coming together under COSIA and others that were exchanging new technologies they were creating. A good example is the large mines in northeastern Alberta. I cannot say how many times I have seen these in National Geographic and other papers. Those are the past. The future is in SAGD in situ development. One cannot even tell that there is oil sands development going on in many of these places. I just wish there was not so much misinformation out there on the environmental record of the Alberta government and the Alberta people.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I certainly agree that there is a lot of misinformation. Unfortunately, as much as I am very fond of the member for Calgary Shepard, much of what was in his speech was alarmingly not about the Canada-Madagascar treaty. However, I will indulge that lapse in relevance to point out that the fact that gas prices in B.C. today are high has nothing to do with the carbon tax, as any analyst will tell us. It has to do with refinery capacity.

We used to have four refineries in Burnaby. We are now down to one. It was Chevron. It is now Parkland. It closed down for repairs last year. It is now back up to 92% production. The reality is that even if the government built the Kinder Morgan expansion, it would undermine access to the fuel the refinery needs. That refinery cannot process solid bitumen. The expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline is for 100% solid bitumen for export. It is diluted to get it through the pipeline. It is called dilbit. Dilbit cannot be used in our refinery. Therefore, it is a refinery-capacity issue. It has nothing to do with pipelines. We would do better if we processed more Alberta product in Canada for use by Canadians instead of pretending that there is a market in other countries.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands is one of my favourite members to spar with. She must know that refineries are one of the largest emitters of GHGs in Canada. It is true that many refineries have closed down. However, that is thanks to policies her own party supports, such as taxing carbon from emitters like large refineries and upgraders.

I have a brother-in-law who works in that sector. There is nothing wrong with exporting our product in dilbit format or bitumen format. Let us apply that to farmers. Would we tell the farmers who are exporting wheat that they are not allowed to export their wheat but should refine it here and send bread overseas? Should lentil farmers make soup in Canada instead of exporting lentils? We do not do that. It is up to the companies to decide where the value-added is. They have made that decision.

As far as refinery capacity goes, if we did not have the damaging policies of the provincial NDP and the Green Party federally and provincially, we would not be in a situation where refineries continue to close in Canada.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have to come back to the member for Calgary Shepard, because having been one of the only members in the House of Commons who has actually been ankle deep in oil, having worked at one of the closed oil refineries, I have to state, for the record, that the Conservatives are not only incoherent and illiterate on energy policy and renewable energy policy, but the example the member has just given shows how completely out of touch the Conservatives are when it comes to the basic economics of exporting raw bitumen.

The reality is that the Conservatives love to cosy up to foreign-owned oil companies, but the idea that we would ship Canadian jobs overseas and contribute to a massive increase in greenhouse gas emissions makes no sense at all. It makes no sense to people right across the country, including the people who are suffering from the record levels of flooding we are seeing in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. In British Columbia, we are already seeing the start of the forest fire season. In the month of May, there are now 15 out-of-control forest fires in British Columbia.

Over the last three years, we have seen our skies covered with smoke in the Lower Mainland and on southern Vancouver Island because of the catastrophic number of forest fires. In the last three years, in the month of August, the air has been unbreathable. Therefore, for Conservatives to say that there is no problem at all, let us just ship raw bitumen overseas, and for the Liberals to support them, shows the degree of irresponsibility we have in the House of Commons. That is something I think Canadians will want to change on October 21.

That being said, I will return to Bill S-6. We support it on this side of the House. We support it because it is the one initiative the Liberals have managed to put forward that does not increase tax havens, money laundering and the legalized tax evasion that is costing this country so much.

There is an idea that this massive tax evasion, started by the Conservatives and continued by the Liberals, with the largest and most profitable Canadian corporations taking their money overseas and not paying taxes on it, is something that is victimless. Somehow it does not hurt Canadians in any way, shape or form. In this corner of the House, we in the NDP caucus can only say that this is simply not true.

We have underfunding of our health care system and the inability of either the former Conservative government or the current Liberal government to bring in pharmacare. One in five Canadians are struggling to pay for their medication. There are Canadians, literally outside the House of Commons, like Jim, whom I have mentioned numerous times, who has to beg on the bridge between the Chateau Laurier and the East Block because of the $580 a month he has to pay for medication that he cannot cover any other way.

The fact is, we have tens of billions of dollars that should be paid as part of the fair share of Canada's largest and most profitable corporations. Tens of billions of dollars simply evaporate away. They are taken to overseas tax havens and sit in corporate bank accounts, because we do not have a fair and just tax system, which is something that hurts so many Canadians. It hurts Canadians who cannot access health care. It hurts younger Canadians who are forced to go into debt on a scale of tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, just to go to college, university or trade school. They have to borrow the money because of the punitive fees that are charged for college and university.

At the same time, Canada's corporate sector is just laughing. I am not talking about Loblaws and the $12 million the Liberals doled out to Canada's richest billionaire, which is unbelievable. It is the fact that so many Canadian corporations do not pay their fair share of taxes because of the very intricate network of overseas tax havens, which the Conservatives started and the Liberals promote. That is what causes so much challenge for the average Canadian family, so much so that the average Canadian family is now the most indebted in the industrialized world and the most indebted in Canadian history. That was on the Liberals' watch during the last four years.

We have seen family debt load skyrocket because people are having to pay for medication and are having to struggle to save money because of college and university, because we simply allow that money to go overseas. Instead of having a fair tax system, Canadians are indebting themselves to a record extent, worse than any other country in the industrialized world. One would think the Liberals would say that it is profoundly unfair, that maybe they should do something about this intricate network of tax havens, that they should do something to force the corporate sector to pay its fair share. However, instead, they double down.

They have signed a number of arrangements with overseas tax havens, some of the most notorious in the country. The ones the Conservatives had not yet signed, the Liberals took up, such as the Cook Islands, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, notorious tax havens where people can put their money, report it and pay zero per cent income tax. Canadian authorities then say that since they paid zero per cent in Antigua, the Cook Islands or Grenada, they do not have to pay a cent in Canada. It is legalized tax evasion to an unbelievable extent. That is why many of the chartered accountancy firms that specialize in tax avoidance, as they would say, though I call it tax evasion, trumpet the fact that Canada now has the lowest effective tax rate in the industrialized world. It is at 9% for the corporate sector, because it can take so much money overseas.

Single parents, fathers or mothers, struggling to raise their children are indebted to an unbelievable extent but are still paying their taxes, because they believe, as most Canadians believe, that Canadians should pay their fair share of taxes, that we all contribute to this project called Canada, that we all contribute to this country. Canadians struggling to make sure that they are keeping up to date and paying their income taxes like good Canadians can take no comfort from what is massive and unbelievable tax evasion. We have the lowest level of corporate tax in the industrialized world and the highest level of family debt. Yes, those two things are related.

It is not just that. A few minutes ago, the finance critic, the member for Sherbrooke, stood to present a bill that should have been presented four years ago, if the Liberals had kept any of their promises, and 10 years ago if the Conservatives had been truthful to their ideology. It would ensure that the massive web giants, corporations like Facebook and Google, outside the country, which suck advertising dollars and revenue out of Canada, should pay some taxes. What a concept. How radical for these massive, multi-billion dollar companies to actually pay some taxes in Canada.

Conservatives said that they did not have to do it. When the Liberals came to power, they talked about a fair tax system but did nothing to address that. Therefore, as usual, as with medicare and in so many other cases, it is the NDP that is putting forward a plan in the House of Commons to ensure that these massive, multi-billion dollar companies, with enormous profits, actually pay some tax in Canada.

It is not just that, as we know. We have also seen reports coming out of British Columbia on the extent to which Liberal policies have contributed to amplifying, to an extraordinary extent, money laundering in Canada. The report, just last week, from the expert panel on money laundering, shows that under Liberal policies, money laundering has reached a critical stage: $47 billion in illegal funds were laundered in Canada last year, according to the expert panel. This is the product of criminal activities. This is the product of illegal activities, yet the government refuses to do anything significant to address the massive extent of money laundering.

This is not a victimless crime. The impact on just one sector, the affordable housing market in the Lower Mainland, the area I represent in the House of Commons, with the escalation in prices, now means that so many families in the Lower Mainland are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, or they have to live on the streets or move away.

I cannot tell the House the extent of suffering that comes from allowing this money laundering to continue without any due regard for cracking down or shutting it down. Honest Canadians, the ones who pay their taxes, are the ones who are most badly hurt by what has now been a couple of decades of complete negligence by Conservative and Liberal governments in this regard.

Last year, $47 billion of illegal money were laundered in Canada. The Liberals do nothing. The Conservatives do not care. However, this has a profound impact on average Canadians, not just on housing prices but on a whole range of activities.

When the finance committee was discussing measures that could have curbed money laundering, the NDP's proposal, which is one of the first recommendations by the expert panel, was to have public accessibility to beneficial ownership registries to ensure we knew how to track the money.

However, the old parties, the parties that have contributed to this system, a system that has been so detrimental for the average Canadian, said no. Members speak with seniors in their ridings. They know how seniors are struggling to make ends meet. Members see young Canadians, who are trying to acquire the skills to contribute to the country, forced to go into debt, in the tens of thousands of dollars. Families are struggling to keep affordable homes over their heads. All Canadians are struggling to pay for their medications. This is all a result of policies that put so much, tens of billions of dollars, in the hands of the very wealthy at the cost of the quality of life of Canadians right across the country.

When we talk about money laundering, the beneficial ownership registry and the NDP's proposal that it be publicly accessible, both of the old parties said no. They did not want to have that. They did not want to have that sunlight that would bring transparency, which Canadians want. It would allow us to combat what has become Canada's black eye around the world. We are now renowned as a haven for money laundering.

The Guardian newspaper talked about Canada being a haven for “snow washing”. It is a now a term that is used around the world to describe the systematic use of money laundering in Canada. It can be done through buying real estate. It can be with a whole range of things. It can be done with impunity because the Liberals have refused to fund the resources that would allow our over-strapped, overworked agencies to combat it. The Liberals and the Conservatives refuse to have a publicly accessible beneficial ownership registry that would allow all of us to track the money.

This is the legacy of the Liberal government.

Let us just take a moment to look at what we have after four years of Liberals in power. They could have done so much to help the quality of life of the average Canadian, to address seniors who eat dog and cat food because that is all they can afford if they want to keep a roof over their head, and often even that is not enough. What about people like Jim who have to beg to get enough money for the medication their doctors have prescribed, medications that are absolutely necessary for their health? What have they done to combat the underfunding of our health care system and the skyrocketing tuition fees that are leading so many families to not even be able to attend university, or college or trade school, at the same time as we have a crisis and shortage of trained and skilled workers in so many sectors?

All of this dysfunction has contributed to the highest level of family debt in the industrialized world. It all comes from the basis of having a profoundly unfair tax system, created by Conservatives and Liberals to benefit their buddies on Bay Street, a system that allows billionaires to get away with not paying taxes. In addition, they get grants that are paid for by those regular taxpayers who do pay their taxes. We saw with the $12 million the Liberal government handed to Loblaws.

It is shocking that we now have created a fossilized unfair tax system that provides us with the lowest effective tax rate in the industrialized world and ensures that some of the largest web giants on the planet do not have to pay a cent of tax in Canada. Even as they are running into bankruptcy, a whole network of community newspapers and local television and radio stations, sucking that advertising out of the country, they do not have to put anything back. It is a legalized tax evasion.

At the same time, we now know that $47 billion, and that is a conservative estimate from the expert panel on money laundering, have been laundered in the country in the past year, contributing to the rise of completely unaffordable housing prices for families that are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and contributing in so many ways to deterioration in the quality of life. Things definitely need to change.

How can we change that?

The NDP has already proposed putting in place a fair and equitable tax system. We are asking that Canadian corporations pay their fair share of taxes. We do not think that is too much to ask. We are not asking that they pay large sums, like 50% or 60% of their profits. However, an effective rate of 9% for corporations is absolutely ridiculous when we consider that the tax rate for individuals is higher than that. Some people do not have the means to be taxed at that rate, but they contribute to our country. We need to have a system that is fair. For that, the effective rate for corporations has to be greater than 9%.

Secondly, web giants have not been paying any tax in Canada for years. They make billions in profits and pay absolutely nothing. These web giants should pay their fair share of tax. If the NDP is elected to government on October 21, our party will get to work immediately. We will not allow this to continue. Instead of giving billions of dollars in gifts to web giants, we will lower tuition for students who want to go to CEGEP, learn a trade or attend university.

With respect to money laundering, our institutions, such as the RCMP, must have the resources required to deal with these crimes. They are not victimless crimes. This is a situation that has rather significant consequences. Eastern Canada is one of the worst regions in the world in terms of money laundering.

All these elements should be considered. All that is needed is the will to do something about it. In recent years, we have seen that the Liberals did not have the will to put in place a fair tax system. This bill is a small gesture made during four years of inaction on this file, which is extremely costly for Canadians.

In a few weeks, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is going to table a report that sheds light on this situation and all the money that is leaving the country. We are ready to examine it. Canadians will then judge the government.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I always find it interesting to listen to the NDP in opposition. I say “NDP in opposition” because when I was an MLA in the Manitoba legislature, the NDP was in government. It was in government for about 15 years and for a good portion of those years, I sat inside the legislature.

One thing I hear consistently from the NDP is that the way to finance every possible expenditure those members can generate in their minds is through corporation taxation. “Make corporations pay” seems to be the standard line they use when they are in opposition. However, interestingly, when I was an MLA, I saw the provincial NDP decrease corporate taxes, not once or twice but seven times.

Could my colleague and friend across the way explain how a provincial NDP government can justify decreasing corporate taxes, while the federal NDP in opposition is banking so much on funding so many promises by increasing corporate taxes? There seems to be a bit of a change from the provincial NDP to the national NDP. Could he explain that to me?