Evidence of meeting #30 for Finance in the 39th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was forestry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Garth Turner Liberal Halton, ON
All right, so anyone who had a stock purchase plan who feels they're in financial difficulty can approach you now and you'll be open to reviewing their case? Is that what you said to us, sir?
Conservative
Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON
No, that's not what I said, if you check the words.
Conservative
Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON
You've lost the other factor, which is that they would have to have bought the shares below market value, so they could not take advantage of the capital gains deduction.
Liberal
Garth Turner Liberal Halton, ON
All right.
This particular situation was brought to you by a colleague, Mr. Gary Lunn, the Minister of Natural Resources. Is that correct?
Conservative
Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON
I inherited it. When I took over as revenue minister I inherited a number of files, and this was one of the files.
I didn't even know about this thing until I took over the revenue department. Maybe in the world of revenue and taxes people are aware of this, but in the rest of the world it's hardly known. I picked this up as one of the files I inherited when I took over CRA.
Liberal
Garth Turner Liberal Halton, ON
All right.
The remission order was granted at a cabinet meeting, I gather, in December 2007. What led you to rule favourably when your deputy minister told you to rule against it?
Conservative
Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON
The deputy minister is a very competent individual, but I don't always accept advice from my staff, either my exempt staff or my department staff. And I don't think, probably, if I asked all of you MPs whether you accept all the advice from your staff--
Liberal
Garth Turner Liberal Halton, ON
On just one point of clarification, sir, how long had you been in the job when you decided to grant this remission order?
Conservative
Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON
Well, you've just said the date, that it was done by December, so it was a few months.
Liberal
Garth Turner Liberal Halton, ON
A few months. You were up that much on the file that you thought this was a specific case that merited that special attention at the cabinet table?
Conservative
Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON
Yes, and you don't have to be a tax expert to understand these things. We have all kinds of advisers around us who tell us about the tax rules and--
Conservative
Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON
And I just said that I didn't accept the advice.
Liberal
Conservative
Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON
It came from me. It is my authority to judge these things.
Conservative
Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON
I considered the thing to be unfair to those individuals. On that basis, beyond all the other things they talked about, I granted the remission, which is, by the way, my right under the FAA.
Liberal
Garth Turner Liberal Halton, ON
Absolutely it is.
So the overwhelming factor was the unfairness of it. That leads us to the whole tax law now that you say we are reviewing as an administration. Do you feel this law, overall, is unfair in that requires people to pay tax in this instance?
Conservative
Gordon O'Connor Conservative Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON
I don't know. It's being reviewed and we'll see what the results of the review are.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Thank you very much.
We'll now move on to Mr. Crête. You have seven minutes.
Bloc
Paul Crête Bloc Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, Minister.
In the particular case of this company, when you had the assessment done, did you inquire into whether other employees of other companies were experiencing the same thing, to see whether this was really an isolated case or whether the same model existed elsewhere?