Honourable members, thank you so much for this opportunity. My name is Sasha Caldera, and I work for an organization called Canadians for Tax Fairness. My organization, along with Publish What You Pay Canada and Transparency International Canada, want to see the Canadian government commit to tackling money laundering, tax avoidance and tax evasion. In our opinion, we believe that the federal government needs to advocate for a publicly accessible registry of beneficial owners of companies during the provincial-territorial finance ministers' meeting.
In budget 2019 we would like to see the following. First, we would like to see a commitment to formally engage stakeholders in exploring a public registry. Second, we would like the government to outline a timetable for stakeholder engagement. A publicly accessible registry of beneficial owners would reduce the administrative burden on behalf of businesses conducting due diligence checks and would also help law enforcement with investigations.
Thank you so much for your time.