Evidence of meeting #28 for Finance in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was families.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
That is a good question. It has been defined in Great Britain and in the United States. Why have we not done it? I do not know. I really do not have a good answer for you.
Liberal
Steven MacKinnon Liberal Gatineau, QC
You do not have a theory about it?
How do you feel about it, Mr. Jacques?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
I am sure that he has one, but I do not believe he will want to share it.
Liberal
Steven MacKinnon Liberal Gatineau, QC
So you approve any initiative that could lead to a little more clarity and transparency, and could assess a situation using better numbers, even though there may or may not be gaps in the approach. Some data are better than no data at all.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
It is a useful tool for parliamentarians. That is the case in Great Britain. It certainly would be in Canada.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
[Inaudible—Editor] there's nothing out there other than [Inaudible—Editor] that we don't create jobs. Has the government approached you to do any analysis on how many jobs can be created from the extra spending that will be allocated in the new budget?
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
The government had an estimate itself in the budget, and we did our own calculation, which was somewhat lower than what the government had estimated. Their estimate was about 100,000 and our estimate was about 60,000 jobs, extra jobs.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
For each job for one year, how much money would you need to invest into the economy?
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
That depends on where you spend it, because each dollar, depending on where you spend it, has a different impact on the economy and the amount of activity it creates. One has to look at that and take that into account.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
For example, in the U.S. they gauged that $89,000 U.S. would create one job for one year. Have we done any of that analysis here? I mean on average. We're not going on an assumption here. We are trying to properly gauge the job creation from spending so much money. If we're going to spend $30 billion, we should create 300,000 jobs, based on those figures. Are we at the same level here?
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
We haven't done the calculation to tell you what the cost of this job creation—
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
It would be nice to know. That's something we can ask your office to submit.
Is it safe to say that what is called the contingency fund could be something to cover the negative impacts of a policy, since there is no measure whatsoever of the new policies and their impacts on the future of the economy and on the financial situation in Canada?
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
As we mentioned earlier, that's just to cover the risk, the outside risk of the private sector protection. Whatever that risk is coming from remains to be seen, but that is what it is for.
Conservative
Ziad Aboultaif Conservative Edmonton Manning, AB
Could that risk be the new financial policy that this government is taking?
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Based on our calculation and estimate, the policies they have put in place will increase the level of activities and increase the number of jobs, and that would not be the case based on our own estimation.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Thank you very much.
Is there anyone else who has one quick question they want to ask?
Okay, with that we'll thank the parliamentary budget officer and all the others with him. Thank you for doing all the work you do. Thank you for appearing before our committee today and the Senate's national finance committee last night. You will be questioned out. Thank you very much.
We'll turn to committee business. We're still in public. There are two things.
We need to decide what we're doing on the Canada Revenue Agency's efforts to combat tax avoidance and evasion. We need to make some decisions as to whether we wrap it up after Tuesday's hearing. The Library of Parliament staff believe they can put a report together. The problem will be whether it's translated in time before Parliament recesses. We could, with House approval, table it using the back-door process. That's number one.
Number two, on the pre-budget hearings in the fall, we have to develop a budget for those hearings, deal with that at Tuesday's meeting, and put that to the liaison committee for budget approval before the House recesses. We'll be doing that in the fall, and there are some complications, I understand, as I'm told that there's no money for us to travel. We will have to go down that road.
In any event, with the CRA efforts to combat tax avoidance and evasion first, maybe we could get agreement. We have already asked to appear on Tuesday, in a one-hour session, Alain Deneault, as an individual, and Michael Hamersley, who would be by video conference from California. We need agreement if we still want to bring those witnesses forward. We're agreed on that.
The question is, generally in this study where do you want to go?
Mr. MacKinnon and then Mr. Caron.
Liberal
Steven MacKinnon Liberal Gatineau, QC
We have had five or six sessions on this subject to date. I would like us to be able to finish the study. The sub judice rule has been brought up recently. I think it is important for this committee to face up to its responsibility. I know that some would like us to act in a way that I would consider irresponsible, but if the committee is going to assume its responsibilities, it would be good to finish our study and table our report in Parliament during our work this spring or summer, by whatever means you choose, Mr. Chair. We could resume our work in the fall by looking at the pre-budget process.
NDP
Guy Caron NDP Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
I do not think it is a problem to prepare a document to be tabled in the House. I see no urgency to submit a report before we finish our work at the end of June. I prefer the work to be done well. After all, we had four or five meetings, which were relatively complex. I would like to be able to give the analysts the time to do a proper job and provide a good translation before the report is tabled at the beginning of the fall. There is no urgency. We do not have to produce anything earlier.
In any event, I would like committee members to remain open to the possibility of more meetings on this topic, particularly if there are new developments during the summer.
The sub judice rule is not something that should tie our hands. We must be prudent because that convention requires the committee to take care not to compromise cases before the courts.
At the moment, two cases are before the courts. One of those two cases deals with the income tax rules, that is, whether the mechanism developed by KPMG was legal or legitimate. Another case involves the government, the minister or the CRA, who are asking KPMG to provide the names of the clients who took advantage of the mechanism. The two cases are being considered by the Federal Court of Canada.
We are in an interesting situation today. In fact, the executive branch is asking KPMG for information. As members of the committee, we are not part of the executive, but rather the legislative branch. Even if the Federal Court came down on the side of the federal government, the executive branch, there is no rule by which we, as representatives of the legislative branch, would have access to the names of those people in order to continue our study. So I think that that raises interesting legal and parliamentary questions.
Before concluding that the sub judice rule is going to limit what we can do, I believe that we should take the time to sit down with the clerk and legal counsel to discuss this matter. It would be extremely easy to limit our study, or any other study, by invoking that convention. It would simply be a matter of filing a lawsuit and Parliament and its committees would be afraid to address the issue. It would become a very interesting way to tie the hands of working parliamentarians.
Before coming to the conclusion that we should stop our meetings for that reason, we could explore what it really means and how we could proceed without compromising the legal process. I personally have begun meeting with some legal experts about it. I believe that we should continue to do so.
Liberal
Jennifer O'Connell Liberal Pickering—Uxbridge, ON
Mr. Chair, I agree. I don't think we necessarily have to be in a rush to have it before the summer recess. I'd like to see a quality report produced. I think it would be beneficial to the minister and her mandate letter in terms of working on these issues. I think we've heard a lot of really good testimony on tax evasion and on what measures the government could take to avoid this.
It's not exclusive to KPMG or the situation that's going on. Perhaps that may have been a catalyst or a recent news story, but I think we've heard a lot of testimony, and we could make recommendations. Even based on the minister's testimony, I think there is a willingness for this information, for making CRA more adaptive to controlling aggressive tax avoidance and evasion.
I agree that we don't necessarily have to rush this. I'd like to put forward quality recommendations based on what we've heard. I'm also of the opinion.... I haven't spoken to my colleagues, so I don't want to drag this out in the sense of taking away from pre-budget consultations, but I do think we should put forward a quality report that is not exclusive to and as a reaction to KPMG but is on tax avoidance and tax evasion in general. That would be my hope and my goal for this report and the work we've done.
I do agree that we should be careful. I wouldn't want to impact the court hearings or the process, because in fact, I want that process to unfold. I want these things to be resolved in the best interests of Canadians, but I don't think that prejudges our ability to make recommendations on how the minister can improve things at CRA.