We struck a committee in 2016 because of our members' concerns with section 84.1. We recognized at the time that 84.1 was an anti-avoidance rule. It's there for a specific purpose. If Finance was going to consider an amendment to that, to allow an exception for family business transfers, our members still needed to be confident that the underlying purpose of 84.1 would be protected.
Fundamentally, we think there needs to be a change to 84.1, but we also think there's a need for some “guardrails” by this committee, or some limitations put in place. Our submission is based on the work that was done three or four years ago, making recommendations to Finance on how they could allow the exception but eliminate any potentially abusive planning transactions that otherwise should be caught by 84.1.
Bill C-208 has some of those guardrails already incorporated. We are supporting Bill C-208 as is, recognizing that Finance may still have some concerns with whether there are enough guardrails or not, and we assume they could, at some point in time, if they feel it's appropriate, amend the provisions to implement those additional guardrails.
We're very concerned that if Bill C-208 doesn't proceed, we'll be back here three years from now still debating this. We would like to see this provision go through. If it can be easily amended before it gets through, that's fine, but otherwise we think Finance always has the prerogative to amend legislation once it's in place to correct any problems that it perceives exist.