Finance Committee on April 9th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Davies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We're going to suspend at this time, so that I can confer again with the clerk and the analyst.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

It's all downhill after that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

We're back after speaking with the clerk and the analyst.

One thing I want to bring to everybody's attention is that this motion is identical to a motion that's before the House today. Depending on what happens at the House, if this motion were to pass here and then go to the House, it could be ruled out of order by the Speaker because it has already been dealt with. That's what would happen because it's identical to what is before the House today.

We are going to continue with the motion. I do have a speaking list. I just wanted to make sure that everybody is aware of where we stand right now. Hopefully we can get through this quickly and get to our, as I said, excellent witnesses who are before us so that we can get to some of the members' questions.

Members, if you do have questions—and we don't have a lot of time—maybe you could pose those to the witnesses, and the witnesses could send answers in writing to our clerk and to our committee.

I have MP Morantz, MP Lawrence and MP Dzerowicz on the list.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think this motion is eminently reasonable. Seventy per cent of Canadians are opposed to the carbon tax. Seven out of 10 premiers have spoken about axing the tax and spiking the hike. Even in Manitoba, Premier Kinew, an NDP premier, has expressed misgivings about the carbon tax and wants to work on a made-in-Manitoba program.

I think it's very reasonable when you have premiers asking to come to a parliamentary committee—it should really be a no-brainer—particularly the finance committee where we consider things like taxes. We're just simply not doing our job—ignoring our responsibilities, in fact—if we don't allow these premiers to come here to speak.

Aside from that, this particular motion talks about convening a meeting with the premiers of Canada. Again, it's a very reasonable issue. Canadians are suffering under the constant increases in taxes that this government keeps bringing in, most recently on April 1, despite all of our strenuous efforts to ask the Prime Minister to not go forward with continually increasing taxes on Canadians at the very time they can least afford it. However, he continued to do it despite their will.

By the way, with respect to Premier Kinew, do you know the first thing Premier Kinew did after he was elected in October? He put a pause on the provincial gas tax of 14¢ per litre. If you go to Manitoba now, gas is 14¢ per litre cheaper. He did it because, like many other premiers—in fact, like many other world leaders—he understands that Canadians are having a hard time affording things right now.

I think it's incumbent on this committee to listen to the will of Canadians through their elected provincial representatives and to have a meeting of Canada's 14 first ministers in order to address this issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Morantz.

I have MP Lawrence and MP Dzerowicz. Then whatever remaining time we have I'm going to divide up by the parties, but there's not going to be much.

MP Lawrence.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I'll be brief because I want to hear from the witnesses, Mr. Chair.

I think this debate in many ways is validation that we need to have this national dialogue between our premiers and our Prime Minister, so let's just get to a vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

I have MP Dzerowicz next.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I want to put a couple of things on the record, and I also want to address one comment that Mr. Davies made.

First, I think it is really important that, when you look at this motion, there's confusion between the affordability crisis we have here in Canada and the price on pollution, or the carbon tax. Unfortunately, the Conservatives have not been honest with Canadians.

The carbon tax has not caused the affordability crisis in this country. Food and housing prices have gone up because we have had inflation. It's not just in Canada; it is around the world. There has been a huge increase in inflation. The carbon tax has not contributed to the reasons Canadians are lining up at food banks. It is not at all the case. It is because we have had inflation and it is because we have had a huge increase in food and rental costs.

Second, paragraph 2 of this motion talks about the recent increase in the carbon tax, or the price on pollution. It doesn't mention the rebates that more than cover this and make eight out of 10 Canadians whole.

Finally, as my colleague Yvan very eloquently said about paragraph 3, which reads, “plans for provinces to opt out of the federal carbon tax”, all provinces are invited to come up with their own plans for reducing their emissions, so we don't need a motion to say that. That has been on the table forever.

What I would love to see, and this is a personal thing, is all of the first ministers come together with our Prime Minister to talk about their fully costed and independently analyzed plans for how their provinces are going to reduce emissions to meet the national target. I would love to see that, but that's not what this motion says at all, Mr. Hallan. That would be a very positive development.

Just so you know, we don't need this motion right now. All provincial premiers have already been invited to create their own plans for how they can reduce emissions and meet our national emissions target.

That's it for me. If there is no one else after me, I would suggest we go to a vote, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Dzerowicz.

I don't see any other hands. Clerk, you can call the vote.

(Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)

The motion is defeated.

Now we will get to our witnesses.

Members, we have not done this before, but because we have seven minutes left for these witnesses, I'm going to give each of you a minute or two to ask some questions, and I'm going to ask the witnesses, if they have the time, to take a back seat. We're going to let the next panel of witnesses come forward, but if members of our committee have questions for those of you on this panel, they will call upon you and you will come to the table to answer those questions.

Witnesses, if you are okay with that, it means you would be here for the next hour.

Thank you.

MP Chambers, please go ahead.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

I would provide UC to allow a full round, if that was okay with the rest of the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

That would be unfair to the other panels because of this motion that we have been debating, which has pushed us back by almost an hour, MP Chambers. That's why we can't do that. It would be great if we could just make up time, but that's not possible.

We will start with MP Morantz.

You have two minutes.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Mr. Simser, thank you for your patience.

Two minutes isn't nearly enough time to cover the kind of ground I think we should be covering with someone like you.

The best question I can ask is this: What can the federal government do to strengthen our money-laundering laws? I know you mentioned that there is no individual stand-alone charge for money laundering, and in the past you have talked about the unexplained wealth orders and things like that.

Could you give us a minute or so on what this government should be doing to strengthen our laws so we can get more convictions and get this problem under control?

[Jeffrey Simser]

Thank you. That's a really good question. I'll be really brief in my response.

I think it's not so much about the laws and the statutes. Canada's reputation has consistently been as a country with strong laws and poor implementation. For me, the key thing to do is to improve implementation. There's a financial crime agency. Hopefully, that comes in in the right way. There needs to be a lot of co-operation federally, provincially and municipally, particularly in law enforcement and the police. We need to pull all these things together.

There are some gaps in the civil forfeiture system. There are two provinces with unexplained wealth orders. That's a fantastic tool. There are some incredible cases happening right now in B.C. Those kinds of things need to be expanded.

It's really about resourcing and implementation. I think that's the key to your question.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

You did mention, though, that you would like to see a stand-alone offence. That would be a legislative change, would it not?

[Jeffrey Simser]

Absolutely. Yes. Right now what has to happen is that a prosecutor has to prove not only money laundering but also a second crime and link the two together. What I'm suggesting is that where you have a professional money launderer, they can be simply prosecuted for what they're doing even though they're divorced from the crime itself.

[Marty Morantz, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB]

Is it not—

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Morantz. That's the time.

MP Weiler, go ahead, please.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today and for their patience as well.

Mr. Simser, you mentioned something very briefly that I wanted to touch on. It's about the ability of FINTRAC to communicate directly with law enforcement. I was hoping you might be able to expand on that a little bit.

[Jeffrey Simser]

Sure. FINTRAC does have the ability to speak to police and to prosecutors, but they do not, for whatever reason, speak directly to civil forfeiture authorities. What happens is that if a case comes into civil forfeiture, they may have a police brief that may include a FINTRAC disclosure, but it will be dated. There's no real-time sharing of information, which in this world is critically important.

The other thing that happens in the same space is that if financial institutions identify a money launderer and kick them out of the bank, they can't tell other banks. All they can do is tell FINTRAC, unless there's fraud. They can literally watch the money launderer just walk across the street from the Bank of Montreal to the Royal Bank and start all over again. They don't have any legal ability to warn the chief anti-money laundering officer at the Royal Bank that there's a problem.

There's another issue in the same space, which is private-to-private information.

[Patrick Weiler, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you.

In your response to Mr. Morantz and in your opening, you mentioned the need for a stand-alone money-laundering offence and the reason why. Obviously, in the legislation that we're talking about today, Bill C-59, there are a number of changes made to the money-laundering offence, particularly around recklessness, as well as layering on changes that were brought in in the budget last year on structuring transactions.

I was hoping you might be able to speak to the impact this may be able to have on making it more effective in tackling money laundering.

[Jeffrey Simser]

Yes. I think both changes are excellent.

On the structuring offence, I think it will be very, very difficult to prosecute. You'll have to prove that someone knew there was a FINTRAC reporting requirement and they were deliberately evading it. But this has happened. There have been lots of prosecutions in the United States since 1986. I think what it really comes down to in that instance is the training of police officers particularly so that they know what kind of evidence the prosecutor will need to make the case.

It's the same with the substantive money-laundering offence. You need those specialized investigators who really understand what kind of evidentiary record needs to be adduced to get to a successful prosecution.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

Now we'll go to MP Ste-Marie, please.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First, I find it unfortunate that we have spent the last hour debating what the House is considering today instead of asking questions about extremely important topics relating to Bill C-59.

My question is for Mr. Soucis.

Thank you for being with us today, Mr. Soucis and Ms. Landry.

Mr. Soucis, under clause 137 of Bill C‑59, the GST would be eliminated for psychotherapy and counselling therapy services.

You said that in Quebec, because of the professional orders, there is a lack of clarity and a fear that this provision would not apply in Quebec.

The Canada Revenue Agency has published notice 335 which provides that this will apply if a person has the qualifications equivalent to those that would enable them to practise in another province. However, it makes no sense for every professional in Quebec to have to go to New Brunswick to have their qualifications recognized.

You are suggesting that the committee adopt an amendment providing that the spirit of the section should be preserved and ensuring that the GST not apply to those services in Quebec unless what the Canada Revenue Agency is proposing has been done.

Is that correct?

[Josée Landry, Guidance councellor, Grouping of Professional Mental Health Orders of Quebec]

Thank you for the question. I am going to answer it on behalf of the Grouping.

That is correct, Mr. Ste-Marie. We want Quebec's professionals to be recognized automatically as having qualifications equivalent to those that would enable them to practise their profession in another province, so that the services they provide to the public in Quebec would be exempt from the GST and then from the QST.