Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Greetings to our witnesses.
I'm going to go to the representatives of Réseau FADOQ.
However, I want to begin with a comment in reaction to the statement of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, which, as I understand it, is requesting that the provisions under the Global Minimum Tax Act respecting taxation of the web giants be deleted.
A bit of context. For many years now, the government has said it wants to go ahead with this measure pending the OECD and G20 plan to impose a minimum global tax of 15% on the operations of those businesses.
The main object of that act is to combat the use of tax havens by businesses to avoid paying their fair share of tax through the use of schemes to underreport their profits. Consequently, if these provisions aren't deleted, taxation of the web giants will be established.
The act provides that Canadian businesses must generate many hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue in order to be targeted by those provisions. Perhaps I don't understand this, but I don't think we're talking about SMEs here.
When I talk to member businesses of the Joliette chamber of commerce, they tell me they're tired of competing with multinationals that don't pay their fair share of tax because they use tax havens.
I think these are important provisions. Obviously, I sincerely hope the OECD is able to impose a global minimum tax of 15% so we can make the immoral illegal. The present system isn't working, but I'm very surprised to see that the Chamber of Commerce has come to the defence of the web giants. I'm surprised and disappointed, and that's my comment.
Ms. Tassé-Goodman and Mr. Poirier-Monette, thank you for being here.
I'd like to go back to ad hoc grocery assistance, which corresponded to the GST credit for the less well-off that has been introduced twice.
Why is it still important to maintain that assistance in the next budget.