Finance Committee on March 14th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you. That's the time we have.

Thank you, National Chief, and MP Dzerowicz.

We're moving to the Bloc and MP Ste-Marie for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to make it clear to the committee members and the witnesses that the Emergencies Act and the three associated orders in council didn't target only the Ottawa area. They applied as a whole across Canada. That's what the act and the orders in council say. We mustn't forget that.

My question is for Mr. Tremblay.

Mr. Bisson, who represents businesses in Gatineau, told us earlier that the two‑year pandemic and the three‑week occupation of downtown Ottawa took their toll on businesses. One specific challenge is staff retention in the midst of a labour shortage. Many businesses lost employees because those employees moved on to other fields.

Is the same situation happening in Ottawa? If so, what can be done about it?

[Michael Tremblay]

Thank you for your question.

We certainly have seen the same issue in the Ottawa region. It's quite simply that job seekers want to be in a position where they can have stable, steady employment. The single best thing we can do is to stabilize the job environment for these people. It's encouraging to see that things are opening up again. As things open up again, we need to make sure that the conditions for these employees as they come back are solid so that they feel comfortable that this can be a career path for them that is going to be stable, steady and unwaveringly good from a job security perspective. I do think it's that simple.

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

Do you think that the federal government should introduce a plan for the gradual return to in‑person work for the public service? Would this help businesses in Ottawa?

[Michael Tremblay]

Obviously the downtown core of Ottawa in particular depends quite heavily on certain levels of government business. I'm sure that's true in the Gatineau region as well. That would certainly help. I think there's a practical reality as businesses come back, including government, that there is a need for hybrid. But certainly having the new normal come into effect as quickly as possible would be a positive thing for the economies of both Ottawa and Gatineau.

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

Clearly. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Ste‑Marie.

We move now to the NDP with MP Blaikie for two and a half minutes.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bisson, you said earlier that the convoy demonstrations affected Gatineau businesses. I want to ask you a question, given that we see many demonstrations in the national capital region and—

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

I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr. Chair. Mr. Bisson said earlier that he had to leave, so I think that he's no longer here.

I apologize for interrupting my colleague, Mr. Blaikie.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

It was for a good reason. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you for letting us know that Mr. Bisson had to leave.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I forgot Mr. Bisson had to leave. I might therefore direct the question to Mr. Tremblay, because he has been talking a little bit about the impact of the convoy on businesses in Ottawa. Of course Ottawa is a place where we see many demonstrations. I'm just wondering if in your recollection you've ever seen a demonstration with the same tone and tenor and with comparable impacts on businesses in Ottawa in terms of both intensity and duration.

[Michael Tremblay]

Certainly there has been nothing that looked like this one. I don't think any of us has experienced a pandemic in our lifetime, or having that then spill over into a three-week period in which companies have had to endure that kind of environment. I certainly can't recall a period in which one and then the other happened. Certainly in my lifetime I've never seen a three-week period when the downtown core was clogged like that.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

What were some of the characteristics of this demonstration that you feel set it apart from other kinds of demonstrations that we would see regularly in Ottawa?

[Michael Tremblay]

It was the fact that it really paralyzed companies from being able to go about their normal business. Some of these businesses were afraid. They were afraid for their employees. They were putting security in and around the perimeters of their facilities. They could not physically operate, and to me that's just unacceptable. That's how I would characterize the difference here. It's one thing to protest; it's another to restrict others from going about their business. That's exactly what occurred here.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you very much for that description.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you.

Thank you, MP Blaikie.

We are moving to our committee floor with MP Albas from the Conservatives for five minutes.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you again, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to talk with some of our cryptocurrency sector representatives here. First of all, I believe Ether Capital has already said that they sell on more of a wholesale capital point, meaning they give access to different markets, so I don't think this will apply. Nonetheless, I will just ask this quickly, Mr. Mosoff. At Ether Capital you don't have individual clients who would be designated persons under these emergency economic measures orders. Is that correct?

[Brian Mosoff]

People would be purchasing our stock through a traditional brokerage account.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Okay.

I'll ask Newton Crypto and Wealthsimple, with regard to the duty to cease dealings, that effectively meant any accounts you held with them. How did the duty to cease dealings and the freeze affect your direct operations?

[Dustin Walper]

I can handle that one first, and Blair can jump in.

For us, we reviewed our client base against the list that we received. I'd have to double-check this, but I don't believe that there was anyone in our client list who actually matched. We obviously blocked some transfers from the list of the client addresses that were given by the RCMP, but that was the extent of it.

The biggest concern was the uncertainty in the first couple of days of exactly what we were expected to do.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

We'll go over to you, Mr. Wiley.

[Blair Wiley]

We went through a similar operational exercise. We reviewed all of our client lists across all of our wealth management and our crypto clients. None of our crypto clients were on any of the identified names lists provided by the RCMP.

We had one wealth management client whose account was temporarily frozen for about three days. That was cleared as soon as we had an affirmative response from the RCMP that there was no need to continue freezing that account.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Did you notify your client of this, or did you simply work with the RCMP? I'm sure the client was concerned.

[Blair Wiley]

We did not notify the client. There is good reason not to notify clients in these circumstances.

One thing I would observe is that the client was one who had a registered account with us, which has certain tax treatments. One of the unfortunate consequences of the breadth of the order is that any wealth management firm that held RRSPs for an individual whose name was on this RCMP list was in a position, as we were, where there would be a need to freeze those registered accounts in some capacity, even though it's hard to draw a line between how a registered RSP account could be used to directly fund the activities that were subject to the order.