Finance Committee on May 17th, 2022

[Bruce Hayne]

That is our understanding, but there are many places within just a few nautical miles of the Canadian border where people can keep their boats. For instance, in B.C. they can keep their boats in Blaine or Bellingham or Seattle. It's the same thing in Buffalo, New York, and so on. It's very easy to register and keep their vessel in the U.S., and they're still allowed to come into Canada, albeit for a limited period, to sail their boat in Canadian waters.

[Yvan Baker, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Got it. It would be for that smaller group of folks, those who are willing to keep their boat in the U.S. and travel to get to their boat every time, or something like that. Those are the folks you're talking about.

[Bruce Hayne]

That's correct. Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you. Thank you, MP Baker.

Now, for the final questions from the Bloc, we have MP Ste-Marie for two minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The problem at the federal level is that every municipality with fewer than 100,000 residents is considered rural. That makes no sense. It doesn't represent the realities of rural regions. In my riding, two municipalities, Saint-Paul and Saint-Donat, had access to the Rapid Housing Initiative to provide social housing for seniors. The criticisms of this initiative have to do with the fact that a tender call was launched when the municipalities were not expecting it. Those that already had a project in mind were able to submit it immediately and obtain funds. It all happened a bit too quickly. The municipalities need to he informed about it earlier.

Mr. Demers and Mr. Boulet, do you have a final comment for the committee? If not, Mr. Hayne mentioned the luxury tax on boats worth $250,000 and over. Mr. Demers, in your part of the country there are some big lakes. Is this something you've heard about?

If you could answer that or make a final comment about what you'd like from the federal government, we'd appreciate it.

[Jacques Demers]

I honestly had never heard anything about that until today. It's the first time I've been told about something as important as that. And yet, there are quite a few boat owners in my region.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Now we have the NDP. These will be our final questions.

MP Blaikie, you have two minutes.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Sarangi, earlier when we were talking about the benefit of the one-on-one approach versus an amnesty approach, you mentioned that other attempts to try to deliver aid to people who are in financial crisis to try to stave off homelessness might be clawed back as a result of not having an amnesty in place. I wonder if you could speak a bit more to the way that this approach can impact other attempts to deliver help to people.

[Leila Sarangi]

Through the chair, thank you for that final question.

Right now, we know that the government is already garnisheeing benefits—for example, maternity benefits for new mothers. If there is an increase or a program to deliver more income benefits, the federal government, through both CRA and Service Canada, has said that they will garnishee benefits from people who have been deemed to have been either overpaid or ineligible and can't prove their eligibility for those CERB and CRB payments.

For example, if there's an increase to the GST benefit or an additional kind of income benefit to support low- and moderate-income families, if they are deemed ineligible for pandemic benefits, those would be garnisheed to offset that.

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

Is that garnisheeing already happening?

[Leila Sarangi]

Yes. Currently it has started happening with maternity benefits, as I have understood.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, MP Blaikie.

To the witnesses, we really thank you.

I thank the clerk, Alexandre, for bringing us all together in such short order and for getting it all prepared and ready. I know there wasn't much time.

On behalf of the finance committee, the members and, of course, the clerk, analysts, interpreters and everybody here, we really thank you for your time and expertise and for answering so many questions. We really appreciate it, and we wish you a great day.

Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.