Industry Committee on Feb. 14th, 2017

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Yes, you didn't answer.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Allow me the opportunity to answer.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Go ahead.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

When you're talking about being bold and setting an example and changing the culture I think that we, at the government level, have demonstrated—

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Then why not do it in the bill?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Sorry, again you're not allowing me to answer the question.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Well, it's filibuster. You didn't answer the question.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

You're not allowing me the opportunity, sir.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Go ahead and try again.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

I will do my best. If you keep on interrupting, it may be a bit tricky.

As I said, the government and the Prime Minister led by example when we put forward a cabinet that reflected 50% women and 50% men. With respect to this piece of legislation, again, we're demonstrating very clearly, by showing leadership, how important diversity is. Not only did we have diversity in terms of the distribution between men and women, we had people of diverse backgrounds also in our cabinet.

This piece of legislation makes it very clear that diversity is very important. Again, the decision is ultimately made by the shareholders. They determine if they're happy with the diversity policy or not, and they will put the pressure on their board and on senior management because they understand that this will have an impact on their return on investment and on their shareholder earnings. I think that mechanism is very important and that's what we're here to promote.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Is it that much to ask a corporation to put a diversity policy...?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

That's exactly what we're doing.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

But you're not putting any targets, you're not putting any dates on it, and you're saying they shall. You shall—

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

We are asking organizations to have a—

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

—and then, by the way, report back to your board of directors and see if they shall do anything. Maybe they aren't doing anything.

If you look at the publicly traded companies that have a diversity policy, not very many of them have a majority of women on their boards, do they?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Again, this is exactly what the bill is trying to accomplish. It is saying, you should have a diversity policy and if you do not have a diversity policy, then you must explain why not. Putting that kind of pressure on a corporation clearly will change behaviour and we've seen this in other jurisdictions.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Other jurisdictions have put targets on it, so we can differ on that.

The other one I want to talk about here briefly is the say on pay. Mr. Masse alluded to this. We see some executives with obscene payouts, pensions. Hunter Harrison would be a great example of one with an obscene payout.

Why shouldn't shareholders have a say on somebody who walks away with hundreds of millions of dollars? Why not do that and be bold? Who would argue with that? Certainly, it's not the workers in this country.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

I do believe shareholders have a say when they select their board of directors and their board of directors ultimately select the CEO or president, and who—

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

But let's go back to who the shareholders are, Mr. Bains.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

With all due respect, Mr. Chair, I'm trying to answer the question. Every time I try to answer the question, he interrupts me.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

If you don't know, then I'll tell you. The shareholders of these companies are not grandma and grandpa down the side road. They are shareholders of equity companies, mutual fund companies, that also give their senior executives obscene salaries, pensions, and payouts. Why not have government put some clamps on this and bring it back into reality where it respects the worker and respects the investor, who does live on the side road and who has no say? Why not that?

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

I'm glad to hear that the Conservative Party is now caring about workers. I'm glad to hear that it is talking about shareholders. I'm glad to hear that it's talking about the middle class.

I can tell you right now that we've been very clear that there's a mechanism in place for accountability with respect to CEO compensations at the board level. Shareholders have the ability to determine that and these shareholders are individuals.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

You're putting the wolves in charge of the henhouse, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Your time is up.

You have the final two minutes, Mr. Masse. Keep it tight and brief, please.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I will.

I think, though, that it's important to note that we haven't talked about beneficial ownership transparency. That's important and part of this. It's money laundering in Canada. In fact, more money laundering is taking place in Canada because we're known as, basically, a safe haven. In fact, what's taking place is “snow washing”, and it's now described as a common element internationally.

It's ironic that the Minister of Finance at the G20 summit said:

We won't rest until we make sure that we're not only in compliance — but that we're doing a very good job understanding who owns what assets in our country, understanding what taxes people owe.

That's what Morneau said. I guess, maybe, the definitions of work and rest might be the ones that challenge here because, certainly given the Panama papers, this would be an excellent opportunity to write beneficial ownership transparency measures into this bill. We don't have them.

In fact, the Toronto Star did an exposé on what's taking place. Money laundering, as you know, is related to terrorist activity. It's related to drug trafficking, embezzlement—a whole series of things. It also, lastly, is inflating the Toronto and the Vancouver housing market. There are several aspects to this.

Exactly what enforcement is provided here, because I see nothing related to that? Why is the government so reluctant to do that, instead of following through on its commitments to the world?