Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak on Bill C-43, an act to establish the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. This bill establishes an agency that will enforce and administer the Income Tax Act instead of Revenue Canada.
This bill, which was introduced by the government last June, is a result of the Speech from the Throne in the previous Parliament. At the time, the government announced its intention to set up a national revenue recovery agency.
The government has followed up on this and proposes in Bill C-43 to establish a semi-independent agency that will be responsible for collecting all taxes in Canada.
The agency would administer all forms of taxes, from provincial sales taxes to taxes on gas and liquor, on a country-wide basis. There is, to say the least, cause for concern when a single agency is given so much power, specially in an area of such importance as taxes. I believe we are justified in asking if the real interests of citizens can be protected by the private sector.
Moreover, this superagency will be able to expand its powers even more if provinces and municipalities accept. Indeed, according to the bill, this agency will be responsible for negotiating with interested parties to collect all forms of taxes in Canada.
Yet, the numerous efforts of senior officials of Revenue Canada convince the provinces to allow Ottawa to administer their tax programs have failed.
When the government tabled its bill, not a single new tax administration agreement with any province was in sight, and not even a single letter of intent had been signed by a province to be part of an agreement. Quebec and Ontario categorically refused to even consider the possibility of dealing with the agency. Even P.E.I. has indicated that it is not ready to transfer further tax powers.
One of the reasons for creating this agency is doomed to failure from the outset.
Provinces simply do not want to relinquish to the federal government what little taxation power they have left. Quebec is no exception. The creation of a huge tax collection agency through which the governments hopes to extend its powers flies in the face of Quebec's position and demands.
Naturally, the Quebec government is all for improving tax legislation administration, which should be streamlined, but not at the expense of its own administrative authority. One way of making the system more efficient would be to have all tax collection operations, both provincial and federal, concentrated in Quebec.
The Quebec revenue department already collects the income tax and other taxes in Quebec, as well as the GST. It could also collect the federal income tax.
Quebec's proposal is to have the Quebec revenue department collect all taxes in Quebec. Unlike the proposed federal agency, this department is fully accountable.
I find profoundly disturbing the concept of an agency not reporting directly to a government being responsible for all tax collection activities. How can we make sure such an agency will give priority to the public interest rather than to its own interests?
Also, in this era of computers and e-mail, many companies buy and sell confidential data. It is normal to wonder whether an agency, which will be less accountable than a department such as Revenue Canada, will be able to adequately protect people's privacy. It is easy to imagine the wealth of personal and financial information that could be concentrated in the hands of this body.
As well, with the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, we are talking about 40,000 employees, that is 20 per cent of the whole public service that from now on will be at the mercy of the agency's board of management.
Clause 30(1) of the bill states that “The Agency has authority over all matters relating to general administrative policy in the Agency; the organization of the Agency; Agency real property; and personnel management, including the determination of the terms and conditions of employment of persons employed by the Agency.” Therefore, the Agency will have the power to raise or lower salaries, hire and fire employees and improve the managerial staff's terms and conditions of employment.
As we know, there is a very different salary scale in the private sector. Just think of the large banks' CEOs, for example. Everything in the current market suggests that officials and managers will be very well paid, whereas the working conditions of support staff, processing officers and so on will not be as good. This is hardly reassuring.
The government said it wanted to modernize the public service and improve the way fiscal legislation is implemented. But it is on the wrong track with the establishment of this agency. Modernization and privatization are not synonymous. It is unfortunate that the government did not try instead to work together with the public service unions in order to find ways to improve the system. There is nothing to suggest that the agency, as defined in Bill C-43, will improve anything. Quite the contrary.
As a matter of fact, according to a study by the Public Policy Forum, 40% of the businesses surveyed saw no advantage to this agency, and more than two thirds felt that it would increase or maintain their costs and, therefore, would have no positive effect in that sense.
Moreover, the structure proposed in Bill C-43 adds another level of bureaucracy in the form of an appointed board of management, which would only have a supervisory role, or so the Liberals say. Nevertheless, this board will require time, money and additional staff, and the agency will still be accountable to Treasury Board for administrative issues.
So the government is keeping all the old mechanisms in place while adding this new board. This means that we end up with yet another level of bureaucracy that makes the system even more cumbersome.
I just do not understand. If the mechanisms are the same and if, as the government says, the minister and his staff will still have control and will make sure the agency is transparent, then we certainly have good reason to wonder what purpose this agency will serve.
Is the government saying these things to ease our concerns and is it planning to eventually give more latitude to this agency, or is it simply trying to shirk its responsibilities and to distance itself, among other things, from negotiations with the provinces on tax administration issues?
It is always easier to blame an agency and to establish commissions of inquiry than to be accountable.
With what I just said, no one will be surprised to learn that I too am strongly opposed to this bill.
Like my colleagues from the Bloc Quebecois, I think that a task as fundamental as enforcing the Income Tax Act cannot be performed by an agency such as the one proposed in Bill C-43. This is not the way to modernize and simplify the administration of our tax system.