House of Commons Hansard #165 of the 36th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was agency.

Topics

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

December 3rd, 1998 / 5:10 p.m.

Bloc

Gilles-A. Perron Bloc Saint-Eustache—Sainte-Thérèse, QC

moved:

Motion No. 6

That Bill C-43 be amended by deleting Clause 5.

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Reform

Jason Kenney Reform Calgary Southeast, AB

moved:

Motion No. 7

That Bill C-43, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing line 18 on page 2 with the following:

“forcement of the program legislation in a manner that respect the principles of fairness, impartiality and accountability;”

Motion No. 8

That Bill C-43 be amended by adding after line 36 on page 2 the following new clause:

“5.1 (1) In carrying out its responsibilities under section 5 with respect to the administration and enforcement of program legislation, the Agency shall, in its dealings with taxpayers, promote, respect and protect the following rights of a taxpayer:

(a) to be provided with a plain English or French version of any provision of the Income Tax Act on request to the Agency;

(b) to be given the opportunity to provide a general explanation of a question regarding tax liability before being subjected to an audit or a requirement to produce receipts and other records to document the matter;

(c) to have assessments, appeals and other procedures related to tax liability dealt with expeditiously;

(d) to receive any information in the possession of the Agency that shows or tends to show that the taxpayer may be entitled to a refund of tax paid or a reduced assessment of tax owing;

(e) to confidentiality of all information provided by or respecting the taxpayer to the Agency, except as may be necessary for the administration of the Income Tax Act, and authorized by law;

(f) to complain to a designated officer of the Agency of the conduct of or a communication from any employee of the Agency and to receive an explanation of it from the officer, and if necessary, to complain further to the Commissioner;

(g) to refuse to provide information that is not required for the administration of program legislation;

(h) to appoint counsel or an agent to represent the taxpayer at any meeting that deals with liability to pay tax under the Income Tax Act and to record, without being required to give notice, the proceedings of any such meeting;

(i) not to be assessed interest or a penalty on tax found to be owing unless the taxpayer has deliberately evaded the payment of the tax or duty;

(j) in cases where the taxpayer has acted in good faith, to reasonable, negotiated terms of payment of taxes owing so as to avoid undue hardship to the taxpayer and the taxpayer's dependants and employees;

(k) to be subjected to steps to recover tax owing, including the seizure of property or freezing of assets, only if such steps are necessary to ensure payment of taxes owing, and to have the steps taken in a manner that protects, if possible, the interests of the taxpayer's dependants and employees.

(2) The Agency shall include in every annual report made pursuant to section 88, a review of the steps that have been taken by the Agency during the year to fulfil its responsibilities under subsection (1).”

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Bloc

Gilles-A. Perron Bloc Saint-Eustache—Sainte-Thérèse, QC

moved:

Motion No. 9

That Bill C-43 be amended by deleting Clause 6.

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Reform

Jason Kenney Reform Calgary Southeast, AB

moved:

Motion No. 10

That Bill C-43, in Clause 6, be amended by replacing lines 17 and 18 on page 3 with the following:

“to the Minister by Parliament.”

Motion No. 11

That Bill C-43, in Clause 6, be amended by replacing line 19 on page 3 with the following:

“(2) The Minister is responsible for all aspects of the”

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Bloc

Gilles-A. Perron Bloc Saint-Eustache—Sainte-Thérèse, QC

moved:

Motion No. 205

That Bill C-43 be amended by deleting Clause 188.

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NDP

Lorne Nystrom NDP Qu'Appelle, SK

moved:

Motion No. 206

That Bill C-43, in Clause 188, be amended by adding after line 16 on page 77 the following:

“(2) The Governor in Council may not make an order under subsection (1) without the approval of at least one-half of the provinces.”

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

5:10 p.m.

Bloc

Gilles-A. Perron Bloc Saint-Eustache—Sainte-Thérèse, QC

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the motions in Group No. 2 before us, which we consider to be nonsense.

First, I would like to express my objection and frustration because by its arrogance, the government has gagged us on this bill. Our time is very limited and we cannot discuss the bill in length.

I would like to know to what extent provinces are favorable to the bill. New Brunswick is the only province suggesting that the bill is worth examining, that it could perhaps create economies of scale. However, before supporting the bill it wants to know what is in it.

We ask ourselves the following question. In order for this bill to be workable, would it be necessary to harmonize all federal tax legislation throughout Canada? If this is the case, what would be the cost? Members will recall that harmonizing the Maritime provincial sales taxes with the federal tax cost $3 billion.

The majority of people who came as witnesses before the finance standing committee were opposed to the bill. Public service union members were opposed to it. And more than 60% of small businesses are against it. Everyone is against it. Yet, with his arrogance, the revenue minister still wants to impose this bill on Quebec and the rest of Canada, when we know full well it is not workable.

There is one another question the revenue minister has not answered and I hope a government member will be able to answer us. How much did the bill's formulating cost us, you, me and the other taxpayers?

As the minister likes to say, “we have created a new vehicle',. This new vehicle is not a Formula 1 race car. This new vehicle will not work.

The revenue department set up 12 committees made up of lots of mandarins who worked on this for months, years even. How much did it cost us taxpayers, just to come up with this utterly useless bill?

There is something else I am wondering about in this bill. It is the position of the commissioner who will head the proposed Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. This person will be appointed by the governor in council. There is a big chance he or she will be a friend of the governing party, someone who has rendered valuables services to the party opposite. He or she will hold office for a term of five years.

How much will the commissioner be paid? What will the annual salary be? Is it possible this person will go to his bosses, the ministers opposite and tell them: “I have as many employees under me and I manage the same amount of money as the president of the Royal Bank, so I should get the same salary he is getting”. That is another absurdity.

The agency will simply be an added layer of bureaucracy. We are the first to admit that the revenue department may not be always up to par, so why add another layer of bureaucracy that will not solve any of the problems we now have with the department, like the auditor general told us this week. We simply do not understand.

The only purpose this agency can serve is to take the 40,000 public servants targeted here and tell them: “We do not need you any more”. The government is simply taking an axe to the Public Service Act under the jurisdiction of the President of the Treasury Board. They are looking for a way to say—and it will never happen—that they have cut expenses. It is not true. By creating this new agency, they are only shuffling the money around. There will be fewer employees, but the agency's staff will be better paid. We are getting four quarters for a dollar, as they say.

That is why I am so vigorously opposed to this agency. We simply do not understand why it is being established. What is its purpose? Why does the government want to create this agency? They already created agencies like Nav Canada, ADM, the food inspection agency and the brand new Canadian wheat agency and, to date, none of these agencies are working. So why set up another one?

We are strongly against the creation of this agency, because we care about the well-being of all Canadians and most particularly about the well-being of Quebeckers. I urge all of the provinces to stand up and clearly tell the government: “This is not what we want. As provincial governments, we want to be able to collect taxes and hand Ottawa its share”.

This is why the Bloc Quebecois and I are strongly opposed to this bill.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

5:20 p.m.

Reform

Ken Epp Reform Elk Island, AB

Mr. Speaker, I am glad we finally got to Group No. 2. I also regret that we have time allocation on this so that we cannot express our genuine concerns about these things.

While we have been sitting here I wrote my newspaper column. One of the things I put in my column is that there are two ways of getting legislation through the House. One is to engage in a fair and an even handed debate, negotiation, give and take, and to come up with a set of rules that is good for people.

I hope that when Canadians trust us to form the government I will not have changed my mind on this. I believe it is a legitimate role for the government to listen to what members in opposition are saying. I noticed one of the members over there gave a hearty laugh. I guess he is eagerly looking forward to being on this side of the House again.

When that happens I think it will be important for us, when we are on the government side, to recognize that everything may not be perfect every time. If I have any role to play in it, I will listen very carefully to what the Liberals on this side of the House have to say on our legislation. I hope we will have the humility to receive fairly legislation the Liberals bring to our attention that they feel is not as good as it could be.

I have not spoken on this group at all and so I would like to address myself primarily to the motions put forward by the Reform Party, although the others also have merit. I am not going to spend as much time on those.

I am going on the assumption that this independent agency will happen. We have seen this over and over. The government will arrange for this vote to pass. This government has already, with its majority, voted for closure. I think this is the tenth time in the last few months.

I will not mention names since I am not allowed and I will not mention ridings since I do not want to embarrass anyone here, but some in the Liberal Party when they were in opposition raised a hue and cry when time allocation was used by the Conservatives of the day. The Liberals said this is wrong, it is a defeat of democracy. The Liberals had all sorts of bad things to say about the use of closure. Now they are on the other side and on command they vote in favour of it.

I suppose I am setting myself up for another quotation maybe four or five years down the road, whenever the next election is, when we form the government.

I think it is important to listen to these debates and to when an amendment is put forward to improve it. That is what I am trying to do now. I know members will not have been given the freedom by their party to vote in favour of these very reasonable and rational taxpayer protecting amendments.

I wonder if we would find among them some statesmen, if we would find among them some politicians who will rise up and represent the people who sent them here, the electors, and they will vote in favour of those people instead of simply following the party line. The purpose of my speech is to persuade Liberal members to do that and to give them solid reasons for so doing.

One of the problems with this agency is the question of accountability. Right now we have some degree of prime ministerial accountability. We have some ministerial accountability. Last night on TV I saw a clip of the Prime Minister when he was leader of opposition. He wagged his finger and said “when we form government you can count on it that ministers will accept responsibility”. We have seen a number of instances in the last little more than five years where that has really not quite been the case. Of course, the Prime Minister continues to say they have no scandals, because what he does is pinch his eyes shut and pretend they are not there and then he can proclaim that there were no scandals. There have been a couple. The Prime Minister said he believes in ministerial responsibility.

What I want to do right now is simply challenge the Liberal members when the vote is held on these amendments to vote in favour of Motion No. 3. Motion No. 3 increases the responsibility and the accountability of this new agency to parliament instead of making it into a faceless irresponsible bureaucracy whose function is to separate the taxpayers from their money and which will not have political of any other kind of accountability to parliament.

We insist that should be done. We want to ensure that the employees, the directors and the commissioner of the new agency are held accountable not to the minister in the backrooms but to parliament directly. I do not think anyone on the Liberal side, if they were on this side and the Reformers were speaking on the other side, would be against this motion. They would vote in favour of it.

Let us not allow walking across two sword lengths of aisle change important principles we believe in. I would simply urge them to do the right thing for taxpayers. I suppose basically everyone n the country is affected by this legislation. That is another reason why it is so odious for the government to have invoked closure on this.

It is absolutely necessary that the government so arrange its affairs that people believe in our government and believe in our tax system. Our tax system is predicated on voluntary compliance. If that is missing, the system falls apart.

We have seen it in the last number of years where with the very undemocratic imposition of the GST many people have gone into the underground economy. They do not agree with it. They said it was not done correctly. They did not have representatives representing them in parliament.

If we just jam this legislation through, two days of debate and it is finished. It is a fait accompli. It is mandatory for us. We have no option but to make sure people support this legislation.

We should take the full length of debate on it so that we as members of parliament can hear what our constituents are saying and we can respond to them and make sure the taxation system is fair, which I believe most people believe in. I have yet to hear anyone in my riding say to me they do not want to pay any taxes at all. But I have heard many times that they want fair taxation and a fair taxation system.

If we vote in favour of Motion No. 3, put forward by my Reform colleague, it would help to provide accountability of this new agency to parliament. It would help people to have faith in and to really have a good feeling about paying their taxes, something they have never had before in their lives. I am sure the Liberals would want the taxpayers to feel good when they send their money to Ottawa.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

5:30 p.m.

Liberal

Beth Phinney Liberal Hamilton Mountain, ON

Mr. Speaker, in response to hon. members who are asking for the deletion of a number of clauses in Bill C-43, an act to establish the Canada customs and revenue agency, I will explain why such an agency is needed. The most important reason is the demand of Canadians for streamlined and more responsive tax, customs and trade administration services.

The agency is designed to improve services to Canadians, to businesses, and to provinces and territories. This will be accomplished in a number of ways. One way is expanding and improving the co-ordination and administration of federal and provincial revenue programs.

This will result in a number of benefits: a reduction of overlap and duplication among levels of government, a potential for significant reductions in costs to governments, a potential for significant reductions in costs to taxpayers in complying with tax laws, one level of tax collector that will create major advantages for businesses, and an improvement in the competitive position of Canadian businesses.

Another benefit of the legislation is that it will improve the management of the agency. The board of management will help to bring a client oriented focus to agency activities. The board will also help to bring a strategic perspective to management by using some private sector techniques to ensure efficient and effective management. The agency will be able to tailor its programs for administrative activities to meet its own needs. As a result of this improved efficiency, the agency will be able to reinvest productivity gains in programs for Canadians.

This improved management will also mean significant improvements for employees. Employee representatives will be able to bargain directly with the employer. This will result in more responsive and simplified staffing and classification systems. In addition, a new approach of recourse will focus on alternative dispute resolution mechanisms such as fact finding and mediation. This will also incorporate access to independent third party review.

Design teams comprised of employees, managers and unions have been involved in designing the new human resource regime for the new agency. The agency model proposed in the Canada customs and revenue agency is unique since it combines the strengths of both the public and private sectors while remaining fully accountable to parliament and the Canadian public.

In developing the Canada customs and revenue agency the department has been sensitive to the concern of the concentration of too much power in one place. Tax, customs and trade administration affect the lives and livelihoods of most Canadians. They want to be sure they are dealt with fairly and that their rights are protected.

In the design of the new agency the essential checks and balances that govern the activities and ensure the accountability of Revenue Canada have been maintained. For example, the enforcement powers of the new agency will be the same as those currently provided to Revenue Canada through legislation like the Income Tax Act or the Customs Act.

If there is a problem or a complaint, the minister will still be fully accountable to parliament and the public for the administration and enforcement of specific legislation. The minister will have the authority, as is currently the case, to answer questions in the House and to ensure the agency is acting properly in its dealings with the Canadian public. The existing provisions for accountability are being enhanced by the addition of three new accountability mechanisms.

The confidentiality of a taxpayer's personal information will be protected under the agency just as it is currently with Revenue Canada. The authorities governing confidentiality are clearly set out in the legislation and they will not be changed by the bill.

Bill C-43 will permit the agency to offer new and better services to the provinces and territories. For example, at the present time Revenue Canada can only collect provincial taxes that are harmonized with federal taxes. The new agency would be able to collect non-harmonized taxes, expanding the potential for single window tax collection with considerable savings for businesses and individual Canadians.

Greater co-ordination among the federal, provincial and territorial governments will simplify tax administration for Canadians and reduce costly overlap and duplication between governments. Increased operational flexibility in the management of internal resources is a major change that will allow the new agency to adopt a more client oriented approach.

The new legislation will allow the proposed agency to customize its own resources and administrative functions to meet the needs of Canadians as well as those of its employees. All of this means better service.

Doing something better is not an expansion of power but an extension of service, service to individual Canadians, service to businesses, and services to provinces and territories. Better service means savings in time and money, savings in compliance costs for businesses and savings in administration costs for government.

The intention of Bill C-43 is not to create an agency with unlimited powers but rather to establish a framework with all the checks and balances for a more efficient agency. The bill is important and beneficial, beneficial for the government, beneficial for business, and beneficial for individual Canadians. This is what is expected of good government.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

5:35 p.m.

NDP

Lorne Nystrom NDP Qu'Appelle, SK

Madam Speaker, I have a motion on the floor of the House right now. It is one that I think is perfectly reasonable and that members across would like to support. It is the one that says the agency should not come into force until at least half the provinces agree to participate.

That is very reasonable. We are a federation. We tend to work together as a federation. It will be a new program in which the federal government expects the provinces to participate. Before the agency takes effect we should have an amendment accepted by the House that at least half the provinces sign on to beforehand.

One of the problems I have with the agency is that nobody has actually said we are going to do this, we are going to sign on. We know, Madam Speaker, that your province will not sign on. Quebec will collect its own taxes. We know hear the province of Ontario is not very enthused. The member who just spoke is from Ontario. She is very close to her premier. Her premier will probably not sign on to it, at least not at this stage. Maybe they will in four, five or six months.

Until that happens the bill should not take effect. In the provinces of Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Alberta there is a great deal of skepticism about the bill. It is a brand new agency.

This is a new agency in this country. Income tax is now collected by the Department of National Revenue, but with this bill a new agency will be established, with approximately 40,000 employees, or 20% of the federal public service. A good number of people are very unhappy with this bill: Revenue Canada employees, provinces and many taxpayers from coast to coast.

I moved an amendment to this bill, to get half of the provinces to agree with it before it was passed.

I see in the House the member from Abitibi. He would certainly agree with my motion. He is a great federalist. I think he would also want to see the majority of the provinces agree before the bill proceeds. It is a very reasonable motion.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)

It being 5.39 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier today, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of report stage of the bill now before the House.

The question is on Motion No. 2. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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Some hon. members

Agreed.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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Some hon. members

No.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

5:40 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

5:40 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)

All those opposed to will please say nay.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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Some hon. members

Nay.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)

The recorded division on Motion No. 2 stands deferred.

The next question is on Motion No. 6. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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Some hon. members

Agreed.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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Some hon. members

No.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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Some hon. members

Yea.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

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The Acting Speaker (Ms. Thibeault)

All those opposed will please say nay.

Canada Customs And Revenue Agency ActGovernment Orders

5:40 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nay.