Mr. Speaker, today we are debating the sixth omnibus budget bill since the last election. It is 850 pages long and includes 70 pages of additions to the Income Tax Act, yet there is not one word about tax havens. Three years, six bills and 4,500 pages of budget bills, and still not a word about tax havens.
The Liberal government's record on taxation is a monumental failure. It is worse than failure, actually, because to fail implies that one has tried. This government is not even trying. It chose to leave the door wide open to tax havens and the people who cash in because of them. It is doing so knowingly and deliberately. Despite all the nice things it says about the middle class, it has picked sides and it is siding with Bay Street bankers. I cannot overemphasize that tax havens are probably the worst financial and economic scandal of our time. When it comes to attacking this cancer, Canada's performance is among the world's worst.
Canada represents just 2% of the world's GDP. Canada's three largest banks, the Royal Bank of Canada, Scotia Bank, and the CIBC, represent 80% of the banking assets in Barbados, Grenada, and the Bahamas. Canada has just 2% of the world's GDP, but 80% of its banking assets are in these three tax havens in the Caribbean.
That is not all. In the eight other tax havens that make up the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, Canadian banks own 60% of banking assets. Canada is not an economic superpower, but it is a superpower in tax havens.
As social democrats, we cannot accept that. There is no social justice without tax justice. There is no justice at all when the financial sector hides its money in the Caribbean and ordinary people are left paying the bill. Ottawa is allowing that to happen and at the same time is cutting transfers. Left with a shortfall, Quebec is making cuts here and there, while Quebeckers made it clear in poll after poll during the recent electoral campaign in Quebec that their priorities were health and education.
In the meantime, bankers continue to grow their billions of tax-free dollars in the sunny Caribbean. This is not illegal because the government has introduced no provisions in six budget implementation bills to prevent it. For this reason alone, everyone in the House should vote against this bill. That is what the Bloc Québécois is going to do.
However, this bill also contains some good measures. It will establish pay equity at the federal level, both for the government and businesses operating under its jurisdiction. It is about time that Ottawa moved into the 21st century, especially since John Turner's government announced this measure in 1984, or 34 years ago.
I will now speak to the issue of consumer protection in banking, which is addressed in Bill C-86. We have to acknowledge that the regime proposed by Bill C-86 is a big improvement over the mess proposed two years ago in Bill C-29. I have to say that I am proud of the work that we did to make the government reconsider and go back to the drawing board.
The Liberal government trampled over Quebec consumers to accommodate Bay Street. I remind members that Quebec is the most advanced society in North America when it comes to consumer protections. The Quebec government sets the strictest guidelines to ensure that consumers are not swindled. This was one legacy left to us by Lise Payette, who passed away last month.
Bill C-29 sought to eliminate all of the safeguards that protect ordinary people but upset rich Bay Street bankers, including measures that ban misleading advertising and hidden fees, those that prevent unilateral changes to contracts, and those that prohibit banks from increasing the maximum liability for unauthorized credit card charges to more than $50.
The Quebec act provides for a simple, free and legally binding recourse mechanism, which is the Office de la protection du consommateur. This organization defends ordinary people rather than profiteers and has the ability to initiate class action suits so that David does not have to go up against Goliath alone. Ottawa wanted to eliminate all this, usurp all the power and use it to give the banks a nice big gift of vague requirements and non-existing recourse—essentially a paradise for bankers.
I will say that Bill C-86 is not as blatant an attack as Bill C-29 was. The obligations that the government is imposing on banks are real obligations. They are not written in the conditional tense as mere suggestions, as we saw two years ago.
The government is much less explicit about its desire to stifle Quebec and set aside its provincial Consumer Protection Act. It has eliminated the infamous clause about federal paramountcy. It seems the two regimes will be able to coexist. I say “it seems” because whether that will really happen is unclear. That is why this needs to be studied in greater detail.
With regard to consumer protection, the federal act has one massive shortcoming: recourse. In Quebec, the process is simple. If someone feels their bank has misled them, they can complain to the Office de la protection du consommateur, a consumer protection bureau that will investigate and, if necessary, take the case to court. There is no cost to the complainant, and the government helps the consumer assert their rights. That is not what Bill C-86 does. The consumer will have to contact the banking ombudsman, a kind of mediator who makes recommendations but has no actual power and, moreover, is paid by the banks. Would consumers trust a judge they knew was in the bank's employ? Of course not. What we needed was a government institution, not an employee of the bankers' association.
If the bank does not listen to the recommendations of its ombudsman, what other recourse do clients have? They can take the case to federal court alone and at their own expense. Does the government really think that a client who is charged $50 in hidden fees is going to take the case to federal court alone and deal with his or her bank's army of lawyers? Consumer protection is new in federal law. It would be in the banks' interest to limit the scope of their obligations as much as possible. We can be sure that they will do everything in their power to ensure that the case law does not come down too hard on them. They will fight. Taking a case to the Supreme Court can cost up to $1 million. No one is going to subject themselves to that to recover $50 in fees. The remedies contained in Bill C-86 are ill suited for an area like consumer protection, where it is often a matter of many small amounts of money.
Also, although the bill imposes obligations on banks, it does not provide any real recourse for clients, which means that the obligations may be more theoretical than real. Here is what I expect will happen. Since clients who have been shortchanged will not have any real recourse at the federal level, they will continue to turn to the Office de la protection du consommateur du Québec. That organization will take on the case and the banks, as they have always done, will defend themselves by claiming that they are above Quebec laws. In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled in a case such as this. It found that the Quebec laws applied to banks and that they could not claim to fall exclusively under federal jurisdiction. However, the Marcotte ruling is a subtle one. One must read between the lines. Basically, what the court said was that banks are subject to Quebec law because the federal Bank Act does not include a comprehensive and exclusive consumer protection regime.
Would the court have reached the same decision if Bill C-86 had been passed? Would it have found that what we are debating here today is a comprehensive and exclusive regime? Incidentally, “exclusive” means that it excludes the application of Quebec's laws. I do not know. No one knows. That is why this legislation needs a detailed study, and not a quick glance as part of an omnibus bill. There is a real risk that Bill C-86 will eliminate the simple, free and binding recourse mechanisms we have in Quebec, and replace them with virtually pointless mechanisms. This will give the Toronto-based banks what they have always wanted: the privilege of being above the law.
To support Bill C-86 without understanding its impacts is tantamount to gambling with consumer rights in Quebec. It would be irresponsible. That is why I would like to move the following amendment to the amendment: That the amendment of the hon. member for Carleton be amended by deleting all the words after the words “other measures” and substituting the following: but that it be split and that clause 10 introducing the financial consumer protection framework be now referred to the Standing Committee on Finance before second reading.