Debates of June 11th, 2018

(Return tabled)

Question No. 1708-

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

With regard to firearms licences issued in each province and territory for the last ten years, broken down by year: (a) how many Possession and Acquisition Licences (PAL) were (i) issued, (ii) revoked by reason for revocation; (b) how many Restricted Possession and Acquisition Licences (RPAL) were (i) issued, (ii) revoked by reason for revocation; (c) what is the average time for government or police to confiscate revoked firearms licences for (i) PAL, (ii) RPAL; and (d) what is the average time for government or police to confiscate the firearms possessed by revoked firearms licence holders for (i) PAL, (ii) RPAL?

(Return tabled)

Question No. 1709

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

With regard to the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) practice of withholding transfer or benefit payments from the Government of Canada or provincial or territorial governments to taxpayers who owe taxes payable (tax debts), and instead applying the balances of such payments to such tax debts: (a) for 2016, 2017, and 2018, broken down by year, how many federal transfer or benefit payments were applied to tax debts; (b) for each year in (a), how many provincial or territorial transfer or benefit payments were applied to tax debts; (c) which federal transfer or benefit payments may CRA withhold and apply to tax debts; (d) which provincial or territorial transfer or benefit payments may CRA withhold and apply to tax debts; (e) which, if any, federal or provincial or territorial transfer or benefit payments are exempt from withholding and application to tax debt; (f) for each year in (a) what total amount of overall transfer or benefit payments did CRA withhold and apply to tax debts; (g) for each year in (a), how many transfer or benefit payments did CRA withhold and apply to tax debts before the deadline for paying taxes owing; (h) is the practice in (g) of withholding and applying transfer or benefit payments to tax debts before the deadline for paying taxes owing legal; (i) if the practice in (g) of withholding and applying transfer or benefit payments to tax debts before the deadline for paying taxes owing is legal, which section of which statute permits it; (j) for each year in (a) in which CRA withheld and applied transfer or benefit payments to tax debts before the deadline for paying taxes owing, how many tax debts to which such payments were applied did taxpayers pay in full by or on the deadline, such that an overpayment resulted; (k) for each year in (a), how many overpayments in (j) did CRA refund to the applicable taxpayers; and (l) for each year in (a), how many transfer or benefit payments which CRA withheld and applied to a tax debt which resulted in an overpayment in (j) did CRA retain to apply to taxes owing in the future?

(Return tabled)

Question No. 1710-

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

With regard to the testimony at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance on March 1, 2018, by the Assistant Commissioner, International, Large Business and Investigations Branch of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), regarding monetary incentives and debt collection at the CRA: (a) what percentage and what absolute value of assessed taxes, including personal, corporate, and excise taxes, did CRA not collect between 2007 and 2017 inclusively, broken down by year; (b) of the taxes owing but not collected in (a), what percentage of debts (i) were collected in the following year, (ii) were collected within two years, (iii) were collected within five years, (iv) were collected after five years, (v) have not been collected to date; (c) what options or authorized measures can CRA deploy to recover tax debts; (d) of the debts in (a) which were eventually collected, what percentage were recovered by each of the measures in (c), broken down by year; (e) by what criteria are CRA employees evaluated with respect to success or failure to collect debts owing; (f) for auditors, assessors, and collectors at CRA, what performance metrics are considered for employee evaluations and how are they ranked or weighted; (g) on what evidence is the audit change rate of 75% based; (h) what is the acceptable error rate for audits and assessments respectively; (i) what measures exist at CRA to reduce the error rate of individual auditors and assessors; and (j) what protocols exist at CRA to correct errors made by auditors or assessors before objections or appeals are filed by affected taxpayers?

(Return tabled)

Question No. 1711

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

With regard to materials prepared for Associate Deputy Ministers and Assistant Deputy Ministers from December 1, 2017, to present: for every briefing document prepared, what is the (i) date on the document, (ii) title or subject matter of the document, (iii) department’s internal tracking number, (iv) title of individual for whom the material was prepared, (v) sender?

(Return tabled)

Question No. 1712

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

With regard to materials prepared for Deputy Ministers from December 1, 2017, to present: for every briefing document prepared, what is the (i) date on the document, (ii) title or subject matter of the document, (iii) department’s internal tracking number, (iv) sender?

(Return tabled)

Question No. 1713

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

With regard to all expenditures on hospitality (Treasury Board Object Code 0822), since December 6, 2017, and broken down by department or agency: what are the details of all expenditures, including (i) vendor, (ii) amount, (iii) date of expenditure, (iv) start and end date of contract, (v) description of goods or services provided, (vi) file number, (vii) number of government employees in attendance, (viii) number of other attendees?

(Return tabled)

Question No. 1714-

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

With regard to materials prepared for Ministers from December 6, 2017, to present: for every briefing document prepared, what is the (i) date on the document, (ii) title or subject matter of the document, (iii) department’s internal tracking number, (iv) sender?

(Return tabled)

Question No. 1716

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

With regard to overtime pay for departmental communications staff since January 1, 2016, broken down by year: what is the total cost of this overtime, broken down by (i) department, agency, or other government entity, (ii) individual communication staff title?

(Return tabled)

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Standing Order 69.1—Bill C-59

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I will try to be brief out of respect for our Conservative colleagues because today is their opposition day. I am taking this opportunity because of the vote that took place earlier today to adopt Bill C-59 at second reading and report stage.

I will quote what the Chair said in response to a point of order I raised a while ago about applying Standing Order 69.1 to this bill.

The Speaker said:

However should the motion in fact be adopted to send the bill to committee before second reading and should the bill be concurred in at report stage and at second reading, I could certainly, as the Speaker, apply Standing Order 69.1 at third reading of the bill. At that time, one would anticipate that after it came back from committee, the bounds of the bill and its principles would be more clearly established.

For that reason, I come back with the same point of order. I would simply refer the Chair to the statements I made on November 20, 2017 to the record of that day. I made the same points. I would only add that the point is even more strongly made following the committee process. As we went clause by clause, different officials from different departments had to be present on different days as we went through different elements. That only reinforces the fact that not only under this legislation, but also where there are disparate pieces that obviously pertained to different acts in different departments, so they would be deserving of different votes.

I hope the Speaker will agree that there should be separate votes because there truly are different elements, especially concerning the Communications Security Establishment, which reports to the Minister of National Defence. The minister had to sneak into the committee at 10 to midnight to make a presentation. I think even the government acknowledges that some elements are in no way related except for some vague national security connection, which I feel is not a good enough reason for Standing Order 69.1 not to apply.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I appreciate the member's comments. We will certainly consider the information he just provided us and other information and deliberate on the matter. We will come back as needed.

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona, International Trade; the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, The Environment; the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, Foreign Affairs.

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Opposition Motion—Iran

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to finish my presentation on today's motion, which seeks to strongly condemn the current regime in Iran and more specifically a terrorist state.

It is often said that you have to turn on to politics, or politics will turn on you. The same can be said of terrorism. Unfortunately, yesterday we saw hate speech come out of the demonstrations that were held in a number of our major cities. It was an incitement to violence.

In Canada, we have freedom of expression, but sections 318 and 319 of the Criminal Code also state that promoting the genocide of or inciting hatred against an identifiable group is completely inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Criminal Code. Unfortunately, that is what we saw yesterday when demonstrators called for the destruction of a democratic country in the Middle East, Israel, and its people.

I am raising this topic in debate because yesterday was the international al-Quds day, which was established in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini, an Iranian dictator. The purpose of this event, which originated in Iran but is financed in several western countries, including, unfortunately, Canada, is clearly to destroy a democratic country.

This is why it is important for every member of this House to take a strong stand and support the motion to strongly condemn terrorism and those who support it.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I want to ask my colleague for his thoughts about a comparison. There has been a lot of discussion today about the question of diplomatic relations and when it is appropriate to downgrade our diplomatic relationship with another country. The current government, though, has downgraded our relationship with other countries in response to human rights abuses. In one case, we wish the government would be more vocal on these issues, but in the case of Venezuela, the government did announce that it was downgrading its diplomatic ties with the country in response to some of the very serious human rights violations happening there, including saying that Canada's embassy there will only be headed by a chargé d'affaires rather than an ambassador.

It is interesting that we have the government on the one hand seemingly open to upgrading our diplomatic relationship with Iran, at least based on some of the comments we have heard today about the language in this motion, but then clearly understanding, in the case of Venezuela, that it is sensible to downgrade the relationship, or at least not to upgrade it, when there are terrible violations of human rights. I wonder if my colleague has comments on this comparison, and why this illustrates further that we should not be moving forward in a way that the government has in the past talked about, in terms of warming up relations with Iran.