Madam Chair, the minister keeps quoting that stat, but quite honestly, it sounds like some of these companies could have saved these jobs on their own and had billions of dollars to spare.
The finance minister wrote a book about guys like Mr. Smith, where she argued the super-rich became rich because they were at the right place at the right time. Maybe she is right. A billionaire American tax cheat got richer off students and Canadian taxpayers during the pandemic as a result of the Liberal government's poorly designed wage subsidy program in this regard. Now Canadians with federal student loans will know that every time they make a payment, an American tax cheat will get richer. I guess that is okay by the Minister of Finance's standards. I am not sure, but it sounds like it is.
Ultimately, we know Finastra is worth billions, yet it received the wage subsidy. We know that 32 companies that went bankrupt before the pandemic was declared took millions from the wage subsidy, some of which no longer had any employees at all. Some of the best performing Canadian hedge funds also received the wage subsidy despite making hundreds of millions of dollars of profits last year.
Will the finance minister commit to ensuring no more profitable billionaire companies receive the taxpayer-funded wage subsidy?