Madam Speaker, it is a little ironic to be having a debate about tax havens right after talking about the housing shortage and how hard it is to get money for things like social housing. However, I will jump right in.
As Radio-Canada's Gérald Fillion said, when it comes to tax havens, Canada is part of the problem, not the solution.
Solutions do exist, however. My colleagues have been talking about solutions in the House all this time. Canada has been favouring tax havens for so long that we could even call it the founding father of tax evasion and tax avoidance, since it is so heavily involved with the worst offenders, like the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands.
I would also like to salute my colleague, the member for Montarville, for introducing this motion. We must not give up the never-ending fight against tax havens. I commend his initiative, because the Liberal government does not really intend to commit to tax fairness, as we can clearly see from its stand against this motion.
However, it is important to be able to clearly identify who in the financial world is pulling businesses' strings and encouraging tax evasion and tax avoidance. We must be able to identify the various elements that help companies mask their actual financial situation and use tax havens to achieve their ambitions: far-flung destinations, luxury hotels and upscale restaurants, or any other clandestine place in a paradise on earth, far from the eyes of the business world, stepping through the portals of a secret world of mysterious transactions and artificial and immoral pleasures, such as drugs or sexual exploitation. Members should read the works of the essayist Alain Deneault to better understand the relationship between tax havens and the sordid underbelly of humanity.
Some may say that I may be exaggerating and that the business people who use tax havens are not such seedy characters. Some are principled and honourable, but they see no alternative to using tax havens, simply to avoid getting steamrollered by their strongest adversaries.
That is a list, one that is far too long, of what makes tax havens so effective. There are certain forces that shape the world that our children will inherit, but is that what we really want?
Maybe we ought to think about that. Are the successive Canadian governments, whether Liberal or Conservative, aware of what is hiding behind the tax haven curtain and the devastating impact tax havens can have on democracies?
In their defence, it is true that, when it comes to tax evasion and tax avoidance, there is sometimes a fine line between what is legal and what is illegal. However, the fact remains that the mores that characterize tax havens are highly questionable. There are plenty of tax havens, and they all reek of immorality. Organized crime, the big cartels, the mafia and unscrupulous business people: Regardless of how we describe these users, we must not be afraid to say that there are human realities behind tax evasion and tax avoidance. More importantly, we must not give up the fight, because tax havens have a bigger impact on our daily lives than we realize.
People develop strategies. People with technological tools and an advanced understanding of the laws and regulations develop tax strategies and tricks that become increasingly sophisticated. Understanding the intricacies of tax havens has become a high-level art that gives the infamous 1% a distinct advantage over those who do the right thing and abide by a fair tax system that is good for society as a whole.
Unfortunately, we must take action and continue to fight tax evasion and tax avoidance because the number of business people using tax havens grows with every passing fiscal year.
Statistics Canada tells us that Canadian businesses invested $381 billion in the top 12 tax havens in 2019. That adds up to almost one-third of Canada's foreign investment. I received a document in the mail about how, given the pandemic, we need those tax haven billions now more than ever. The document names these countries: Luxembourg, Bermuda, Barbados, the Cayman Islands, the Netherlands, the Bahamas, Switzerland, Hong Kong, the Virgin Islands, Ireland, Singapore and Malta.
That is why the Bloc Québécois is calling on Ottawa to crack down on businesses that hide their profits in tax havens.
To do that, it will need to require Canadian banks to disclose how much money they are putting in their foreign subsidiaries, establish a global registry that identifies the actual owner of a company in order to lift the veil on shell companies, contribute to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's global efforts to eradicate tax havens, and ensure that income that individuals and businesses repatriate from a tax haven is taxed in Canada. That was an interesting document that I got in the mail.
The absence of this $381 billion from the coffers of Quebec, the other provinces, the territories and Canada has major consequences for the quality of our social services and the development of our institutions, for our businesses and infrastructure, for our education system and health care system, for seniors and so on.
Surely such a huge shortfall is the root of all our problems, given the consequences for economic prosperity. There is an obvious, not to say troubling, link between shifting tax revenues and the decline in economic prosperity.
How much of the missing $381 billion could be invested in the economy every year by the Quebec and Canadian governments? How much of those billions of dollars could help the local and national economies? How much of those billions of dollars is not being used every year to train and attract workers? How much of those billions of dollars is not being used to modernize our economy? How much of those billions of dollars is not being pumped into colleges and universities to fund research and development?
All this missing money is not being used to reverse the trends of globalization and the offshoring of Quebec and Canadian manufacturing. How much of the missing $381 billion could be used to revitalize the domestic Quebec and Canadian markets so products could be sourced and manufactured locally?
How many immeasurable resources are we leaving in tax havens? We could revitalize a truly national economy that is much closer to the workers and producers. This would help us be more environmentally conscious and more supportive of secondary and tertiary processing. This would ensure a much more innovative and creative economy than the current globalized model, which is inseparable from tax evasion and tax avoidance.
We need to join forces and work together to recover that inaccessible money from tax havens. The metrics of success for a company, an industry or a nation like Quebec would change, since the money recovered from tax evasion and avoidance would be invested for the benefit of local and national companies. There would be more for us, the people, than for them, the wheelers-and?-dealers club.
Every transaction through a tax haven comes at a cost to small business owners in Quebec and Canada, who are struggling to carve out a place in a global economy that artificially benefits international empires.
These small businesses do not have a fair chance at success. Small business owners are fighting hard and being resourceful and creative, while international empires are relying on the financial clout that comes from not paying taxes. This disparity is weakening our democracies.
Furthermore, tax evasion and avoidance are inevitably and gradually weakening democracy in Quebec and Canada. The empires are so powerful that they are neutralizing democracies, which are scrambling to recover so they can stop finance industry crooks from hiding their activities under the cover of laws allowing tax evasion and avoidance.
Do we really want democracies that have been neutralized by powers that do not pay taxes in Quebec and Canada? No, we do not, at least not in Quebec. Once again, Quebec is a leader on this very important issue. Canada has a dismal record and is even seen as an accomplice in the world of tax havens, which showcases the worst traits in human nature: exploitation, lying, selfishness, cheating and more.
In closing, I want to condemn Ottawa's complacency. The federal government is being complacent in the face of fraud and excessive use of tax havens. Parliament is allocating ever-increasing amounts of money to help the Canada Revenue Agency tackle the problem, but nothing is being done and the results are not there. In 2018, the Minister of National Revenue boasted in the House that the CRA had recovered $15 billion as a result of international tax investigations, but the CRA's report indicated that the amount was actually 600 times lower, a meagre $25 million.
More recently, we learned that five years after the leak of the Panama papers, the CRA has laid no charges and has recovered only $21 million in unpaid taxes.
Meanwhile, Revenu Québec has recovered $21 million in addition to the $12 million that has been assessed but not yet repaid. That means Revenu Québec has recovered provincial taxes equivalent to half of what the CRA has recovered for all the provinces.