Diane Lebouthillier

[Questions on the Order Paper, September 18th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to the Pacific Salmon Strategic Initiative, or PSSI, announced on June 8, 2021, and with regard to (a), Budget 2021 announced $647.1 million over five years plus $98.9 million in amortization as the accrual budget to implement PSSI. The $647.1 million funding breakdown is as follows: $346.4 million for Vote 1, $26.2 million for Vote 5, and $274.5 million for Vote 10.

With regard to (b), the $98.9 million is the amount of amortization that remains related to the Vote 5 allocation provided to PSSI over a five-year period commencing in 2021-22. When added to the $26.2 million referenced above, the total Vote 5 allocation is $125.1 million, which is broken down by the following assets: $81.5 million for buildings; $21.2 million for leasehold improvements for buildings; $8.3 million for communications equipment; $7.3 million for trailers; $3.5 million for vehicles; $2.6 million for scientific and laboratory equipment; $600,000 for vessels, and $15,000 for trades support equipment.

[Questions on the Order Paper, September 18th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to the Canadian Coast Guard’s Coastal Marine Response Network, broken down by coastal region, with regard to (a), the Coastal Marine Response Team initiative is in its planning stage only so there are not yet any teams established and ready to respond to incidents. Indigenous and coastal communities are being engaged to determine their interest in co-developing this community response initiative. A pilot project that is a precursor to the Coastal Marine Response Team known as the Heiltsuk Marine Emergency Response Team, which is funded and supported as part of the Oceans Protection Plan renewal, is currently operating, with 12 response personnel, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, on the central coast of British Columbia in close collaboration with the Canadian Coast Guard. Coastal Marine Response Teams are anticipated to become operational beginning in 2025.

With regard to (b), as the initiative is in its planning stage there are no established teams, locations or individuals employed at this time. Nor has equipment been purchased through government funding.

[Questions on the Order Paper, June 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, “offsets” are a standard procedure that the CRA uses to collect overdue balances from taxpayers. Offsetting involves proactively applying tax refunds and benefit payments, such as the GST/HST credit, to tax and other government debts. However, in May 2020, the CRA temporarily paused benefit offsets in an effort to provide relief to Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since October 2022, the CRA has resumed its activities aimed at offsetting taxpayers' debt. When an individual has a government debt, that debt will be identified for them directly on any notice of assessment, determination or redetermination they receive from the CRA. These notifications were issued throughout the pandemic and individuals were able to access their amounts owing even while certain collections activities were paused.

The CRA has also begun to recover overpayments for the Canada child benefit, CCB. The first CCB payment impacted was the March 2023 payment. Unlike other benefits, the CCB payment can only be used to pay a CCB debt. Other kinds of child benefit payments can only be used to pay a debt from the same benefit.

If a recalculation shows that an individual was overpaid CCB, the CRA sends a notice of redetermination that includes a remittance voucher to inform the individual of the balance owing. The CRA may keep all or a portion of future CCB payments, income tax refunds, or goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax, GST/HST, credits until the balancing owing is repaid. If an individual receives any kind of payment from the CRA, the notification they receive will include both the payment amount and how that payment was applied to outstanding government debt.

As is the case with any income-tested benefit program, CCB entitlement may fluctuate from year to year depending on the amount of income assessed in a given tax year. Income is often comprised of a variety of sources, e.g., employment income, dividends, pension income, rental income, capital gains, etc. In addition to a change in income, CCB entitlement may increase or decrease for other reasons such as the age and number of children. Factoring in all of the above, the CRA cannot attribute a change in CCB entitlement to one particular source. For these reasons, the CRA is unable to offer a detailed response, as the data is not captured in the manner requested.

[Questions on the Order Paper, June 14th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, please note that the scope of the CRA's artificial intelligence, AI, definition is consistent with the definition of "automated decision systems" outlined in the Treasury Board's directive on automated decision-making. However, the CRA's directive is broader in scope as it includes AI solutions developed for CRA's compliance programs and internal operations in addition to those developed for external service delivery. This definition also includes robotic process automation, RPA, processes that are highly administrative, require little judgment and have clear business rules.

It is important to highlight that the CRA continues to keep humans in the loop of all its AI activities. Human oversight and final decision-making continue to be applied in all types of AI results and program activities.

The CRA does use artificial intelligence in various ways.

The CRA is using AI-based solutions to solve compliance and collection business activities including analysis of patterns, cluster analysis, prescriptive, predictive models and applied predictive analytics i.e., for non-compliance identification, fraud detection, workload selection and compliance strategies.

The CRA employs AI to transform business activities using robotic process automation to automate pre-assessment activities and AI techniques to model and identify processes efficiency gains.

The CRA is using AI-based solutions to transform client service offerings and enhancements through continuous improvements such as the chatbot and improved accessibility. Service improvements are also informed through AI text analytics such as topic modelling, text summarization and sentiment analysis on high volumes of unstructured textual data such as client feedback.

The CRA also uses AI techniques to strengthen data-driven outcomes. Specifically, it is used for research including forecasting, identity and relationship resolution, lead generation and advanced visualization pattern detection. In the research space, the CRA is beginning to experiment with artificial neural networks and recurrent neural networks to test predictive capabilities and assess potential business benefits.

Internally, the CRA uses AI to transform its internal services including natural language processing for analysis of employee surveys. The CRA also uses AI to support security including the evaluation of software/documents to assess their maliciousness, anomaly detection, log collection, tracing and monitoring of accesses.

[Carbon Pricing, June 6th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am always astonished when the Conservatives try to convince us that they are the party of common sense.

Let me refresh their memories. They deny climate change, revoke women's rights, take help away from families, give ridiculous advice on Bitcoin and dine with extreme right-wing politicians. I could go on like this all afternoon.

Is that really how the Conservatives show common sense? It is high time they started using their judgment because Canadians do not want that kind of common sense.

[Canada Revenue Agency, June 6th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question. I too am grateful for all the work that was done during the pandemic to help people get through such tough times.

As we have indicated, the Canada Revenue Agency is proceeding on a case-by-case basis. We invite people to contact the CRA and take the necessary steps. We are here to help people.

[Women and Gender Equality, May 11th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle for her important question.

We know what happens when right-wing activists team up with anti-choice politicians to try and take away our basic rights. The only possible outcome is restricting women's rights.

Our mothers and grandmothers fought hard for us to have these rights. All women should have freedom of choice and should have access to services.

I have a bit of news for the Conservatives: There is no going back.

[Business of Supply, May 11th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, in order to grow the population, we need people from all over. Quebec was created from immigrant populations.

I encourage my colleagues to visit Grosse‑Île and the Irish Memorial National Historic Site, which is truly an extraordinary example of what immigration has brought to Quebec and to Canada as a whole.

[Business of Supply, May 11th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I have met with business owners in my riding and all over Quebec, and I have also worked in the health care sector. I can say that businesses will do the work and take care of teaching people French. We know that. They are ready to do it. The business community is ready to co-operate, be it the Quebec Employers Council or the chambers of commerce.

In the health care sector, back home, the physicians who are coming to work in our emergency rooms are travelling doctors. They are doctors who come from abroad. They speak other languages, but they also speak French. They are able to come help out in our communities. This is a plus for the region.

I also want to point out that Quebec sets its own targets for immigration.

[Business of Supply, May 11th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, if my colleague had listened carefully to what I said, not so long ago—I may be of a certain age, but that is not to say that I am old—when I was young, we had schools in my town. There were six elementary schools. Now there is one.

Immigration is productive for a region. It can bring a region to life. These are people who work, who will get involved in the community. They will be good citizens and will pay their taxes, and that money can be used to build schools. They will get training. This can only be good for our regions.