Jim Maloway

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, October 20th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the member is correct. The fact of the matter is that tax evasion has been a big problem for many years. We cannot provide services and infrastructure to the taxpayers and the citizens of Canada if we allow corporations and wealthy individuals to simply take their money offshore. As long as tax havens are available, people and corporations will gravitate toward those tax havens. It has to be a concerted international effort to shut these places down.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, October 20th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely correct. There has been a new wave of anti-union repression in Panama. This is hardly a good time to be implementing a free trade deal when a situation like that is developing in that country. Several workers were killed. Over 100 were injured and over 300 were arrested, including leaders of the trade unions.

We are considering this at a time when trade with Panama is actually very small. We only have $132 million in trade with Panama. Even if we were not to proceed with a free trade deal, this trade would not go away. There has been some suggestion on the part of the government that somehow if we do not sign a free trade deal with Panama or any other country that we will stop trading with them. That is not going to happen. There has been trade with Panama for many years and we will continue to trade with Panama for many years with or without the free trade deal.

Let us not put the cart in front of the horse. Let us get the tax avoidance agreement signed with Panama while we still have some clout. Eight other countries have signed agreements, including France. France received compliance from Panama. Why can we not do the same thing? I would ask the Prime Minister to pause a bit, to follow in France's footsteps, and maybe in the whole area of tax havens.

I want to ask the government about its arrears situation in GST and income tax, corporate taxes, and other kinds of taxes that it may be a little slow to collect from some people. The fact of the matter is that the government could collect a lot of this money if it followed what France did when it formulated its black list.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, October 20th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-46 today. It is certainly a bill I have been looking forward to speaking to for the last little while.

I enjoyed the two previous speakers. Certainly, the Bloc has put a lot of effort into dealing with the issue of tax havens. Clearly, that is a very important point to which we should have been paying attention in this country for many years already. It is extremely unfair to have corporations and individuals essentially hiding their money in foreign tax havens, basically to save taxes, but it is essentially robbing Canadian taxpayers and stealing from the Canadian public.

The tax dollars that are collected by the government are used to build infrastructure and provide services in this country. A lot of tax haven participants are people who take full advantage of our roads and medical system. Yet, they insist upon putting half a million dollars in a Swiss bank to try to hide income.

It is good to see that after all these years, at least two countries, France and Germany, are actually doing something about it. However, it took them forever, too, to get the ball rolling, and by the way, it had more to do with actually two disgruntled bank employees. The first bank employee worked for a Liechtenstein bank and when he left, he took his computer diskettes and actually sold them to the German government. The German government have chased down the German tax evaders and collected. I am not sure whether it is half a billion dollars, but quite a bit of money in back taxes.

The German government gave the information to the Canadian authorities two years ago. A small number of Canadians were involved, most of whom are from the beautiful province of British Columbia. Guess what? Revenue Canada offered an amnesty to these people. Why would we need an amnesty if we had the names of the tax evaders? I assume they are offering the amnesty because they want people to voluntarily walk in and declare their undeclared income.

Since then, another employee from the HSBC in Switzerland went on the run to France and he too carried a lot of information on maybe 5,000 taxpayers. I believe 160 of them are in Canada and their names have been turned over to Revenue Canada.

Now we have the Prime Minister going to Switzerland this week to talk to the Swiss prime minister to try to get more compliance from Switzerland. The French government did. The French government collected a list of, I believe, 18 tax havens around the world and decided to be proactive. Unlike Canada, which is totally reactive and acts as though we are surprised when something happens. We wish it would not happen because it causes us some inconvenience. The French government levied a tax of 50% proactively on dividends, interest, royalties and service fees paid by anyone based in France to a beneficiary based in the countries on its black list, which in this case included Panama.

Once this happened, it did not take long before some of the 350,000 corporations that are hiding assets in Panama, the French participants of the 350,000, started to get concerned and put pressure on Panama. They will have to take their money out of Panama. In view of that, the Panamanian government simply went cap in hand to France and asked to be removed from the list because it is bad for business, and Panama agreed to sign the taxation avoidance treaty with France.

It signed the double taxation avoidance treaty with France and now there are eight countries that have negotiated tax agreements with Panama.

However, it was not done by coercion. France did it by getting tough on Panama. It got it by taxing its own corporations who were actively doing business in Panama. That is how France got results.

Panama ratified its agreement with Mexico on June 21. I believe the agreement with Barbados is being signed. It has also reached agreements with Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Qatar and Spain, but that is it.

Did we see Canada on this list? Absolutely not. What is Canada doing that the other countries are not doing? Canada is going further. Canada has a free trade deal. Canada is proposing ratification and implementation of a free trade deal with the very country that is a haven for some of our taxpayers. This is a perfect opportunity to follow in France's footsteps and these other eight countries, and demand that before we implement anything, before we pass anything in the House, that we get Panama's agreement on these taxation avoidance treaties.

Once we implement the agreement, once we pass it through the House, what is the incentive for Panama to do anything? There is absolutely none.

We should be proactive as the French were, as the Germans were. When the Prime Minister gets back from Switzerland talking to the Swiss prime minister should get on a plane and visit the Panamanian president, and demand that he sign the double taxation avoidance treaty with Canada, so that we can be number nine. Only when he has done that, then we should be looking at proceeding further, but not putting the cart in front of the horse which is what we are doing.

This is a government that talks about being tough on crime. The government is soft on crime.

We have mentioned many times that the number of white collar criminals put in jail in the United States is 1,200. The number in Canada is one, two convictions both against the same person.

The Americans feel their system is not tough enough and they want to get tougher. They are recalibrating, recalculating and reregulating the whole financial services industry.

Let us look at what the United States is doing in this case. The United States is dealing with a Panama treaty as well. Guess what? Fifty-four congressmen have demanded that President Obama forgo the agreement with Panama until Panama signs the tax information exchange treaties, so we have activity going on there.

I do not know if anyone has mentioned the situation with AIG. AIG, the House will recall, received huge bailout money from the American taxpayers only two years ago. Guess what? It is one of the 350,000 foreign registered companies operating in Panama and it is suing U.S. authorities right now to keep, I believe, $306 million in back taxes that it wants to hold back on because it has been using the Panamanian tax haven. Is that not sweet? The taxpayers bailed it out in its time of need with huge amounts of money. The next year it turned around and rewarded itself by giving employees huge bonuses and now it is suing the taxpayers to keep its ill-gotten gains through tax havens like Panama.

These are the types of companies that we are dealing with. We have to get tough with them. It is about time the Prime Minister started doing something, rather than just pretending that he is tough on crime. He is soft on white collar crime.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, October 20th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for his comments today.

The fact of the matter is that France did show some leadership with regard to chasing people who are investing in tax havens. First, it compiled a list of the tax havens. I think it was 17 or 18 countries, and then it proactively levied a tax of 50% on dividends, interests, royalties and service fees paid to anyone based in France to a beneficiary based in countries on its black list, which included Panama. That is what France did.

Guess what? In short order, what did Panama do? It lined up and signed a double taxation avoidance treaty with France. As of now it has eight signed treaties. That is an example of a country that was proactive and got results on tax havens.

What does Canada do? It waits until it gets some tax information from a former employee of the HSBC and it offers them amnesty if anybody wants to come forward and confess their sins. Then we have the Prime Minister going cap in hand to Switzerland to beg the prime minister of Switzerland to help out.

That is a totally different approach than what the French and the Germans have done. Those two countries know what to do in this situation because they are getting results.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, October 20th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, my follow-up question for the member is this. After France put Panama on the black list, guess what happened? Panama signed a tax avoidance treaty. After Panama signed with France, it now has eight signed agreements.

Where is Canada in all of this? Canada is pushing ahead with a free trade agreement and it is not even one of the eight countries that Panama signed a tax avoidance agreement with.

[Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, October 20th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, at the beginning I want to make a Hansard correction on behalf of the member regarding Bill C-46 because in his black list of countries with tax haven status he had mentioned the Dominican Republic, but he had meant to say Dominica, so I want to correct that on his behalf.

I think it is very interesting on the difference in approach on the issue of tax havens between France and Germany vis-à-vis the Canadian Prime Minister.

In France, the French government drew up its list of tax haven countries and it was very proactive. It applied taxes against these companies that do business in Panama. It taxed their dividends, service fees, royalties and interest paid.

What does the Canadian government do? Exactly the opposite. It waits until an employee of a Swiss bank turns over bank records to the French government and now we have the Prime Minister going cap in hand to Switzerland to talk to the Swiss finance minister about getting more information from Switzerland.

Revenue Canada has been given the list of these Canadians who have been investing in the tax havens, and guess what Revenue Canada does? It gives them an amnesty. There is a totally different approach. We have a very soft approach whereas the Germans and the French have a very tough approach.

I would like to ask the member--

[Petitions, October 20th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my petition calls on the Canadian government to negotiate with the United States government to reduce the United States and Canadian passport fees. The number of American tourists visiting Canada is at its lowest levels since 1972. It has fallen by 5 million visits in the last 7 years alone, from 16 million in 2002 to only 11 million in 2009.

Passport fees for an American family of four could be over $500 U.S. While 50% of Canadians have passports, only 25% of American citizens do.

At the recent Midwestern Legislative Conference of the Council of State Governments, attended by myself and over 500 other elected representatives from 11 border states and 3 provinces, a unanimous resolution was passed as follows:

RESOLVED, that the...Conference calls on President Barack Obama and [the Canadian] Prime Minister...to immediately examine a reduced fee for passports to facilitate cross-border tourism; and be it further

RESOLVED, that [the Conference] encourage[s] the governments to examine the idea of a limited time two-for-one passport renewal or new application;

To be a fair process, passport fees must be reduced on both sides of the border. Therefore, the petitioners call on the government to work with the American government to examine a mutual reduction in passport fees to facilitate tourism and to promote a limited time two-for-one passport renewal or new application fee on a mutual basis with the United States.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think I have been to Washington once over the last 10 years when I have not been told by a member of Congress that he or she has had some problem at the airport that should not have happened, dealing with this flight situation. So clearly the system put in place, Homeland Security, has become a huge monster. Some might say it is bit out of control. We do not know if it is achieving results. I do not have the statistics. I had them before, on the growth of this agency. However, the number of people and the amount of money this agency eats up in a year is just unbelievable. It is incumbent upon governments like the one here to stand up to those agencies, because they will put pressure on us. They have to have checks and balances in their own system, where United States senators and congressmen actually stand up and take a stand against their own Homeland Security and say that it has gone far enough, it is out of control and it is spending too much.

We have no problem with security, as long as it is smart security. We do not want to be running off, spending huge amounts of money on systems that do not necessarily work. Thickening a border when the criminal elements are simply walking across it or driving around it on snowmobiles is not the answer. We are just tying up our own good hard-working citizens in knots over something that should not be done. We have to keep forcefully putting this message across to the Americans, because at the lower levels, at the state levels, those local officials get it. Those local elected officials in South Dakota and North Dakota understand that thickening the border is not where the national government should be going. So, there are allies out there; the government just has to start talking with them.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member is on the right track. That is why I suggested he get together with his own Liberal caucus tomorrow and iron out where it stands on the bill. Its new critic, the member for Markham—Unionville, says he only saw the bill two days ago, while the member for Eglinton—Lawrence claimed to have read it the day it was introduced on June 17, the last day Parliament sat. So clearly, the Liberal caucus members are not really talking to one another about the bill. Then another Liberal member made a great speech, basically supporting the member for Eglinton—Lawrence. So, we have two Liberals who sound as if they do not like the bill and one who says he only heard about two days ago and it sounds okay to him and maybe we could sort out any problems it has in committee.

I think the Liberals are on the right track. I think they are going in the right direction. They can discuss it in caucus tomorrow.

The member's advice to the government is good, though. Maybe it should look at pulling the bill and coming back with something more palatable. I think it would give the Bloc the opportunity to have a breather too, because I think the Bloc critic today did not seem to clearly understand just where things were going with this bill either. So perhaps we will have another 15 minutes of debate, we will finish for the day and then it will be time to discuss this tomorrow in more depth.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 19th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I hear some of my colleagues say, “Who's doing the fearmongering in this place?” We have just heard some of it here.

Yes, we know that the exemption was given for airlines to fly point to point in Canada and go over American airspace. We know the exemption was there.

However, what is the difference? The fact is that somehow the Americans are willing to exempt airlines and allow these passengers, some of whom might be people who they do not want to fly over their territory, to do so. When we fly from Toronto to Winnipeg, we will be flying over the Great Lakes and American territory but that will be okay because the government got an exemption.

However, if we were to add a few more hours to the flight and go south to Mexico, that does not qualify. It is kind of a fine line that the member seems to be drawing.

The big issue is why the government did not get reciprocity. Why do Canadians not get to look at who is flying over Canada? Somehow our airspace is less important than theirs. Is that the way the government looks at it?