Murray Rankin

[Public Safety, April 18th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, this Canadian has already suffered unconscionable abuse and torture at the hands of Sudanese authorities, and the Government of Canada not only abandoned him but also was found by the Federal Court to have been complicit in his detention.

However, rather than work toward justice and accountability, the government has just walked away from settlement negotiations with Mr. Abdelrazik, giving no reasons.

Let me echo the call from Amnesty International. Will the Prime Minister instruct his officials to recommit to mediation and to apologize for Canada's role in his horrific ordeal?

[Status of Women, April 17th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, due to a lack of funding, the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre has had to discontinue its hotline after decades of service. Year in, year out, the hotline has helped hundreds of women in Victoria. Across the country, rape crisis centres face the same urgent problem, and with the surge of victims coming forward after the #MeToo movement, the situation just gets worse.

If the Prime Minister is truly concerned with the well-being of women and sexual assault victims, why does the budget not provide stable, predictable, operating funding to rape crisis centres?

[The Budget, February 28th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. Leader of the Opposition has obviously indicated his passion for balancing the budget. I would like to know if he shares our passion for the need to address the growing inequality in our country.

I wonder if he feels it is acceptable today that two Canadian billionaire businessmen own as much wealth as 11 million Canadians; or if he is okay with four million people living with food insecurity, including one and a half million children. How does he feel about the use of tax havens? How does he feel about Starbucks being able to use transfer pricing to keep its profits in the Cayman Islands or elsewhere and pay little or no taxes, yet the company across the country, that small business, has to pay its fair share.

Is the Conservative Party in favour of that regime or will he join us and try to address this growing inequality in our country?

[Indigenous Peoples and Canada's Justice System, February 14th, 2018]

Mr. Chair, obviously there is always a balance in these things. We keep them around the Criminal Code. Obviously, some people thought they made sense. I note that back in the eighties they were repealed in the United Kingdom, and I do not see why we cannot do it now.

I would say that challenge for cause can be expanded, and we can ask more questions, as happened in cases like the Williams case just before the Gladue case about whether there is a racial basis. Is someone able to dispassionately discharge his or her responsibilities as a juror, yes or no? The Americans spend endless amounts of time on jury selection. They have experts on jury selection. We do not do it nearly as much. We do not have nearly the data to use. However, I think we could use the challenge for cause a lot more effectively to get at whether there is any bias in a potential juror. An expanded use of challenge for cause would replace the peremptory challenges that exist in the Criminal Code.

Much of what we need to do is recognize the administration of justice is primarily a provincial issue. I would hope the Minister of Justice would take on what has happened here today, the Prime Minister's commitment, her speech, those of all members, and ask why we not go to the federal, provincial, and territorial justice ministers and make these changes a priority. We cannot do it alone.

However, what we can do alone, one of the few things we can do on our own, is simply repeal the section of the Criminal Code that allows the peremptory challenges to persist in our system. That is one thing we can do in this session of Parliament without any provincial or territorial involvement. I urge the government that it do just that.

[Indigenous Peoples and Canada's Justice System, February 14th, 2018]

Mr. Chair, obviously there needs to be a greater understanding in indigenous communities of the law enforcement system, because I think it is a foreign system. That was what Mr. Justice Sinclair said so long ago, in 1971, and it is certainly no different now. There needs to be an understanding that perhaps we can use our systems, but perhaps we can put the systems that come from those indigenous communities themselves to greater use.

In a lot of the self-government agreements that my friend will be aware of, there is emphasis on trying to restore some of those systems, including a greater use of elders. It is not a foreign imposed system, but is part and parcel of the community where they live so it makes sense to them and speaks to them in their reality. That is among the first and most important things we can do.

[Indigenous Peoples and Canada's Justice System, February 14th, 2018]

Mr. Chair, I am happy to rise this evening on such a critically important issue. I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the hon. member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.

It was back in the 19th century when a famous British judge said that justice must not only be done but must manifestly be seen to be done. I think a lot of Canadians see what has happened in the last while as something that certainly appears to have been a problem. The family of Colten Boushie has said that passionately. The legacy of colonialism, which is at the root of this issue, shows that it is not just an appearance issue but a reality issue.

In the very short time that I have this evening, I want to talk about one particular issue, and that is the ability to use what are called peremptory challenges in the jury system, to effectively prevent anyone from the indigenous community to be a juror or to prevent black people from being on juries. We have seen this in cities across the country. In rural areas, it is even worse for first nation representation on juries. That is why I was so happy today to hear the Prime Minister say that the government would fix the juror-selection process. As justice critic for the New Democratic Party, we will work hand in hand to try to make that happen quickly.

I was also pleased to listen to the passionate speech of my colleague from Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou. He talked about working hand in hand with the Prime Minister on the broader agenda, what the Prime Minister referred to as the framework for recognition and implementation of indigenous rights. That is a larger agenda, and it is long overdue. We heard the member pledge, as the NDP critic on indigenous issues, to work carefully and fully with him in an effort to achieve reconciliation.

Let me speak about the specific issue with which the Prime Minister started his remarks, and that is the issue of peremptory challenges. Canadians may not understand that it is open to both the crown and the defence to have what are called peremptory challenges to jurors for no reason at all, perhaps the colour of the person's skin, but they do not have to give a reason. They have a certain number of peremptory challenges that each side can bring to bear. In addition, they have the ability to challenge a proposed juror for cause, of which there is unlimited ability to do that.

I want to read what Mr. Justice Murray Sinclair, now Senator Sinclair, wrote in 1971 after the murder of Betty Osborne. He was asked to do a study on the justice system and aboriginal people in the province of Manitoba. The way he started his report was chilling. He said, “We believe that the jury system in Manitoba is a glaring example of systemic discrimination against Aboriginal people.” Then he went on to say, “If a significant portion of that public is not properly represented on juries, it would not be surprising to discover that a portion of the public never comes to view the justice system as anything other than a foreign and imposed system.” That says it all.

That is why, among the recommendations made so long ago, Justice Sinclair said that there was a need to get rid of the ability for peremptory challenges to occur, and that was one of his key recommendations.

More recently, Professor Kent Roach said exactly the same thing. He says that it is time to get rid of this discriminatory practice. He calls peremptory challenges an invitation to discrimination, and I could not agree more. However, he says something else. He says that he hopes the government will take seriously, that the time for additional studies is over.

We have studied these issues to death and it is time for us to look at indigenous systems of justice, perhaps the greater use of sentencing circles, as the former chief judge of the Yukon Territorial Court, Barry Stewart, pioneered. There are a number of reconciliation issues and restorative justice initiatives we can take, but there is one thing we can do in this session of Parliament right now, and that is get rid of the use of peremptory challenges in our jury system.

[Justice, February 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, for the system to be fair, jury members need to reflect the community where the alleged crime occurred. However, in far too many instances, that is just not the case. The use of peremptory challenges means lawyers can reject jurors for no reason at all: maybe they do not like the way they look, or maybe it is the colour of their skin.

As a first step to ensure real community representation, especially following the tragic death of Colten Boushie, will the minister review and possibly revoke the use of peremptory challenges under the Criminal Code?

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith bringing to our attention the fact that there are two sides to the same coin. If we could get the $11 billion into the Canadian fist every year, we could do so much more. We could deal with the debt and deficit. We could invest in indigenous programming. We could take climate change seriously. We could have a pharmacare program. The list goes on and on.

The member will forgive me if I also point out something I promised to point out. In the Senate on Tuesday, the Hon. Serge Joyal brought to the attention of Canadians the presence of organized crime in the cannabis market. He pointed out that of 86 companies authorized by Health Canada to produce and sell cannabis, 35 of them were financed through tax havens.

This is a huge problem with organized crime coming into this world through the back door and using tax havens. Thankfully, the RCMP appears to be aware of this. I do not know what we are doing about it. That is another part of the puzzle that needs to be addressed.

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, is this the first time this is being considered a priority? I do not think so. The member said that $1 billion had been invested. Maybe, but I do not know. How do we count that? What does it mean? It is like we are getting perilously close to identifying the money, we have invested money, but show me the money. Why can we not get the money back?

Also in talking about this as being a priority, I can find out about tax cheating by, for example, a hairdresser in Trois-Rivières or in Saskatoon by looking at the CRA website. I defy any Canadian to look at the CRA website and see how many people with trust funds in the Cayman Islands have been identified, let alone prosecuted for tax evasion.

When we look at the government's record with respect to the KPMG scandal, which I would love to talk about more, we will see how seriously the government does not take this issue.

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed an honour to rise in support of the opposition day motion today, which asks the government to keep its promise to cap the stock options deduction loophole and to take aggressive action to combat tax havens and take concrete steps in the next budget to do so.

This is a very important motion for a number of reasons. During the course of my remarks, I want to talk about tax havens in particular. I also want to talk about the use of tax havens by companies that are in the burgeoning cannabis business, something that came up in the Senate a couple of days ago that I would link into this debate. Finally, I would like to talk about a private member's bill I have before Parliament that would make some contribution to this problem.

What is this problem? We have heard it often already. Other speakers have pointed the finger at the enormous and growing gap in our society, the growing inequality, where Canada's top CEOs earn 200 times the average person's salary. These statistics are quite extraordinary when Canadians hear them, and they cannot be said too often.

Oxfam reported last month that eight super-wealthy men own as much wealth as half the world's population. That is staggering. It is hard to get our heads around figures like that. Of course, the top 20% also own 67% of all the wealth in our country. This is not the kind of society I grew up in, but it is the kind of society we are leaving to our children and our grandchildren. I frequently hear, on the doorsteps in my riding of Victoria, the recognition that Canada is changing before our very eyes. One of the reasons it is changing is that we are allowing tax havens to flourish.

The government will tell us that it is doing all it can to deal with aggressive tax avoidance schemes, that it has hired all these people. However, as the old ad used to say, “Show me the money.”

I cannot remember how many times in the last Parliament I asked the member from Delta, who was a Conservative member and the minister of national revenue, just how much money they had recovered, because they kept bragging about how the CRA was on the front lines in doing all it could to recover this money. I kept asking how much money they had actually recovered. Here is how they put it: “We have identified billions of dollars.” I would ask the next time, “How much have you actually recovered?” I never got an answer. It was always “identified”. We need to watch the bouncing ball. We need to watch the rhetoric, because this government uses it as well.

About $500 million was recovered after the Panama papers were first exposed by countries that took seriously their need to tackle tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. The line between those two concepts is murky at best. How much did Canada recover? We do not know. They will not tell us. Maybe they identified a lot of money. I suspect that they did.

I do not for a second wish to make light of this. The government hiring more people is a good first step. Of course, when the Liberals were in opposition, they used to remind the House frequently that for every dollar invested in going after international aggressive tax avoidance, we would recover five or ten or some multiple. I absolutely believed them. It is an excellent investment.

Second, I support and applaud our government's work at the OECD, the G7, and other international places to make sure that we are part of the solution to tax avoidance and trying to deal with what they call BEPS, and a number of other things. I support Canada's leadership in those place. However, it is not as much as the British have or as the French have. I fear that Canada is there but perhaps does not have much to show for it yet.

Third, I noticed that Canada has entered into a number of these agreements called TIEAs, tax information exchange agreements. Sometimes it looks to a person reading them that all they do is regularize tax avoidance and that the use of tax havens seems to be just fine.

At the macro level, stepping back from this, our Income Tax Act has for a long time been criticized by accountants, the organized tax industry, and the person on the street who has enormous difficulty understanding how the scheme works. It is such a simple thing for a politician to stand up and say, “We have to simplify our tax system.” How long have we heard that? Sometimes we get simplistic arguments. Sometimes I hear in Alberta how we need to have a flat tax and all of a sudden everything will be better, no matter how regressive that in practice turns out to be.

We have a big problem at the international level and at the domestic level. If one talks about the effect of tax havens on Canada, it is nothing compared to what is happening in the developing world, where resources are siphoned off and find their way into bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein and places like that. The money that is so desperately needed for development is not happening. Sadly, some of that is in the mining sector, and sadly, the mining sector seems to be a significant part of Canada's economy. We see in Vancouver that half or more of mining corporations are incorporated, sometimes using tax havens.

I am trying to set out the enormity of the problem and some of the solutions that may be at hand.

One idea I think is worth discussing, at least, is my private member's bill, which is Bill C-362. It would attempt to close some of these loopholes. This is a very simple two- or three-line bill, which I would urge hon. members to consider. It is inspired by the late Dr. Robert McMechan, who, sadly, passed away last year. He was a tax litigator for most of his career right here in Ottawa in the Department of Justice. He went on to do graduate work at Osgoode Hall. He wrote a very important book on international tax avoidance. He came into my office and asked to work with me in trying to get our hands around this enormous problem. Of course, I welcomed him with open arms.

The bill that is at issue would make what the Canadians for Tax Fairness have characterized as a significant impact. I confess that I do not know how they got this figure, but they claim that it would yield $400 million to Canada every year if this bill were implemented.

What would the bill do? Members will recall, back when Prime Minister Mulroney was in power and Michael Wilson was our finance minister, that Canada did what a number of countries did. The government incorporated into our Income Tax Act the general anti-avoidance rule, GAAR, as it is called. GAAR would be amended by my bill to require that there be “economic substance” considered as a relevant factor in determining whether transactions were “avoidance transactions”. If the judge had the ability to eyeball a set of transactions, he or she could say that they seemed to be only for tax purposes. Putting that money in Liechtenstein or the Cayman Islands has only one purpose, and that is to avoid paying taxes, and there is no economic substance, in the jargon, for that to occur.

That was how we started, but with great respect to our courts, they took a different path in the application of that principle, and “economic substance” seems to have been lost in the fog. Cases such as Canada Trustco and Copthorne took us to a place where courts were no longer able to do what they had initially been instructed to do. This simple amendment would put us on track with what the British and the Americans are doing: being able to ensure that there is a reason to put the money in the Cayman Islands, aside from simply saving tax. It is simple, but it is an ethically important thing to do.

Speaking of ethics, it is time we took tax avoidance much more seriously rather than saluting and applauding the wizards of Bay Street, be they in a law firm or an accounting firm, who know how to play the angles. The best and the brightest, when I taught law, often went there, because the ability to make money is astounding in this field. As Canadians, we should look at that the same way we look at smoking or other social vices. This should be seen as an immoral activity. Yes, it can be done, but no, it should not be. We should, as Canadians, be applying an ethical lens to this field of the use of tax havens and aggressive tax avoidance.