Murray Rankin

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, to do so would require an analysis of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act that has been the subject of a mandatory review by the House but has yet to take place; that is to say, we have not had that bill reintroduced. It deals with telecommunication companies and the like. How that is going to connect with this initiative is something about which many people are worried. In other words, we have a two-legged stool but we are only examining one leg here to fully understand how it is going to work.

The government should finally come forward with the amendments to PIPEDA that are long overdue and awaited by so many sectors so we really can effectively and fully answer the question by my hon. colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am concerned about the provisions that used to be in Bill C-30, the “you're with us or you're with the child pedophiles” bill as the former minister of public safety referred to it. It would appear that many of those provisions have been put into this bill without a lot of analysis. We have an amalgam of a bill that everyone supports on cyberbullying with its controversial provisions of that sort dealing with public safety.

The bill will go to committee for which I am obviously grateful, but a lot more work needs to be done with it. Whether the government of the day, having tried once, failed and come back again, will accept amendments will remain to be seen. We live in hope.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, one of the issues that is addressed in the bill is the so-called low threshold for what is called metadata. Professor Geist has been talking about the voluntary disclosure resulting from privacy threats of personal information and the lack of civil and criminal immunity granted to intermediaries like Internet service providers and telecom companies that provide disclosure. It is the definition in the bill of transmission data that is so concerning.

The bill would create a new warrant allowing judges to order the disclosure of transmission data when there would be reasonable grounds. However, there is also this continuing concern about metadata, which if we have learned nothing from the revelations in the last while concerning the national security agency and CSEC, we obviously have to address very carefully.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak in support of this bill. In doing so, I wish to salute the leadership and thoughtful analysis that has been provided by my colleague, the member for Gatineau. As is so often the case in the House, I wish I could simply stand in this place and enthusiastically support this Conservative initiative, but once again the Conservatives cannot stop themselves from overreaching.

As others have noted in this debate thus far, the official opposition requested unanimous consent to have the bill divided into two parts and to allow the part that was initially introduced by my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, Bill C-540, the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, dealt with in one fashion, and ask that it be adopted as quickly as possible in committee because of all-party support. Why could this not be about that? Because it is about more than that. Other provisions from the defunct Bill C-30 should be studied separately, in the NDP's view, and given the attention that they so desperately require.

I am going to speak first about some of the cyberbullying issues, then focus upon what are called the lawful access provisions and the critique that so many people have made about those provisions, and then return in the few minutes available to the issue of cyberbullying, which is so critical.

Even in this fractured and divided Parliament, I cannot imagine many colleagues who would disagree with the need to better protect people of all ages from the distribution of intimate images without their consent. We have clearly heard from families, educators and law enforcement officials that there is a need to update the Criminal Code to address this kind of malicious activity. There seems to be no doubt about that. In fact, a few months ago I attended a presentation on Parliament Hill that was hosted by ResearchImpact, Canada's knowledge mobilization network group, that is seeking to maximize the economic, social, health and environmental impacts of research.

Among the presentations I heard in the Centre Block was one by a University of Victoria professor on a program that Professor Bonnie Leadbeater, a professor in the department of psychology at the University of Victoria, was involved in as a researcher. She is also the author and evaluator of WITS LEADS, an elementary school program, a program designed to bring together schools, families and communities to help elementary school children deal with bullying and peer victimization and to encourage adults to respond more effectively to children's requests for help.

This cutting-edge research by Professor Leadbeater and her peers has made a real impact across the country. In fact, for her work, Professor Leadbeater was awarded the Partnership Award by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research this past year. I am happy to see such important and applied research on bullying from my community and that it has had such national impact.

Therefore, it is unfortunate that the Conservatives are taking a straightforward issue that everyone supports and making it into something much more complicated than it needs to be. That is why the NDP has proposed the splitting of this bill, with all of its unanimous support, from those parts that are, frankly, much more controversial, as I will describe in a moment.

We all know that the initiative for Bill C-13 was the tragic events of the highly-publicized suicides of two adolescent victims of cyberbullying, Rehtaeh Parsons of Nova Scotia and Amanda Todd from my province of British Columbia. Frankly, the bill essentially repeats what my colleague, the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, had already put in his bill, as I said earlier, so obviously there is no issue of support. However, the scope of the application of Bill C-13 is so much larger and targets a whole lot of other issues that have nothing to do with cyberbullying, issues like access to bank financial data, the Terrorist Financing Act, telemarketers and the theft of telecommunications services. These are all in the bill before us today.

It is the issue of access and warrantless disclosure of personal information from Internet service providers to “lawful authorities” that is at issue for this other part, the larger part of this initiative, and it is that I wish to address now.

Many experts on privacy law have expressed great concern over this initiative. A famous privacy lawyer in Halifax, David Fraser, has expressed it as “really cynical and disappointing”, to use his words. He says that there is a whole bunch of irrelevant and other stuff in here that is going to distract from the legitimate discussion of how to fine tune it and get it absolutely right. He is, of course, right.

I would like to focus on the very current critique of the bill by Professor Michael Geist who is perhaps one of our most famous academics and practitioners in this field.

Professor Geist, the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law, is a professor at the University of Ottawa. To say he has written prolifically on this topic would be an understatement. As recently as two weeks ago, he wrote the following:

The debate over Bill C-13, the government's latest lawful access bill, is set to resume shortly. The government has argued that the bill should not raise concerns since new police powers involve court oversight and the mandatory warrantless disclosure provisions that raised widespread concern in the last bill have been removed. While that is the government's talking points, I've posted on how this bill now includes incentives for telecom companies and other intermediaries to disclose subscriber information without court oversight since it grants them full civil and criminal immunity for doing so. Moreover, newly released data suggests that the telecom companies don't seem to need much of an incentive as they are already disclosing subscriber data on thousands of Canadians every year without court oversight.

This is not an opposition politician speaking. This is probably the leading academic expert on this matter in the country who is bringing this to our attention. No wonder there continues to be great concern.

Professor Geist goes on to talk about the work that the Privacy Commissioner is doing, the recommendations she has released designed to enforce privacy protections in the age of cybersurveillance and a report that includes recommendations for reform to our private sector privacy law to:

—require public reporting on the use of various disclosure provisions under PIPEDA where private-sector entities such as telecommunications companies release personal information to national security entities without court oversight.

That is what is before us.

Civil liberties groups and academics sent a public letter to the various leading telecom companies asking them to shed new light on this policy of data retention and sharing policies. The claim is that our role in the whole surveillance activity remains a bit of a mystery, but there can be little doubt that Canadian telecom and Internet companies play an important role as intermediaries that access, retain and possibly disclose information about their subscribers' activities. These are the kinds of concerns that have so many Canadians continuing to be concerned.

I would like to read another quote into the record from Professor Geist. He says:

In fact, Bill C-13, the so-called “cyberbullying” bill, includes a provision that is likely to increase the number of voluntary disclosures without court oversight since it grants telecom companies and Internet providers complete immunity from any civil or criminal liability for those disclosures....The privacy implications of this secret disclosure system are enormous...

I wholeheartedly support the initiative on cyberbullying. However, once again, I wish the government did not overreach and go into this area of lawful access, which causes so much concern in the communities across the country.

[Taxation, April 28th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives have cut millions of dollars from the budget of the Canada Revenue Agency and reduced our ability to go after tax cheats. Uncollected tax debt has ballooned to tens of billions of dollars in this country and now we learn the government is essentially throwing up its hands after failing to find ways to collect taxes from the $35-billion underground economy.

When will the minister stop targeting charities that disagree with the Conservative government and start doing her job: collecting taxes?

[Tax Evasion, April 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to stand today and speak to Motion No. 485, prepared by my colleague from Rivière-du-Nord, in the spirit of getting the government to take tax havens seriously. The specific motion is, however, narrower than that. It fundamentally asks that the government study and measure Canadian tax losses to international tax havens and tax evasion in order to determine what is called the tax gap, the amount of money we should be collecting but are not.

It is a very timely motion as we are in front of the tax clock. In the next short while Canadians must submit their tax returns, and I am concerned that my fellow Canadians pay their fair share. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Unfortunately, many Canadians—large corporations, trusts, and wealthy Canadians—are sending their money offshore to avoid the incidence of tax in our country.

The motion simply asks the Conservatives to do what our allies in other countries of the world already do; namely, put their hands around the size of the problem. Just what is the tax gap? It has often been said that, if we do not measure something, we will not be able to effectively manage it. That is what we are asking here.

The government will ask why it should bother, since it is not going to give exact information as to how many billions of dollars it is losing every year, but in fact Sweden, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom are all doing that and by now there are fairly good economic measures, fairly good techniques, to do exactly this, which is to measure the tax gap.

That is the first step of getting the government to take the tax havens problem seriously.

In my riding, I was talking someone who own a small coffee shop. He told me his effective tax rate is much higher than the big Starbucks down at the corner. Why is that? It is because Starbucks is able to arrange its affairs by use of international tax havens to really pay an effective very low rate of tax. Indeed it was caught on that in England, where demonstrations led it to make a voluntary tax payment in the tens of millions of pounds, because it recognized it needs a social licence to do business. That is great when they are caught, but what about the small coffee shop owner in my riding who cannot compete because his rate of tax is so much higher than that of a company that can use these tax havens?

We asked the minister to do just that, to measure the tax gap. I wrote to the former minister on March 8, 2013, asking that he please estimate the tax gap the way our allies have done. I got no response. However, apparently tens of trillions of dollars worldwide are being lost to tax havens. It is estimated that somewhere between $5 billion and $8 billion a year may be lost to tax havens in this country; and who knows, if the government will not measure it? Think of what we could do with that money if the government were to take this problem seriously. Think about what we could do with hospitals, infrastructure, and the like in our country.

That is why this is not a theoretical issue. It is an intensely practical and immediate issue and one that our allies are doing a lot better on than we are. I think of Mr. Cameron in the United Kingdom who at least appears to be taking action, and certainly in the United States there are new efforts under way as well.

The government is simply taking baby steps to address the issues we are talking about today; but the amount of money, as I said, is enormous. Also enormous is the amount of cuts that the government is making to the Canada Revenue Agency. I hear so many people say they cannot do their jobs because so many of them have been dismissed. The Conservatives have cut their budgets so dramatically and expect Canadians to take them at their word when they say they are getting tough on tax havens, tough on those who evade their taxes. It is simply not so. The number of people l have talked to from that agency, who shake their heads, bear witness to that.

The former parliamentary budget officer was asked to measure the tax gap. Essentially it went like this. Since the government will not do it, since the CRA refuses to do it, why does the parliamentary budget officer not do it? He said he would love to, no problem; all he would need is the data from the government to do the job. He asked and asked, but of course nothing happened.

He was not even given the data to do the work that our allies in other countries are beginning to do so effectively.

Therefore, the government's rhetoric on this issue is not matched by reality. It is not giving the CRA the resources to do the job. It is not hiring the experts required to go after the very sophisticated people who use these tax havens inappropriately. It will not even tell us the size of the problem, which is what this motion is all about.

It is shocking to report that in 2011, 24%—almost a quarter—of Canadian investment overseas went to tax havens, twelve tax havens, the top five of which are Barbados, Cayman Islands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Bermuda; $130 billion, in one year alone. At the same time, the government cut the CRA so it cannot even do its job. We think Canadians deserve to know how much taxes are being evaded through the use of these tax havens. The government will not measure it. That is the point of this first step of taking this problem seriously.

The government has no trouble spending $550 million on advertising—often for programs that have not even been passed—but it has cut $250 million from the Canada Revenue Agency, obviously hindering the ability of that agency to do what is proposed. We think, instead of cutting employees from the compliance and enforcement divisions of the Canada Revenue Agency, that the Conservatives should begin investing additional resources to recover lost revenue. Maybe the way to get their attention is to use the word “invest”, because the rate of return if they did this would be enormous. We have seen that in many of the countries I have mentioned. I just wish the government would likewise wake up and smell the coffee.

The New Democratic Party made a number of recommendations in the finance committee, of which I am proud to be a member, when studying tax havens, the first of which was once again sadly not accepted by the government. This was in the supplementary report. It states:

That the federal government study and measure, to the greatest accuracy possible, Canadian tax losses to international tax havens and tax evasion, in order to the determine the Canadian federal “tax gap”.

That is exactly what this motion would do. It is once again asking that the government get its hands around this very serious problem.

We also asked, among other things, that the government go after those who enable tax evasion, including accountants, lawyers, and other professionals. We have seen egregious examples where people have come from tax havens—Switzerland comes to mind, where bank secrecy has been the rule—to the United States and Canada and demonstrated to people, advised them, how to avoid paying their fair share of taxes, how to cheat the Canadian and American tax systems. It happened in Denmark recently. It is happening in a number of countries.

It seems obvious to me that we should make it harder for those who enable that to occur. We should bring the full force of the law down on those who do not pay their fair share and on those who enable people to not pay their fair share. That is another part of the problem that definitely needs to be addressed.

We believe it is absolutely essential that this motion be passed. We hope the government will see fit to join other countries like, as I have said, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and Australia, all of which have taken this very first step, to get our hands around and measure the problem so we can begin to give it the resources and expertise needed to take this issue seriously.

As we fill out our taxes at this time of year, I hope all Canadians will urge their government to do the right thing and stop this tax haven abuse once and for all.

[Canada Revenue Agency, April 9th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, on top of the recent privacy breaches that compromised the personal information of thousands of Canadians, now at the height of tax season, Canadians are not able to access the Canada Revenue Agency website.

What is worse, they have no assurances that their personal information has not already been compromised by this security vulnerability.

Will the minister agree to extend the filing deadline to ensure Canadians will not be penalized for waiting to file until the CRA website is secure?

[Petitions, April 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition calling attention to the increasing violence against bus drivers that occurs every year. The number of assaults has gone up.

Bus drivers serve our public across this country. I have had meetings with bus drivers in my riding, who serve Victoria and Oak Bay, from Unifor Local 333.

This petitions calls for an amendment to the Criminal Code to create a distinct, specific offence to punish those who assault bus drivers and to establish more stringent penalties for those who commit those cowardly offences.

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, April 4th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the speech read by my hon. colleague opposite.

My question for the member, through you, Mr. Speaker, is what are his views on the appropriateness of the government introducing a motion to limit the debate after 25 minutes on another monster omnibus budget bill, a bill that is over 350 pages, with almost 500 clauses that would amend dozens of bills, some of which have nothing to do with the budget?

I would ask, through you, Mr. Speaker, to hear his views on the appropriateness of that in a democratic parliamentary system.

[Pensions, April 1st, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the minister just does not get it. Not being able to afford a decent quality of life in retirement is what hurts Canadian families. Even the minister's own department contradicts his bizarre claim. Government research has shown that gradually expanding the Canada pension plan would be affordable and would be good for Canada's economy. However, the Conservatives prefer to implement ideologically driven policy rather than factually based evidence.

Why will the minister not do the right thing, the sensible thing, and work with provinces to strengthen retirement for Canadians in their retirement?