Pierre-Luc Dusseault

[Cannabis Act, November 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I must address what was just said, because my colleague is offering no solution. In fact, he thinks that the status quo will do the job. In his opinion, allowing marijuana to remain illegal, as it has been for decades, works. How can he offer the status quo as a solution?

Can my colleague at least acknowledge that what his government did for 10 years did nothing to improve the situation? In fact, the situation got worse, since cannabis use increased over the 10-year period in which his government was in power.

How can he stand up today and say he wants to reduce cannabis use, while the strategy his government used for 10 years did absolutely nothing? In fact, it made things worse. How does he explain this?

[Cannabis Act, November 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech. However, I often have difficulty understanding the Conservatives’ logic when it comes to finding solutions to problems. Often, their first reaction is to say that all the answers are in the Criminal Code. They want to criminalize everything, as though that would solve the problem.

My other colleague even drew a parallel with cigarettes by talking about the awareness campaigns, which, statistics have shown, enabled us, over time, to reduce tobacco use without having to criminalize the toxic substance.

I therefore wonder why we should not use the same approach with cannabis that we used with cigarettes; in other words, legalize it and launch awareness campaigns to reduce its use.

Since it worked for cigarettes, why would it not work for cannabis?

[Petitions, November 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the last petition was signed by hundreds of people from Sherbrooke this summer and concerns the fight against tax havens.

It calls on the government to acknowledge this increasingly pervasive and significant phenomenon. It asks the government above all to take steps to actively fight tax evasion and to put an end to amnesty deals such as the one in the KPMG affair.

[Petitions, November 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition has to do with a Falun Gong practitioner who is imprisoned in China. She is a Canadian citizen. The petitioners are asking the Government of Canada to condemn this individual's arrest in China and to call for her immediate and unconditional release. She is a Canadian citizen and deserves to be properly represented by our government abroad.

[Petitions, November 9th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask your indulgence because I also have three petitions to present.

The first petition is from citizens of Ontario. It is an electronic petition. It was signed by 703,086 Canadians from across the country. They state that there is currently no election law at the federal level that allows elected politicians to be removed from Parliament, so the petitioners are calling on the House of Commons and Parliament as a whole to pass a bill that allows for recall referendums.

[Ethics, November 7th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I really cannot figure out what the Minister of National Revenue does not understand.

While she drags her feet, the Liberal Party's cronies continue to take advantage of the system that she is keeping in place. The Liberal Party of Canada's bagman, for example, sheltered millions of dollars from taxes in the Cayman Islands. The Cayman Islands are a notorious tax haven with which Canada has signed a tax information exchange agreement. This agreement should have made the Canada Revenue Agency aware of the scheming Liberal cronies have been involved in.

Why do we have agreements with tax havens such as the Cayman Islands if they let the Liberal clique dodge their tax obligations?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 2, November 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, five minutes is not a lot of time to go over the reasons why we must oppose the bill.

To me, we must oppose this bill for many reasons, including for its lack of substantive measures for fighting tax evasion and for the problems raised a few minutes ago at the Standing Committee on Finance regarding the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. We have a lot of problems with this bank. It raises a lot of questions.

Let us start with the fight against tax evasion. Yesterday, there was another leak regarding the Paradise Papers. According to an army of lawyers representing wealthy Canadian clients, everything is legal, there is no problem, everything is fine. They are entitled to do this, there is no problem.

That is precisely the fundamental problem that we tried to address in question period in the House today. The government should have addressed this issue in its Bill C-63, the budget implementation bill. It failed to so yet again. There is no measure in place to make illegal what is morally unacceptable or what we might describe as legalized fraud.

They use tax treaties like the ones with the Cayman Islands and Barbados and tax agreements to avoid double taxation. Those tax information exchange agreements are supposed to give us information about taxpayers who have interests and accounts in the Cayman Islands, but the fact is, the government has had a tax information exchange agreement with the Cayman Islands since 2010. That is where Mr. Bronfman had his tax-free trust, which apparently netted him some handsome returns.

Agreements like those, like the one with the Cayman Islands, legalize what should be illegal. Those information exchange agreements were supposed to provide information to the revenue minister and the finance minister in exchange for that tax benefit, if I may call it that.

It is becoming clear that the revenue minister is once again completely in the dark with respect to the information hidden in those tax havens. She never got any information. Information leaks and data about Canadian companies and interests in that country reached her at the same time as they reached the rest of the public.

What, then, is the purpose of these tax information exchange agreements? We get no information, but those who register their trusts, their companies, their subsidiaries, and their shell companies over there get tax benefits. We get nothing at all out of the deal.

It is time for our government to step up and review our tax treaties. It also needs to review schemes like these, which allow rich taxpayers to get out of paying the Canadian government what they owe. These people benefit from our infrastructure, our roads, our public transit, and our health and education systems, but what do they give back to society in return? Zilch. They stash their wealth in overseas accounts and contribute nothing to the development of our communities and our country.

Now more than ever, it is time for the government to take action on this issue. With Bill C-63, the government missed its opportunity to take action and show that it really does intend to solve the problem. Now we see that it has been infiltrated by people who are exploiting the system and the status quo to get out of paying their fair share of taxes. Today, we really have to wonder what the government's true agenda is.

The other thing I wanted to mention is the Asian infrastructure bank. Close to $500 million of Canadian taxpayer money will go to creating a bank in China that will be controlled primarily by China. This bank will invest in Chinese interests and in privatized Chinese infrastructure projects. We saw the same thing here with the Canada infrastructure bank. This is shameful. We need to speak out against this bill for the sake of Canadians, perhaps even for the sake of people overseas.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 2, November 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague talked a lot about workers in Hamilton and protecting workers' rights, and also today, my colleague from Hamilton Mountain introduced a bill to protect pensions.

I would like to know my colleague's opinion, considering that in the 2015 election campaign, she promised many things to her constituents in Hamilton. I would like to hear what she told them about protecting workers' pensions and what she has to say to them now about the fact that, since this government came to power, it has not introduced any bills that include amendments to better protect workers' pensions, like the workers in Hamilton. Bill C-63 also does nothing in that regard.

What does she have to say to them?

[Ethics, November 6th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the government does not understand anything about international tax avoidance because it continues to ignore the fundamental problem of tax havens instead of addressing it.

The minister still believes that the solution to tax havens is to invest in the Canada Revenue Agency. However, the fundamental problem lies in our overly permissive legislation that the Liberal Party's cronies benefit from.

Could the minister get her head out of the sand, especially since she voted for an NDP motion calling for action against tax avoidance and tax havens? Why has the minister still not proposed any measures to put an end to this legal tax scam?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2017, No. 2, November 2nd, 2017]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his remarks.

Based on his last answer, it costs $400 million to build a foreign investment bank. I think this is too expensive. There must be some other way to build Canada's brand abroad.

That being said, there is a question I have wanted to ask for some time. As we saw yesterday, the Liberals like to boast that they have lifted 300,000 children out of poverty. What methodology did the Liberals use to come up with this figure? Could my colleague tell us a bit about their calculations?

My colleague loves throwing numbers around, but he does not really give any details about how they calculate these figures. Can he tell us exactly how the Liberals came up with the figure of 300,000 children?