Extension of Sitting Hours  We spent hours discussing bills on which everyone agreed, whereas there had been short shrift given to things like FATCA, on which both my hon. colleague and I want to run back to the finance committee to try to get a proper result there, an omnibus bill on which we know there was not adequate time for debate or study.

Extension of Sitting Hours  This is where we end up, with these ridiculous motions that take us to midnight, and the balance of things goes completely out of whack. Things that are deeply important, like FATCA, the agreement with the United States to disclose up to one million Canadians' tax information to the IRS, get minutes of discussion. Yet we have prolonged hours on things that we agree to.

The Budget  Speaker, the Conservatives do not understand their own budget bill, which does not surprise me since so little has to do with the budget. For example, the evidence is piling up that the implementation by the Conservatives of FATCA will harm up to one million Canadians. Yesterday the Privacy Commissioner of Canada testified that other clauses to allow CRA bureaucrats to hand over our personal tax information to the police, without warrant, violate privacy law and the charter.

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, FATCA has raised a number of concerns in Canada. The new agreement addresses those concerns by relying on the existing framework under the Canada-U.S. tax treaty. The CRA will not assist the IRS in collecting U.S. taxes, no new taxes will be imposed, and only U.S. citizens will be affected.

Finance committee  In your assessment of the U.S. constitutionality of FATCA, would it survive—and I know you can't say one way or another—a U.S. constitutional challenge? What are the implications of that afterwards if it doesn't?

Finance committee  It's very significant for U.S. citizens in Canada, because there are two parts of FATCA. The first is the part that deals with the banks, and the second part, which nobody ever talks about, has enhanced and very stringent penalty-laden reporting requirements for U.S. citizens abroad requiring them to disclose an unbelievable amount about their lives and their financial assets.

Finance committee  I just wanted to clarify that for the record. Let me ask Mr. Hannah the following. Given the onerous regulations of FATCA, we've seen that a number of foreign financial institutions, such as HSBC, Deutsche Bank, and Credit Suisse, have been closing brokerage accounts for U.S. citizens. To your knowledge, was that ever contemplated by Canadian banks as an option?

Finance committee  I'm expecting that there's going to be quite a significant—and we've heard this from some of the banks before today—investment in the technology that's going to be required to actually manage and monitor this type of thing, which would have been in place either way, I'm assuming. So with that case, if you had to go under FATCA and had a one-to-one contract relationship with the IRS, if you will, then I'm assuming that it would have been a much more significant investment on your part than having to specify, along with the exclusions of the registered accounts.

Finance committee  That as well was in fact one of the big gains from the work that we had done, because if you went back to the FATCA legislation, in its regulations in the U.S., in its original incarnation, there would in fact have been a renewal process, whereby you would have had to go back to clients. There's none of that in the IGA.

Finance committee  American citizens have always had a tax liability due to their citizenship and, quite frankly, we can't change that. All we can do is put some parameters and some rules around it, and that is what FATCA has done. Mr. Brison started to ask the question, and really didn't follow up on it, about whether Canada is better positioned under this agreement or not, so I'm going to ask you that question.

Finance committee  Mr. Hannah, you've just described FATCA as enormously complex. This IGA is effectively a treaty between two governments. Should something so enormously complex be part of an omnibus bill with a couple of hours of study allocated to it?

Finance committee  So in your opinion, the IGA is a significant improvement over FATCA.

Finance committee  Financial institutions would have to negotiate individually with the IRS to come into compliance with FATCA. If they did not do so, they could be subject to a 30% withholding tax. The IGA gets around this. It also is beneficial, given privacy concerns; instead of financial institutions reporting directly to the IRS, they now report to CRA, which then reports to the IRS.

Finance committee  Without an IGA, do you have an idea of what FATCA would have cost Canadian financial institutions and Canadians holding dual citizenship?

Finance committee  Is it your view that this has had sufficient study, that FATCA, in all of its complexity, has had sufficient study? If not, do you agree with our position that it ought to be taken out of Bill C-31 and given further study?