Industry committee  Thank you for welcoming Canadians for Tax Fairness to speak on this topic. The pandemic has taught us many lessons. Most importantly, it taught us that we are inextricably dependent on each other. Individualism is a myth. Part of this lesson is that government is a vital instit

Industry committee  It's hard to say at this moment that Canada is out of step, but the fact that there has been very little discussion spurred on by what has come out of the U.S. and the U.K. governments is worrying. The current Canadian government prides itself on being progressive and is currentl

Industry committee  Put the money there. Support them. Support those small businesses. Support the local economy. Support the things that will keep our communities thriving. If the concern is that the debt is growing, then you can find the money where it is, which is with the wealthy.

Finance committee  Thank you very much. Thank you kindly for having Canadians for Tax Fairness comment on this budget implementation bill. Let me begin by commending the government for acting with the appropriate urgency to create a publicly accessible beneficial ownership registry. The need for

Finance committee  Yes. Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to comment on that. Our main concerns with all of the speculative housing measures have to do with how that is targeted. We think that taking steps towards reducing the treatment of housing as an asset first and a home sec

Finance committee  Yes. They absolutely risk being fuel on the fire. I get the instinct behind these measures. My concern is that they're rooted in an impulse to always try to adhere to the market logic and let the market work the way it wants to work. But where housing is at, we need to look to th

Finance committee  Thank you very much. Our general comment with regard to climate action in budget 2022 is that there's nowhere near enough direct actual action with funding to achieve the types of economic transformations that we need. We're concerned that there is excess reliance on tax credits

Finance committee  We're very happy to see the end of the flow-through shares for investments in oil and gas companies. We take issue with the flow-through share structure more generally. It really only benefits the absolute elite investors and encourages investment in what are otherwise not profit

Finance committee  As an economist, my area of expertise is less about how this needs to be specifically designed. I actually respect your expertise in this area, Ms. Chatel, and Mr. Arnold is certainly an expert in this area. What I know, as an economist, is that GAAR is incredibly out of date

Finance committee  Our organization was part of putting out a recent report on snow washing, which is the use of Canada's reputation as a country with a solid rule of law, that is financially stable and that has a relatively robust tax system. However, the anonymity that's available with business r

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. While we're targeting foreign owners, it wouldn't be too difficult to appear to be a Canadian owner if you were buying this asset via a Canadian ownership vehicle.

Finance committee  That's absolutely a fair summary. Obviously, our organization's main concern is the role of anonymity and the role of these corporate registries in being able to avoid taxes. Knowing who holds beneficial ownership will empower the CRA to make sure that all of the taxes that shoul

Finance committee  If the government wanted to sanction oligarchs who are connected to the Putin regime, to make sure that they're not able to flee from their culpability and do business in Canada in a way that is ultimately serving the Russian war machine—for lack of a better term—it would be almo

Finance committee  It's because companies can own companies. You can have one company own another company in another country, which owns another company in another country. The ability to track where assets are actually owned, and who they're owned by, becomes incredibly opaque, because you're deal

Finance committee  This is an absolute need. It must be publicly accessible. Searchability is just the basic function of making something like that useful. This will enable not just government and government institutions, but all sorts of entities to make use of it. One thing that we and our part