SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 177

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 31, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 177 - Mar/31/23
Mr. Chandra Arya (Nepean, Lib.)
  • Mar/31/23 10:27:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, corporations exist basically to allow individuals to channel their capital for the benefit of making profits. I think the corporation as we know it came into existence in the 1844 act in Britain, and the shareholders were granted limited liabilities in 1855. In 1866, the United States code declared that a corporation is a natural person. The key thing that I want to focus on is the tax evasion and tax avoidance. Supreme courts around the world have ruled on the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion and identified that if there is any transaction in the process followed by an individual or a corporation that does not have any impact other than to reduce or eliminate tax, the transaction can be declared null and void. Coming back to the corporations here, why should the public not be aware of individuals who are investing money into corporations, including their citizenship being known? It is not the fundamental right of any individual that he or she can be a shareholder. It is a privilege offered by the states through various acts, so why should the public not be aware of individuals who are the shareholders, including their citizenship—
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Context: House Hansard - 177 - Mar/31/23
Mr. Marty Morantz (Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, CPC)
  • Mar/31/23 10:48:53 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, there are a number of areas of clarification, in my mind, that need to be addressed, and perhaps it would be done through committee. One is the type of asset that is caught by this legislation. For example, a beneficial owner is someone for whom an asset is held in trust. There could be shares of a corporation held in trust by a shareholder for someone else, whether that shareholder is an individual or a corporation. Also, the assets of a corporation could be held in trust for an owner or a group of owners. One of the things that I would like to have clarified is whether this just applies to shares being held in trust for beneficial owners or if it actually applies to the assets of a corporation that are held in trust for owners. What happens, for example, when those beneficial owners, in turn, decide to set up trust arrangements with other people holding their beneficial ownerships in trust for others? Second, there are 500,000 corporations under the CBCA. There could literally be tens of millions of these trust arrangements in existence across the country. What resources would be dedicated to making sure we could track them? Finally, I was a little concerned that personal addresses would be published. Most of these trust arrangements are legitimate business practices and a much smaller number are for money laundering. I just want to highlight that—
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