SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 216 - Jun/19/23

Jun/19/23 8:17:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is not something I turned my mind to when I was preparing this speech, so I appreciate the fact that the member raised it. This is another piece of the puzzle. When we talk about connecting the dots for proving an offence, it would seem that we would have to connect dots in order to prove who owns what when it comes to sanctions. Perhaps that would be another by-product of this legislation. There is an illegal invasion of Ukraine, and there are also other people around the world who have committed all sorts of atrocities, and those people should not be using Canada as a safe haven for their money. I fully support using this registry and every tool available to find their assets and seize them.

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Mr. Scot Davidson (York—Simcoe, CPC)

Jun/19/23 8:18:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are here in closure again with the Liberal government. Does the member opposite agree that more time to study this bill at committee would have helped strengthen it? I am looking at letters from stakeholders. They were pleading for more time. I wonder if the member could answer that and speak to our being in closure again.

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Mr. Frank Caputo

Jun/19/23 8:19:06 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member raises an excellent point. Why are we rushing this through? This is important legislation. Everybody around here says that this is important legislation, and when legislation is important, so is debate. We should not be settling for an okay bill or a good bill; we should be pursuing excellence for the people of Canada.

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Excellence

Mr. Bernard Généreux (Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, CPC)

Jun/19/23 8:19:40 p.m.
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Re: Bill C-42

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues, and I want to take a moment congratulate all of the young folks. In fact, everyone is taking the opportunity to thank everyone else because of the short time we have left in the House of Commons. I would like to take a minute to thank and congratulate all of the young people who found a summer job in all of the ridings, mine in particular. These young people are contributing to the regional economy of our communities and embracing work. As I see it, work is an extremely important value to instill in young people to help them rise to the challenges of the future and gain experience through summer employment. I am very pleased to rise in the House this evening to speak to Bill C-42, an act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other acts. This bill is one phase of the government's plan to create a national registry of individuals with significant control over corporations in Canada pursuant to the Canada Business Corporations Act, or CBCA. Of course, we are talking about federally regulated companies. The purpose of this bill is to require Corporations Canada to make public some of the information collected under the 2022 amendments to the CBCA. The bill also introduces whistle-blower protections, introduces exemptions for certain individuals, adds new offences and gives Corporations Canada additional powers with respect to inquiries, data validation and information sharing. For one thing, these powers allow Corporations Canada to share information with provincial authorities. We know that Quebec already has a registry. Since I am an entrepreneur myself, my name is on this registry, as are the names of my company's shareholders. I think it is important for the public to have access to this information. According to what the government is saying, this bill basically seeks to protect Canadians from money laundering and terrorist financing, deter tax evasion and tax avoidance, and make sure Canada is an attractive place to conduct business. I completely agree up to that point. It is a worthwhile initiative. Money laundering and terrorist financing do a lot of harm. Unfortunately, Canada has a poor record when it comes to fighting these modern scourges. Canada is known as an easy target for criminal groups and as an epicentre of money laundering and tax evasion. According to a 2020 investigative report published by Criminal Intelligence Service Canada on money laundering and fraud in Canada, the estimated extent of money laundered in Canada is between $45 billion and $113 billion. That is a huge amount of money, and it is good that the government is doing something about that. The Conservative Party has agreed to vote in favour of Bill C‑42, but not because it is perfect, far from it. The review process in committee was rushed. There were only two meetings. I am a member of the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, and I would say that everything happened quick as a flash, leaving members and stakeholders little time to develop and debate amendments to improve this bill. We also proposed amendments that were unfortunately rejected, and that is what I want to focus on. The first amendment we proposed that was rejected had to do with share acquisition thresholds. We proposed: “(a) any number of shares that carry 10% or more of the voting rights attached to all of the corporation's outstanding voting shares; or (b) any number of shares that is equal to 10% or more of all of the corporation's outstanding shares measured by fair market value.” This amendment would have added a new clause to the bill, amending the parts of the CBCA that define significant control to lower the threshold from 25% to 10%. We know that there are several categories of shares in a business. In this case, we are talking about voting shares, those with decision-making authority. James Cohen, the executive director of Transparency International, made the following comment regarding our proposal, and I quote: I don't think...lowering the threshold from 25% to 10% and a risk-based approach are mutually exclusive. I think they actually go hand in hand. I would note that the 25% isn't so much a standard as it was an initial global recommendation that everyone just kind of grabbed on to. There is room to go down to 10% and provide more information for the RCMP. The amendment that we proposed would have enabled the RCMP to cast a much wider net in terms of tax avoidance in particular, and also money laundering. We also moved an amendment to make it easier for law enforcement to access information during investigations. This amendment would have added specific wording to the bill to ensure that law enforcement and other investigative bodies such as the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC, could access information from the director rather than having to approach companies individually. It would also have removed the reference to prescribed circumstances with regard to exceptions, ensuring that only minors are automatically exempt from having their information disclosed and that everyone else must apply for an exemption to prove that it is necessary. Once again, this amendment was rejected. This bill could have been improved, but the NDP-Liberal coalition said no. Not only were our amendments rejected, but, as I said earlier, the bill was rushed, to put it mildly, through the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, on which I sit. In fact, we had just one meeting to hear from departmental officials, and we heard from justice experts on the same day that the clause-by-clause process took place. Briefs from interested organizations such as the anti-money laundering campaign and the Canadian Bar Association were received the day after amendments were submitted. There were several amendments, and several of these briefs were received after the presentation of certain amendments. It is strange because we received some very interesting briefs from law firms, which had some significant reservations about this bill. It is truly unfortunate, but that is how this government operates. It waits to take action and then, at the last minute, it acts hastily and imposes time allocation, which is what we have been experiencing for practically two months in the House of Commons. Time allocation is introduced time and time again. I will take this opportunity to point out that the NDP has now adopted almost 55 time allocation motions, which it never, or almost never, did before. This demonstrates the extent of the government's hold over that political party. As I was saying, by colluding with the NDP, the government is getting its way with obviously shoddy results. Canadians expect the federal government to combat money laundering and the proceeds of crime in a way that aligns with our economic and security partners around the world. Canada must shed its reputation as a haven for dirty money. A future Conservative government will make it happen. In 2021, the Conservative Party committed to establishing a federal registry of beneficial owners for residential properties and implementing comprehensive changes to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act to give FINTRAC, law enforcement and prosecutors the tools they need to identify, arrest and prosecute money launderers and, ultimately, stop illicit funds from making their way into the real estate market. This is the kind of policy our government will bring in to really tackle the problem of money laundering and tax evasion. Particularly in the Vancouver area where my colleague lives, absolutely huge sums of money are being invested by outside entities that launder money directly through real estate acquisitions. The provincial and federal registries must be harmonized. In Canada, about 15% of corporations are in federal registries, while 85% are in provincial registries. The two types of registries therefore need to be harmonized so that the provinces and the federal government can work together. As I was saying, Quebec has a great registry that works very well, but it was recently amended. The federal registry could have been even better had the time been taken to study it.

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Mr. Sébastien Lemire (Abitibi—Témiscamingue, BQ)

Jun/19/23 8:29:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup for his work. I was thinking back to the question that he asked me earlier. The key word that I missed was interoperability. It is important to have laws that are interoperable, so I would like to try again by putting it in a comment and asking him the following question. How important is it that our laws remain interoperable?

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Mr. Bernard Généreux

Jun/19/23 8:29:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, by interoperability we understand the connections and interplay between the provincial laws and the federal law that enable them to work together. It is imperative and fundamental that these laws can work together so that the work done upstream or downstream—whether at the federal or provincial level—can be constructive and effective, particularly against money laundering. I think my colleague is right, and I thank him for that. I must say publicly that my colleague is a very fine individual who does great work on the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology and who always makes an effort. As he said earlier, we do not always agree. However, in general, I think his arguments are geared towards the common good of Quebec and Canadian society as a whole. That is what we are arguing for as well. To answer his question, I think it goes without saying. Everyone should realize that this is really something that should be interoperable.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Jun/19/23 8:31:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on this same point, I would say that this interoperability is really important. The provinces that already have a public registry have set the threshold at 25%. The member mentioned 10% before, but, for the bill to be compatible with the laws of the provinces that already have a public registry, it seems to me it would be important to start with a 25% threshold and to then have some conversations with the provinces, instead of legislating something in the House that is incompatible with the provincial registries. How can we address this and make sure we create laws that allow the federal government to have an important tool it can use to go after the Russians who are hiding their assets in Canada?

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Mr. Bernard Généreux

Jun/19/23 8:32:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his excellent question. To move society forward, we must move bills forward, be it at the federal or provincial level. I realize that the registries are all harmonized at 25%. We are fully aware of that, but, in moving amendments like the one meant to lower the ownership threshold to 10%, we have made people think, not only in the House, but also at the provincial level. In doing so, we could perhaps improve the registries to ensure that all the information could be collected more effectively, both at the provincial and federal levels, so as to eliminate, once and for all, money laundering, tax evasion, and related crimes. The tighter the measures across Canada, the greater the chance of limiting the damage. I am an entrepreneur and I regularly consult the Quebec registry. I will be consulting it again soon, because my daughter will be taking over for my associate in my company. I will be required to have a notary make the change at the IGIF, the institute that records all the information in a registry. We will record my company's new shareholder, my daughter. Actually, it will just be my daughter and me. That is very important. We each hold 50% of the companies' shares, but there could have been several shareholders, and the threshold could have been 10% instead of 25%. In our case, it does not matter, because we are not fraudsters. I remember that my colleague said that there are companies that own multiple companies. It becomes a sort of puzzle. It would have been more obvious to have a 10% threshold rather than a 25% threshold.

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The Speaker

Jun/19/23 8:34:22 p.m.
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Is the House ready for the question? Some hon. members: Question. The Speaker: The question is on Motion No. 1. If a member of a recognized party present in the House wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division or wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Jun/19/23 8:35:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I request a recorded vote, please.

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The Speaker

Jun/19/23 8:35:14 p.m.
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Pursuant to order made on Thursday, June 23, 2022, the division stands deferred until Tuesday, June 20 at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux

Jun/19/23 8:35:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order. I believe that you have received the proper advance notice and, if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent to see the clock at midnight so we can begin Adjournment Proceedings.

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The Speaker

Jun/19/23 8:35:53 p.m.
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I have received notice from all recognized parties that they are in agreement on this request. Is it agreed? Some hon. members: Agreed.

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Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

Jun/19/23 8:36:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am standing today representing my constituents and the constituents of Alberta. I want to tell a bit of a story. In May 2020, amid COVID-19 shutdowns, on the Friday afternoon before the May long weekend, Alberta's United Conservative government quietly revealed that it was rescinding Alberta's coal policy that had protected the Rocky Mountains and the eastern slopes from exploration and mining since 1976. Albertans had no insight into this. They had no inkling that this change was going to happen, but the mining companies absolutely did. Within days, on 240,000 hectares of environmentally sensitive land on the eastern slopes, areas that included the headwaters of Alberta's major watershed serving Edmonton, Calgary and southern Alberta, thousands of trees were bulldozed and hundreds of kilometres of temporary roads were carved through the landscape by coal-mining companies. The outcry from Albertans and other Canadians was swift. It was overwhelming. Through various petitions and forms, hundreds of thousands of Canadians turned to the federal government for help. They asked that the government enforce federal laws, including the species at risk legislation and the Canada Water Act, and consult with first nations and other indigenous groups in keeping with the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which is something that the provincial Conservative government had very clearly failed to do. I stood in this House and called on the government to close a loophole in the legislation. In fact, I brought a private member's bill forward to do that. The loophole was that in the past any mine that was under 5,000 tonnes per day did not trigger the Impact Assessment Act. What we were finding was that mining companies were building two mines side by side that were 4,950 tonnes or 4,925 tonnes to get under that 5,000 tonnes per day loophole. Therefore, I brought my private member's bill to the minister of the environment at the time, the now Minister of Natural Resources, and he agreed with me and he agreed in policy to change that loophole. It was the best day of my life as a parliamentarian because my legislation was put into policy, so we were delighted. It meant that all coal mines in the Rocky Mountains were going to trigger an environmental impact assessment. I am pleased to say that meant that some of the mines that were going to be most destructive in southern Alberta were shut down and the ones that were most destructive in the eastern slopes were shut down and did not go ahead. The investors pulled out, the mining companies pulled out and our water and our land was protected in Alberta. However, after that we got a new minister and the new minister has now rubber-stamped a coal mine that is going into the Grande Cache mountains. The minister has completely discarded the policy that his predecessor put in place. Either he is not paying attention or he does not care, and if that is the case it is a betrayal. Either the minister thinks that this mine does not have to be under the threshold of 5,000 tonnes or he thinks that selenium is not a risk. What I would like to know from the government is, which is it? Which reason is it that the government is betraying Albertans and not triggering an environmental impact assessment on a coal mine in the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains?

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Mr. Bryan May (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence, Lib.)

Jun/19/23 8:40:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address the question by the hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona regarding the impact assessment process and coal mining. I want to assure the member that the government will continue to lead the global effort to phase out coal-powered electricity and the mining of thermal coal, and to ban thermal coal exports from and through Canada as swiftly as possible, and no later than 2030. In June 2021, the government issued its policy statement on the new thermal coal mining or expansion projects, stating that these projects are likely to cause unacceptable environmental effects within federal jurisdiction and are not aligned with Canada's domestic and international climate change commitments. Canada is taking decisive action to address climate change, and we will consider the policy statement in deciding whether to designate any new thermal coal mines or expansions under the Impact Assessment Act. With respect to metallurgical coal mines, we will consider designating any new mines or expansions that have the potential to release selenium into the environment. Canada has a rigorous federal impact assessment process that considers the positive and negative environmental, economic, social and health impacts of mining projects, among others. The type of projects subject to this process are identified in the regulations known as the project list under the Impact Assessment Act. Summit Coal Inc.'s proposed summit mine 14 project near Grand Cache is a metallurgical coal mine, not a thermal coal mine, and is well below the threshold identified in the project list that would automatically trigger a federal assessment process. In August 2022, a number of first nations wrote the Minister of Environment and Climate Change about the proposed summit mine 14 project, and requested we consider designating it for assessment. To support our consideration of this request, the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada provided the minister advice about the project informed by science, indigenous and community knowledge, input from the proponent, and consultation with Alberta, other jurisdictions and potentially affected indigenous groups. On November 14, 2022, the minister decided, after carefully considering the scientific analysis and advice from the agency, to not designate the project. His response and the analysis that the agency provided him are publicly available on the Canadian impact assessment registry in support of transparency and accountability.

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Ms. Heather McPherson

Jun/19/23 8:43:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I have three additional questions from that response. One is this: Does the minister not understand the damage coal mining does to the mountains, whether it is metallurgical or thermal? The minister before the current Minister of Environment and Climate Change promised they would assess every single coal mine. We also know that there is no way of him knowing what the selenium outcomes are going to be. We do not have that information because we have not tested and we have not looked at it yet. Selenium poisoning is what is going to kill the water, kill the fish and kill the land. Does the minister not understand how selenium poisoning works, and will he not listen to the indigenous groups in the community that have asked for this impact assessment and have asked him to close this loophole? He has the ability to do this. I beg of the minister to close this mine down and bring in an impact assessment, as was promised, now.

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Mr. Bryan May

Jun/19/23 8:44:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the government is committed to preventing and managing pollution from industrial sectors. Effluent from coal mines in Canada can be a source of pollution that harms aquatic life, specifically fish and fish habitat. Environment and Climate Change Canada is developing coal mining effluent regulations under the Fisheries Act. These regulations would reduce the risks to fish and fish habitat by limiting levels of harmful substances in coal mining effluent. Once in place, they will apply to the 28 existing coal mines in Canada and to all future coal mine expansions and new coal mine projects.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Jun/19/23 8:45:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in the pandemic there were folks who were in quite desperate financial situations. One group was foster kids graduating out of care in the spring of 2020. There were no jobs available. They were told by the provincial government that they could not access social assistance unless they applied for CERB. The provincial government knew very well that it was a no-fail application. That is how those kids, at the time, got money to support themselves, as they were striking out on their own at the age of 18. Now, the government is calling in all of those debts, and many of those Canadians are still in a desperate financial situation. The government said it was going to take a compassionate approach, but recent media coverage has said it just cancelled the $5- and $10-a-month payments, so people cannot access that anymore. The government is clawing back benefits. If the government is really committed to a compassionate approach, at the very least it should know how many CERB debtors fall below the low income cut-off. Has it done the analysis, and if so, what is the number?

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Mr. Bryan May (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence, Lib.)

Jun/19/23 8:46:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Elmwood—Transcona for his question and his ongoing advocacy on behalf of his constituents. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we quickly introduced the Canada emergency response benefit, or CERB, and ended up helping more than eight million Canadians. When it came to delivering the benefit, we knew that speed was of the essence. We knew that we needed to get money into the hands of Canadians quickly so that they could feed their families and pay their bills. We were clear from the onset that eligibility would be verified at the back end, once tax data became available. This approach kept workers attached to their jobs and positioned our economy to come roaring back. Since day one, we have treated all cases individually and fairly to ensure that Canadians were not placed in financial hardship. We have also been committed to responsible financial stewardship. That is why we developed a comprehensive four-year plan to support post-payment verification activities on the CERB. By late 2021, we estimated that about 1.8 million people had an outstanding amount, owing between $500 and $2,000 as a result of CERB advanced payments. That is when we began to notify people who had an obligation to repay. When we started the post-payment verification process in January of last year, we asked people who had received the benefit to assess their own eligibility and voluntarily repay what they owed, and many people did just that. To date, ESDC has sent out 1.8 million overpayment notices of CERB advance payment reconciliation for an amount of $3.1 billion as of June 16, 2023, and $2.17 billion has already been repaid. While we recover overpayments, we are doing everything we can to avoid causing undue hardship to Canadians. We are continuing to take an empathetic, people-first approach. When a person facing repayment tells the CRA that they are struggling financially, the agency will assess the person's ability to pay, based on their entire situation, and that includes family size, current income and assets. In addition, we are not imposing penalties or interest on overpayments. We treated Canadians with compassion and understanding when we created these benefits and we are continuing to do that now. Once again, I thank the member for Elmwood—Transcona for his ongoing advocacy on behalf of his constituents.

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Mr. Daniel Blaikie

Jun/19/23 8:49:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a compassionate government would proactively assess the financial situation of people it was trying to collect a debt from and then have that assessment inform the debt collection strategy. That is not what this government is doing, and it has recently cancelled a lot of the measures that it claimed were part of its so-called compassionate approach. I have been asking for almost two years now how many people who owe CERB debt fall under the low-income cut-off, and I think it is pathetic from a government that wants to claim it is compassionate that it still does not have an answer to that question. One more time: Of the people who owe CERB debt, how many of those folks have an income that falls below the low-income cut-off?

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