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moved that Bill S-217, An Act to amend the Canada Revenue Agency Act (reporting on unpaid income tax), be read the second time and referred to a committee. He said: Mr. Speaker, it is an absolute pleasure to rise in this chamber again to speak on a very important issue to Canadians. Before I start, I want to pay tribute to a local individual, Mr. Dan Newman, who recently passed away. He was a two-time elected member of the provincial parliament and cabinet minister in the Ontario legislature from 1995 and re-elected in 1999. Dan was a dear friend of mine, a dear friend to many in the community, a quick wit and a wonderful individual. I would like to give his family my sincere condolences on behalf of all those in Simcoe North. I am sure they miss him deeply after his very unexpected passing. Thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, given that you seem to be in a giving mood tonight, I also wish my brother and my good friend Stephen Graham happy belated birthday, to give them a tribute in this speech. Just crossing the desk, I want to make sure the House is fully aware that the Prime Minister was in New York today, and he said that a strong Canada would “help make America great again”. I did not have it on my bingo card that the Prime Minister would be embracing MAGA principles, but I seem to always be amazed by the opportunism of the Prime Minister. Getting back to the issue at hand, it is an important bill that we are debating here tonight. I would like to start by thanking the House again for its co-operation on another bill, which I think is adjacent to this one, Bill C-230, which we passed here unanimously just a few weeks ago. This bill, Bill S-217, is basically identical to the bill by Senator Percy Downe that passed in the Senate three times. Senator Downe stands as an example to all parliamentarians that, with persistence and good-natured collaboration and engagement, good ideas have a real chance of becoming law in this country. Senator Downe has been talking about the issues of tax evasion and the efficacy of the CRA in carrying out its primary objective of collecting the tax monies that are owed to the federal government. He has been highlighting these issues for many years and raising concerns about the actions of the CRA in pursuing individuals who participate in overseas tax evasion, which is evading taxes paid in Canada by using overseas tax havens. Members will recall the Panama papers, a very well-publicized, international exposé by journalists, who later had their lives threatened and in fact had violence perpetrated against them. The Panama papers identified a number of Canadians who had assets hidden away in overseas tax havens. To date, there have been no Canadians convicted of overseas tax evasion from the Panama papers. This is one of the reasons for which Senator Downe has brought forward this legislation. The legislation, in my mind, does a few key things. Number one, it would require greater transparency at the CRA to publish the list of individuals who are convicted of tax evasion. Number two, which is also a serious issue that we have dealt with many times in this chamber and in the government as a whole, is the ability of the Parliamentary Budget Officer to receive relevant data and information from the Canada Revenue Agency. This bill would require the Canada Revenue Agency to produce data and information and make that available to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, so the Parliamentary Budget Officer could complete independent analysis on the tax gap. “What is the tax gap?” one might ask. The tax gap is an assessment of what the CRA believes it is owed on an annual basis by taxpayers, corporations and individuals, versus what it is actually able to receive: that is, what taxes are assessed and what taxes are collected. The Parliamentary Budget Officer should be doing an independent analysis of this tax gap. The bill would also require the CRA to produce its own estimation of the tax gap so that it can be viewed by parliamentarians. This is consistent with best practices in other jurisdictions around the world. These are the three main points of the bill. I have to commend Senator Downe for a number of things, such as his leadership in making sure that these issues are not forgotten from Parliament to Parliament. Senator Downe has passed this bill three times in its basic exact form over previous Parliaments. This is the third time the bill is coming to this chamber. I am on the record suggesting that the current majority status of this Parliament is a disadvantage to Canadians because that was not the result of the last election at the ballot box. However, if there is a silver lining to the majority status of this Parliament, and the fact that we may be here for a little while longer, it is that it will give the House the opportunity to properly consider, review and potentially amend this bill and to make it law, because it has been sent here three times and the House has been unable to make it law. We owe Senator Downe this effort because of his persistence and leadership on this issue. He has convinced his colleagues in the Senate three times that the bill ought to become law. I think all members in this chamber should be willing to work together to examine this bill at committee. I was very proud to put my name on the bill in this chamber for a number of reasons, but also because Senator Downe has worked very closely with me on some of my private member's bills, one on money laundering in the last Parliament and, yet again, in this Parliament with Bill C-230, which, as I mentioned, passed here unanimously a couple of weeks ago and which is complementary to this bill in so many ways. I would like to just talk a little about the bill in the words of Senator Downe. When taxpayers cheat, the rest of Canadians make up the shortfall. Taxes rise to cover the balance. The government is forced to take on more debt. Debt service payments increase, and the debt gets paid forward to the next generation. Enforcing compliance with Canada's tax laws and collecting monies owed to government is a core mandate of the CRA, but how well is the CRA fulfilling its responsibilities? Consider overseas tax evasion. Story after story follows the same pattern. A news story will break, and the CRA appears with its regular talking points: They are working hard to catch overseas tax evaders; they take it seriously; they have identified monies that are owed to the government; the work is ongoing to collect those monies. However, the results are ultimately disappointing. I mentioned previously the 2016 Panama papers, the disclosures of overseas tax evasion. Other countries with citizens involved in this scandal have collected billions of dollars in taxes owed. A recent article by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the journalists who broke the story, lists Australia as having recovered $44 million; Germany, $87 million; and Spain, $175 million. Iceland, a country of just 340,000, recovered $25 million. Canada, however, after 10 years, has not announced the recovery of a nickel. Approximately 900 Canadians were identified as having accounts linked to the Panama papers. Not one person has been charged, much less convicted of this tax evasion, a stark contrast to what has happened in other countries. The fairness for all Canadian taxpayers act, introduced by Senator Downe, would require the government, as I mentioned before, to disclose these convictions of tax evasion, to publish the estimates for the tax gap and then to make sure that the Parliamentary Budget Officer can complete independent analysis of the tax gap for the benefit of all members in the House. Canada lags behind other countries that measure their tax gap and provide the public with more transparency and more information. The bill would certainly help legislators in this place and in the Senate make better laws to ensure that the CRA has the tools to carry out its core mandate effectively. I have to mention that, while Canadians may be frustrated with the Canada Revenue Agency's performance over the last number of years, there are a number of fantastic people who work there and work very hard. I believe that they deserve a level of sympathy, because the government has been asking the CRA to do more and more activities that are outside of its core mandate. The government has asked the CRA to administer new benefit programs. It has asked the CRA to introduce and administer new tax reporting structures that are incredibly complicated. In one case, the CRA was to implement bare trust reporting rules that everyone knew were complicated. People spent hundreds of millions of dollars in total in complying with this new reporting requirement, only to have the government, a political actor, reverse the decision about submitting this paperwork at the last second, on the day the paperwork was due. Hundreds of thousands of taxpayers incurred, in some cases, multiple-thousand-dollar tax bills to send information to the CRA, only to have the CRA say that it was too complicated and that it did not need that information right now. These are the operational decisions that the government has unfairly placed on the CRA, in my opinion. I believe that there are wonderful agents at the CRA who work hard and try to collect the money owing to government, but I believe, and I concur with my friend in the Senate, that Canadians deserve greater transparency on those who are convicted of tax evasion. I think we should make sure that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has access to the information it needs to conduct independent analysis of the tax gap. I would be remiss if I did not mention that, following my speech, I will be joined by the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, who is a wonderful mentor of mine and a person from whom I have learned a great deal in this place about how he carries himself, how to collaborate and how to make sure that one is standing up for their constituents and their principles with vigour, as well as with integrity. I look forward very much to his speech and thank him for his support on this bill and on my bill, Bill C-230, which, as I mentioned, I was pleased to see make it through this chamber.
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