Hello,
In a letter to new Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, NDP MP Niki Ashton is calling on Ottawa to create a special committee to investigate the use of tax havens by Canadian corporations.
The NDP has long urged the minority Liberal government to more aggressively tackle tax evasion by corporations and high wealth individuals and is clearly hoping a new minister will lead to a new approach.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s July 26 shuffle included leadership change on the revenue file. Since 2015, the Canada Revenue Agency has been the purview of Quebec minister Diane Lebouthillier. She is now the Fisheries Minister. Ms. Bibeau, the new Revenue Minister, was previously in charge of Agriculture.
“If you are truly interested in cracking down on corporate and billionaire tax avoidance, I urge you to work with the NDP and create a special committee to investigate the use of tax havens by Canadian corporations as the NDP has called for in the past,” wrote Ms. Ashton, the NDP revenue critic, in a letter dated Aug. 22 and released publicly Friday.
Ms. Ashton also calls on the government to increase the corporate tax rate and to ease up on enforcing clawbacks from individuals who received over-payments of pandemic supports.
“It is so galling that we see the CRA’s continued attacks on working people and people on fixed incomes. I’ve spoken with people in my riding and across the country who received onerous clawbacks to supports they rely on, like their Canada Child Benefits,” she wrote.
Treasury Board President Anita Anand recently gave cabinet ministers an Oct. 2 deadline to identify about $15-billion to be cut from spending plans over five years, following up on a target that was first announced in the 2023 budget.
In an opinion piece for The Globe, former Liberal economic advisor Robert Asselin, who is now senior vice-president of policy at the Business Council of Canada, criticized the plan as a “shell game” that will move spending around rather than produce actual reductions.
“Redistributing borrowed money may look virtuous, but at the end of the day it will just make us collectively poorer. It already has,” he wrote. “More deficit-financed spending at higher interest rates will eventually and inevitably lead to levels of indebtedness that will force future governments to cut spending and raise taxes.”
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
New Heritage Minister holds ‘positive’ talks with Meta – Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge says she has held productive talks with executives at Meta, which is blocking Canadians’ access to news on Facebook and Instagram, but told the tech giant she will not give in to demands to “roll back” Ottawa’s Online News Act.
“We’ve had, I would say, a very positive and constructive and also honest conversation,” Ms. St-Onge, who became Heritage Minister in last month’s cabinet shuffle, told The Globe and Mail in an interview. Full story here.
OPP’s ‘conflict of interest’ on Greenbelt probe puzzles police watchers – The Ontario Provincial Police decision to refer to the RCMP a potential probe into Premier Doug Ford’s government and its interactions with Greenbelt developers is highlighting confusion in Canada about which police agencies are best suited to investigate politicians, their aides and the public sector, observers say.
The provincial police force announced this week that the RCMP would take over its review of the Ontario government’s decision last year to carve out 15 sections of land from the protected Greenbelt to open them up to housing development. Full Globe and Mail story here.
BC Wildfire Service pulls firefighters after protesters confront RCMP – British Columbia has pulled firefighting crews out of the North Shuswap area after a group of protesters confronted RCMP at a highway checkpoint, where the demonstrators argued the Mounties do not have the authority to block people from entering a wildfire evacuation zone. Globe and Mail story here.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow sets out ‘first step’ in affordable housing plan – Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow presented on Thursday what she called a “first step” in her bid to build 25,000 affordable rental homes, in addition to those already planned for the city. Canadian Press story here.
Ukraine seeks Canada’s help in selling peace plan – Canada aims to heed a new call from Ukraine to help it sell a peace plan with Russia to developing countries who have taken a neutral stance on Moscow’s invasion.
Ottawa says it is gearing up for a diplomatic push on multiple continents, to get the world to endorse Kyiv’s vision of an end to the war, through a plan that includes a full restoration of all Ukraine’s territory and a war-crimes tribunal. Story by the Canadian Press here.
THIS AND THAT
The House of Commons and Senate remain on summer break, returning in mid-September.
PRIME MINISTER’S DAY
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is scheduled to be in Vancouver Friday afternoon. He will speak at the Global Environment Facility’s Seventh Assembly.
LEADERS
No public events have been announced for the Conservative, Bloc Québécois and NDP Leaders.
OPINION
Shannon Proudfoot (The Globe and Mail) writes that the bear trap of incumbency snapped shut on the Trudeau cabinet in Charlottetown: “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet found themselves in the absurd position of having to simultaneously insist that everything is great – because they’ve been in charge of all the things for the last eight years – while somehow also responding to the cost-of-living rage-anxiety that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is bottling up like rocket fuel… It’s all part of the creeping brittleness of this government as it ages.”
Jimmy Thomson (Contributed to The Globe and Mail) says politicians must empower their expert government staff to answer questions from the media: “Today, there is no way to talk directly to the people who know what they’re talking about without first talking to those who don’t. That’s by design. When image management is the primary concern of decision makers, there’s an implied reputational risk if they’re seen to be ignoring their own expert staff – never mind that that’s what our elected governments are routinely doing, on files ranging from the Greenbelt to salmon farms. The most important thing isn’t to give citizens the information they are rightly owed, particularly if it involves the government they elect and the decisions it makes that affect their lives; it’s not getting caught making a mistake.”
Konrad Yakabuski (The Globe and Mail) says the U.S. has thrown France under the bus after Niger coup: “The U.S. and France find themselves at odds over how to deal with the military junta that ousted the African country’s democratically elected leader. The Biden administration has once again thrown France under the bus, this time by cozying up to the putschists in Niger who have seized on anti-French sentiment in their country, a former French colony, to justify overthrowing President Mohamed Bazoum.”
Rob Huebert (Contributed to The Globe and Mail) writes that China is on a relentless mission to control Canada’s arctic waters: “China will very soon enjoy a major advantage in monitoring Arctic waters, especially under the surface, and it will have confidence that Canada has little ability to see what is going on or do anything about it. Factor in the overwhelming evidence of Beijing’s efforts to target and interfere in our political system – and our reluctance or inability to respond to these actions – and the larger threat to Canada’s very sovereignty comes starkly into view.”
Alix Hawley (Contributed to The Globe and Mail) writes that fleeing the fires in Kelowna was a horror movie come to life: “We’re used to fires now. We’d heard one was burning on the west side, but even now that we could see it, it seemed far enough away, with a lake between us. I made nachos. My son set up a time-lapse video of the fire while my daughter dug a Popsicle out of the freezer. She made us watch Scream. I made her fast-forward past the scariest parts. Eventually we went to bed.”
Close to 11 p.m., the firefighter who lives across the street knocked on our door. He said small fires had caught at both ends of the neighbourhood. We should pack a bag and get out.”
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