Financial Administration Act

Honourable senators, this is my opportunity to rise as the supportive critic of this bill. It is also my first opportunity to speak for 45 minutes. I may be reading the room wrong, Your Honour, but my sense is that there is tremendous enthusiasm for this speech and this bill, so I’ll keep my remarks well short of 45 minutes.

This bill is from our colleague in the House of Commons Member of Parliament Adam Chambers, and it was introduced in this chamber for second reading by Senator David Wells.

MP Chambers has been a long-standing champion of transparency and accountability at the Canada Revenue Agency, and this bill reflects his dedication to this cause.

As Senator David Wells has noted, this bill seeks to establish a publicly available, searchable registry of all debts in excess of $2 million owed by any “. . . corporation, trust company or partnership . . .” to the federal government that the government has — again in the words of the bill — “. . . remitted, forgiven, written off or waived . . . .”

It is worth emphasizing that this does not apply to individuals, just companies. Therefore, the privacy of individual Canadians will be preserved. I’m sure Senator Deacon is thrilled to hear that.

The need for this bill is a state of affairs that resonates with me because it parallels what I’ve learned from my work on overseas tax evasion. It can seem that the more you owe the government, the easier it is to duck out of that debt. Efforts to get details from the Canada Revenue Agency about whom they go after for money owing and who gets off easy runs into a wall of excuses for why they won’t provide details, including the ever-popular, “We don’t track the information that way.”

As we all know, the first step to solving a problem is understanding it, and this bill is that first step. It isn’t going to fix the billions of dollars in debt the Government of Canada writes off every year; it does not claim to. What it is going to do, if passed, will be to show Canadians which companies benefit from those decisions. Knowing that, Canadians will be better placed to ask why those decisions were made.

This curiosity is warranted by the amounts involved. Last year, the federal government wrote off more than $5 billion worth of debt. In the fiscal year 2023-24, over $18 billion in “debt and other obligations” were forgiven. In a time of government deficits and cuts to services, Canadians have a right to expect that governments exhaust all possible options to ensure it is paid what it is owed before giving up and walking away from that much money.

In his speech in the House of Commons, Conservative MP Adam Chambers stated that he would welcome constructive suggestions from all parties, including the government, and to his credit, he was true to his word. In fact, during its journey through the House of Commons, this bill received four amendments, all from the Liberals, which were, in turn, subject to two subamendments: one from the Liberals and one from the Conservatives. Commenting on the give and take, Mr. Chambers wisely remarked that one can hold out for one’s version of perfection and get nothing or one can accept the suggestions of others so that all can have a say in the bill and deliver progress for taxpayers.

Bills like Adam Chambers’ Bill C-230 seek to provide a level of much-needed transparency and, thus, accountability from the CRA regarding which debt it chooses to collect and which it chooses to abandon.

I fully support this bill, and I can also say without any fear of contradiction that, if our former colleague and friend Senator Marshall were here, she would join me in urging the passage of this bill, given the work she has done on financial matters as well.

Colleagues, I’d like to give you a brief illustration of the problem, and I know the Leader of the Government in the Senate will be particularly interested in this. I filed two questions. One was in November 25, 2021, on this very topic, in which I asked what was written off, including the largest amounts and the smallest amounts together with a long list of other questions. In 2021, I received one of the answers, which was that, in total, 196,268 legal entities had their debts written off in 2018-19. The second part of the answer was that the largest amount written off in 2018-19 was $133 million. The third part of the answer was that the smallest amount written off in 2018-19 was one cent.

I asked the exact same question, Your Honour, in 2025. The answers were — surprise, surprise — a little different. The smallest amount written off was one cent. The largest amount written off — well, they can’t answer that any more. Let me read the answer:

Due to confidentiality provisions in the act administered by the Canada Revenue Agency in cases where an individual corporation could be directly or indirectly identified, data cannot be released. Therefore, the Canada Revenue Agency cannot respond to the question in the manner asked.

Colleagues, that’s identical wording, a few years apart, with no changes in the act and no changes in the regulations. The change was that the Canada Revenue Agency refused to answer the question. They are denying Canada the information it requires.

The last part I asked was this: How many waivers were given in 2021? Of course, I received an answer, which was 264,000. The answer in 2025 was similar: “We cannot respond to the question in the manner requested.” Again, there were no changes in the act and no changes in the regulations; rather, there was a change in attitude. That’s what Adam Chambers’ bill will do: It will help disclose information Canadians should have. It will force the CRA to be more transparent and open.

Your Honour, as we get closer to the time for adjournment, I don’t want to delay us any longer. However, I will conclude by saying that this bill is a tremendous step forward. MP Chambers deserves full credit for it, and I’m pleased to support it as the supportive critic of the bill in the Senate.

Thank you, colleagues.