Like others, I didn’t intend to speak on this, but just seeing the amendment I must admit I’m quite impressed by it.

The problem, of course, is we do not know if the list Senator Joyal read out from well-known tax havens is representative of criminal elements or not, and that is the very purpose of the amendment — transparency and openness. The fact we don’t know hinders our law enforcement agencies, hinders our international tax treaty and hinders the Canadian Revenue Agency. We do not know.

Before the Senate Banking Committee we had Jon Allen of Transparency International, one of many groups simply trying to get Canada to catch up to what many other countries have done for many years in advancing the information of who owns what.

At that meeting he indicated a line that stuck with me: You have to disclose more information to get a library card in Toronto than you do to open a corporation and hide the owners. Imagine that. We have agencies of law enforcement, revenue collection, who try to track down taxes that are owed in this country, and they don’t know who owns the company. They’re hidden behind walls that we cannot penetrate.

Our country is massively behind other countries. In the last few months and years the European Union has made tremendous advances in this area. Even if we simply copied what they do, we would be light years ahead of where we are now.

On this amendment in particular, we have the transparency we need, we have the information we need and we have all the financial information we’ll need. So the law enforcement agencies and others can know if these are criminal activities or not. If this amendment passes, they will then have the information they require to determine what we all want to know: Are these legitimate businesses, or are these businesses controlled by criminal organizations?

The second part, which I believe Senator Joyal mentioned as well, is the actual collection of the revenue. As we all know, it’s not illegal to have an account outside Canada. It is, however, illegal not to declare the proceeds from those accounts. In Canada, we may end up with a situation where a host of individuals and corporations, rather than paying the money owed in Canada, will move the money offshore and avoid paying taxes.

Last year the Conference Board of Canada — a very well respected think tank — published a report indicating the tax gap, the difference between what the government is collecting and what they should be collecting could be up to $48 billion. They do not know the amount. We don’t know the amount. More importantly, the revenue agency does not know the amount because of this lack of transparency on beneficial ownership and who owns what.

We’re now being asked to approve companies in this very important area that we’re voting on. Billions of dollars seem to be at stake when you look at the value of these companies, and we don’t know where the money is going or who is behind it. In my opinion, the fact that they’re from well-known tax havens is highly suspicious but is not proof. This will give our officials the information they need to do the job we all want them to do. We don’t want criminal organizations coming in the back door when we will not let them in the front door, which is a major part of the bill, to remove the criminal element from marijuana sales and distribution in Canada.

I congratulate the mover of the amendment and I’ll be supporting it.

The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Downe, will you take a question?

Senator Downe: Of course.

Senator Woo: Senator Downe, you’ve worked on this issue much longer than I have and I know you know the subject much more intimately.

Would I be right in asserting that you would like to see beneficial ownership information and clarity on the tax gap across the entire Canadian economy rather than just for one industry, because presumably the use of tax havens and the use of obscure structures to hide beneficial ownership extends well beyond the cannabis industry?

Senator Downe: Absolutely. The problem, of course, is the Canadian government, for whatever reason, and it’s a mystery, refuses to adopt the rules that other countries are moving to quickly. There is no indication that they’re prepared to move in the short or long term. There are groups meeting. There are discussions being held. Federal-provincial meetings are being convened. Correcting this problem is not a matter of reinventing the wheel; it’s simply looking at what other countries are doing and what is adaptable to Canada.

As I said, it is a mystery to me. I have looked at these files extensively over the years, and the Canadian government has every excuse possible.

On the tax gap, for example, I won’t repeat, but everybody knows there is a host of countries around the world that do it. Most of the G8  countries, the OECD countries — Turkey, Switzerland, U.K., the list goes on — even the State of California plus the American government have been doing it for years for a host of reasons — good financial planning reasons — to help their countries collect the revenue required to run their health care, their education and all the infrastructure we take for granted when people pay their fair share of taxes.

The Canadian government resisted that from day one. The Parliamentary Budget Officer threatened to take them to court. We had meetings three or four years ago where they had a legal opinion and he had a legal opinion. They only reluctantly agreed to provide him with the information to measure the tax gap after he threatened to take them to court, and then they coughed it up.

I say that simply as an illustration of the government — the Stanley Cup playoffs are on now — ragging the puck, if you will, not taking any initiative or giving any leadership on this file whatsoever at the expense of Canadians.

If the Conference Board is right in their figures that the tax gap could be up to $48 billion, think of that would mean for Canada. We would have no deficit. We would have opportunity to lower taxes and fund additional programs even if half the money was collected. The country would be in far better shape.

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The thing that always annoyed me more than anything is people complain about taxes, but we all understand the collective good of paying taxes. We have a health care system that is outstanding. There are complaints about it, but when you look around the world, who would not want our health care system? We have an educational system and infrastructure. Our problems, compared to the rest of the world, are minor. But it takes a lot of money to keep the social harmony going. It takes a lot of money to keep the infrastructure in place.

For the people who avoid paying taxes in Canada, I always ask: If they or a member of their family becomes ill, do you think they’re taking the health care in Panama or in the Bahamas, or are they returning to Canada to take advantage of our health care system? But they don’t want to pay the taxes to pay for that. Is that fair in any way?

Senator Joyal again hit the point of how much revenue will we lose? We don’t know who owns these companies and we don’t know who is behind them, but they use all the tricks in the book to avoid taxes, as companies and individuals have done in the past. Furthermore, our revenue agency and our law enforcement don’t have the tools to go after them because they don’t know who is behind them. What would the cost to the nation be?

A second and equally valid point is we’re trying to keep the criminal element out of marijuana distribution, yet we don’t know if they’re actually in it or not.

This amendment will actually be very good for a host of other areas in the Canadian economy as well. However, since we’re dealing with this bill today, it suits the purpose of what we have before us, which is transparency and openness. Let the sun shine in, if you will, where there is no information available about who these people are from the Cayman Islands or from other tax havens.

When I read the list a few months ago, it struck me what countries these people are from. It’s a massive collection of tax havens. It’s highly suspicious, but again we have no proof. This will help us find out what is really going on. It may be innocent as the day is long. It may not be. Let’s find out.