Agriculture committee  As I mentioned, this is a struggle between the suppliers and their customers—clients—over passing along costs. Certainly reducing the oligopolistic power the big groceries chains have is important. However, I don't think we should overly fetishize competition as the means of doing so, because grocers face suppliers who are often massive transnational corporations.

Agriculture committee  Our organization was founded to counter the vilification of taxation. We saw taxation as a vital social mechanism, and we wanted to be able to have adult conversations about it. We certainly never wanted to vilify taxation in and of itself, but I sometimes think about corporate profits as being like a tax that gets paid to private sector actors rather than to our public institutions.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. You need to start intervening in this redistributive struggle, with the winners being those who have always been the winners. The pandemic has just amplified the amount they're winning. We are going to see a massive worsening of inequality after a short-lived improvement in it, in part because we almost had something close to a guaranteed annual income that was supporting a huge swath of Canadians, and now that money is trickling upwards into the accounts of the already ultra-wealthy, in part because of huge increases in corporate profit margins that we ultimately all pay for.

Agriculture committee  Our analysis of where corporate profits are coming from, and where they're going, has looked at both the higher margins during 2021, and how much tax these companies were paying compared with how much you would expect them to pay, given the tax rates. We found that in 2021, there was about $30 billion in total corporate tax avoidance.

Agriculture committee  Other G7 countries use different tax mechanisms that we absolutely should be exploring. I can't speak in an informed way about this specific one, or that specific one. I'm pleased to hear there's an interest in what other countries are doing. Absolutely, we should be looking at what other countries are doing.

Agriculture committee  Thank you for inviting Canadians for Tax Fairness to comment on this important issue. Inflation is a complex phenomenon. Unfortunately, an overly simplistic claim about the cause of inflation being too much money chasing too few goods has driven an overly simplistic policy solution: higher interest rates.

Finance committee  This is an absolute need. It must be publicly accessible. Searchability is just the basic function of making something like that useful. This will enable not just government and government institutions, but all sorts of entities to make use of it. One thing that we and our partners really emphasize is that this will actually be a big benefit to business as well.

Finance committee  Absolutely. It points to a multitude of likely issues that are preventing the CRA from moving ahead with charges when the evidence, for those of us who aren't necessarily experts in all the legal ins and outs, it overwhelmingly seems that someone has done something that deserves to face the law.

Finance committee  I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm not aware of it. It got past us. We are definitely interested in seeing what has been suggested, and I'm always in favour of more information. More information is rarely a bad thing.

Finance committee  Yes, absolutely. While we're targeting foreign owners, it wouldn't be too difficult to appear to be a Canadian owner if you were buying this asset via a Canadian ownership vehicle.

Finance committee  That's absolutely a fair summary. Obviously, our organization's main concern is the role of anonymity and the role of these corporate registries in being able to avoid taxes. Knowing who holds beneficial ownership will empower the CRA to make sure that all of the taxes that should be paid to Canada are being paid.

Finance committee  If the government wanted to sanction oligarchs who are connected to the Putin regime, to make sure that they're not able to flee from their culpability and do business in Canada in a way that is ultimately serving the Russian war machine—for lack of a better term—it would be almost impossible.

Finance committee  It's because companies can own companies. You can have one company own another company in another country, which owns another company in another country. The ability to track where assets are actually owned, and who they're owned by, becomes incredibly opaque, because you're dealing with different legal systems in each of these countries.

Finance committee  Our organization was part of putting out a recent report on snow washing, which is the use of Canada's reputation as a country with a solid rule of law, that is financially stable and that has a relatively robust tax system. However, the anonymity that's available with business registries allows people to hide their money and flow it through Canada.

Finance committee  As an economist, my area of expertise is less about how this needs to be specifically designed. I actually respect your expertise in this area, Ms. Chatel, and Mr. Arnold is certainly an expert in this area. What I know, as an economist, is that GAAR is incredibly out of date because the global economy has become much more digital, and the ability to shift intangible assets makes it so much easier to book profits in the most tax-favourable centre.