Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, honourable members.

As the chair mentioned, my name is Edgar Lopez‑Asselin, and I am the coordinator of the Échec aux paradis fiscaux collective. Joining me today is my colleague Philippe Hurteau, who is in charge of research at one of our member organizations. He is also on the collective's coordination committee.

We are here today representing the Échec aux paradis fiscaux collective, a coalition of union and community organizations in Quebec. Our mandate is to foster public debate on the use of tax havens, and to develop and support solutions to shut them down. Our collective has some 20 members, representing a total of 1.7 million people across Quebec.

I'd like to start with a few figures that illustrate the extent of tax avoidance in Canada. According to the Canada Revenue Agency's overall federal tax gap report, released in June 2022, the net tax gap for 2018 is between $18.1 billion and $23.4 billion Canadian. That same report indicates that reporting non-compliance by large corporations alone—and that obviously includes big multinationals—accounts for 70% of the corporate income tax gap.

Our collective looks at the problem from a rather unique perspective. We apply a citizen-centred democratic lens to the fight for tax fairness. To address a problem all too often seen as the exclusive domain of experts, we take an approach built specifically on policy. Our approach can be summed up in three keywords.

First, in order to crack down on tax havens, we need to expose them. That means shining a light on mechanisms that make it possible to engage in tax avoidance.

Second, we need to penalize—use the means available through the criminal justice system to deter those who engage in tax evasion.

Third and finally, we need to collect, in other words, recover the money that tax avoidance represents and use it to fund public services and social programs.

Those three keywords are reflected in a series of recommendations—13, to be exact—that appear in the brief we submitted for the pre-budget consultations in advance of the 2024 federal budget.

I do want to point out that the Parliament of Canada and the Standing Committee on Finance have made progress in a number of areas related to our recommendations. The creation of a Canadian beneficial ownership registry, provided for in Bill C‑42, and the modernization of the much-discussed general anti-avoidance rule represent two of those areas. Those are both measures that our collective has long supported. The bills have yet to be passed, of course, with Parliament still needing to examine an area. Nevertheless, when it comes to cracking down on tax havens in Canada, we see it as a huge step forward that the discussion has reached this stage.

I'll wrap up this short presentation with a few of our collective's priorities for the coming year. I'm referring to two things in particular, the recent legislative consultations and the UN's role in international tax co‑operation.

As far as the recent legislative consultations are concerned, the collective worries about the democratic deficit associated with the recent legislative consultations on tax policy, specifically, consultations on the reform and modernization of Canada's transfer pricing rules and on the implementation of the global minimum tax.

By paving the way for dialogue on a wide range of issues in this area, the federal government has gotten the public used to a more democratic approach. Unfortunately, the recent consultation process largely limited the opportunity for dialogue, focusing on draft legislation informed by OECD discussions instead of a genuine dialogue with civil society stakeholders. However, well-known solutions to address both of those issues already exist and are being discussed at the international level. We feel the Canadian public should be able to debate the issues in an open and democratic forum.

Lastly, with respect to the UN's role in international tax co‑operation, we urge Canada's elected representatives to pay close attention to efforts aimed at strengthening the UN's role in this arena. For its part, the OECD has done a significant amount of work to clean up tax relationships between states, through the base erosion and profit shifting project and the two-pillar solution.

Nevertheless, these efforts have not led to the reforms civil society wants to see. In our view, the talks regarding the UN's taxation initiative are an opportunity to deliver the reforms initiated under the auspices of the OECD. It is our hope that Canada will duly consider the possibilities this renewed momentum opens up.

Thank you.

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