Adam Chambers

S-217, An Act to amend the Canada Revenue Agency Act (reporting on unpaid income tax) moved that Bill, be read the first time. He said: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to sponsor this bill in this chamber. I would like to congratulate Senator Downe on his third time sending this bill, which deals with increased transparency at the CRA, into this chamber. The names of those who are [more]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate everyone's patience while we had an ability to have discussions among the parties. I appreciate our officials being back with us again today, and also the thorough suggestions and answers they provided at our last meeting. Mr. Chair, I believe I am in a position to withdraw the subamendment that I had jumped the gun on making and turn the floor, with your [more]

Perhaps I'll just confirm. I think I know the answer. This does not change any substance of the bill, as far as you're aware. Is that correct?

Thank you very much. On the wonderful advice of our officials, I think this is acceptable.

I guess the final question would be that if a decision is made to redact, would the reasons for that redaction be made available—or could the reasons be made available—to parliamentarians, and what would be the mechanism to make that information available?

I appreciate trying to get some clarification. I thank the chair for his helpful suggestion, as well as my colleague from the Bloc, who I think is trying to figure out a way to make this palatable. From my perspective, I think it's a reasonable suggestion. If that were formally moved as a subamendment, I think that would be welcome.

I'm not moving a subamendment. This is regarding proposed subsection (3) where it says: Despite subsection (2), the President of the Treasury Board may exclude from the registry any information To me, “exclude” is like “delete”. As Mr. Lemire mentioned, if the word “exclude” was “redact”, that implies to me that information is still in the registry. It is blacked out, but there is, in theory, [more]

Okay. That is very helpful. If there is a redaction made, would other information appear on the registry? Would the information proposed to be redacted be redacted, or would there be no entry at all? Would there be a line item that is blank on the name, but the amount and the act under which the debt was waived, forgiven, remitted or written off would appear?

In theory, to the best of your knowledge, a parliamentary committee could still compel that information even if a redaction has been made. Is that correct?

I guess the question would be how you would envision parliamentarians or the public knowing that a redaction has been made.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the perspective as well. I think this is a first for the committee, so I appreciate your going slowly. I welcome the suggestions from the government, of course, but just to give some additional context, the $1-million threshold was intended to be easy to communicate. That was number one. Number two was to not produce a list that was thousands of names long, but [more]