Another IMPORTANT submission on Omnibus Bill C-31 (which allows implementation in Canada of the FATCA IGA) – Senate Committee on National Finance

109 thoughts on “Another IMPORTANT submission on Omnibus Bill C-31 (which allows implementation in Canada of the FATCA IGA) – Senate Committee on National Finance”

1. Some comments on this thread have gone missing so I’ll try to repost that I was finally able to watch today’s Senate meeting here:
   http://hocca.wmod.llnwd.net/a4502/e2/20140429142559_9411_1103.wmv

   The interesting part begins about 1:50:00. The committee will meet again tomorrow (Apr 30) at 1:45 PM (Ottawa time) to continue hearing testimony regarding Part 5. Please Brockers — watch this if you can. The Senators mentioned getting e-mails and tried to ferret out information about privacy concerns. Sen. Callbeck also asked if the IGA was Charter compliant and Brian Ernewein essentially said they looked into this and concluded there was no problem with the charter. It appears as though the Office of Privacy Commissioner was informed about the IGA but didn’t respond so the assumption was taken that OPC had no concerns. We’ve got to get our side heard.

2. Senator Catherine Callbeck, PEI, (L) start at about 2:02:40, re Challenge, etc. Thanks, Em.

3. @ calgary411
   I guess we knew this would be misrepresented by Fin. Can. — including Kevin Shoom who looks a tad uncomfortable when he testifies. Brian Ernewein on the other hand looks completely comfortable with his role in all this. Ted Cook is a typical policy wonk.

4. …Everyone concerned has been given their reading homework for tonight for continuing discussion tomorrow. Will be listening when we can tomorrow.

5. I posted the following over on the Shoom Senate thread earlier today, but this thread seems to be getting more attention, so I’m posting it again here.

   I hope people are willing to send their submissions to the Senate on to Finance Canada to the Finance Committee of the House of Commons.

   My request for copies of the submissions that were sent to Finance Canada will probably not be filled until after the Act is passed. On Sunday, I sent Anne Frank’s proposed amendment to the Clerk of the Finance Committee (as suggested by Nathan Cullen).

   I also sent copies of my submissions of March 2014 and November 2012, Christians-Cockfield and Richardson-Kish submissions and Hogg letter. I copied all members of the Finance Committee on that.

   Here is the response I received from the Clerk:

   Dear Ms. Swanson

   In the name of the Standing Finance Committee, I acknowledge receiving your comments and documents concerning Bill C-31.
   The content of your email will be translated and distributed to the members.

   However, the documents attached to the email won’t be translated and distributed for two reasons: first, the Finance Committee asked that people making their views known to the Committee do it in a document of a maximum of 5 pages, and these documents are not sent to the Committee, but cc to the members for their attention.

   I see that you have already shared these documents with the Finance Committee members directly. Members can have these documents translated if they want to access them in French.

   Kind regards,
   Christine Lafrance
   Greffière du Comité | Clerk of the Committee

   I wrote back and asked where Finance Committee asked for submissions. I also expressed my disappointment Finance Committee will not review the submissions made to Finance canada and shared my dismay they won’t review won’t review the superb submissions from Christians-Cockfield or Richardson-Kish because they are more than five pages. I also pointed out both of my submissions and Peter Hogg’s letter are all under five pages.

   So, if Finance Canada won’t give the members of the Finance Committee your submissions, why don’t you give them to the Finance Committee yourself?

   You should send your submission to the Clerk of the Finance Committee with copies to the members of the Committee. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Send them your original submission to Finance Canada or your submission to the Senate. If that was over five pages, send a shortened version.

   Here is the Clerk’s e-mail address:

   FINA@parl.gc.ca

   Here are e-mail addresses for members of the Finance Committee

   murray.rankin.a1@parl.gc.ca
   nathan.cullen@parl.gc.ca
   scott.brison@parl.gc.ca
   james.rajotte@parl.gc.ca
   shelly.glover@parl.gc.ca
   mark.adler@parl.gc.ca
   cathy.mcleod@parl.gc.ca
   guy.caron@parl.gc.ca
   randy.hobak@parl.gc.ca
   randy.hoback@parl.gc.ca
   raymond.cote@parl.gc.ca
   brian.jean@parl.gc.ca
   dave.vankesteren@parl.gc.ca

   Keep them under five pages or they won’t be accepted!

6. @ calgary411
   I hope the senators go home and read our e-mails tonight. They’ll be more comprehensible than the pages and pages of IGA implementation clauses in Bill C-31. I’ve got my calendar marked for 3:45 PM (Alberta time) but this time if the live feed doesn’t work properly I’ll be patient and wait for the archive.

7. @ Blaze
   Oh my, mine just made it under the wire at roughly 4.5 pages in pdf form. I didn’t know there was a limit. I’m getting confused now because I sent my senate submission to a different e-mail address (nffn@sen.parl.gc.ca) and to the senators on that committee individually. It was a variation of what I had already sent to the Dept. of Finance in February. So now we need to send our submissions to the Finance Committee (FINA@parl.gc.ca) and its member MPs because they won’t be getting our Dept. of Finance submissions. Is that right? How soon?

8. I have known the name Brian Ernewein but have never seen his face until today. Wow he looks a lot like Dick Harvey. I didn’t think we had any like Dick Harvey in Canada.

9. @ Tim
   Sometimes Dicks have different first names.

10. I “borrowed” from Blaze and George for my cover email and received the following response:

    Thank you for your submission, Ms. Tapanila.

    Your brief will be sent for translation and then distributed to the Members.

    Thank you,
    Chantal Gilliland
    Committee Assistant | Adjointe de comité
    Standing Committee on Finance | Comité permanent des finances
    Committees and Legislative Services Directorate | Direction des comités et services législatifs
    House of Commons | Chambre des communes
    131 Queen Street, 6th Floor |131, rue Queen, 6e étage
    Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6
    Tél. 613-996-1532
    Fax | Télécopieur 613-947-3089
    chantal.gilliland@parl.gc.ca

    From: carol tapanila
    Sent: April 29, 2014 2:54 PM
    To: ~Finance/Finances; Rankin, Murray – Assistant 1; Cullen, Nathan – M.P.; Brison, Scott – M.P.; Rajotte, James – M.P.; Glover, Shelly – M.P.; Adler, Mark – M.P.; McLeod, Cathy – M.P.; Caron, Guy – M.P.; randy.hobak@parl.gc.ca; Côté, Raymond – Député; Fort McMurray—Athabasca; Van Kesteren, Dave – M.P.
    Subject: Submission re U.S. FATCA IGA Implementation by Omnibus Bill C-31
    Importance: High

    Honourable Members of the Finance Committee,

    Attached is my submission. I hope that each of you will thoroughly read and consider my and other submissions you receive on this important issue.

    I understand that your rules (which I had not read anywhere) say submissions of more than five pages are not permissible. As I want this to get to you as soon as possible, I have not pared down what I wanted to submit for your perusal so am sending individually to each member of the Finance Committee. I hope my submission will not be discarded.

    I am appalled that this rule would eliminate the research and public submissions of John Richardson, Dr. Stephen Kish and Professors Cockfield and Christians. How can this be?

    This all goes back to can you treat a Canadian Citizen born in Toronto differently than a Canadian Citizen born in Syracuse? Neither Canadian Citizen had a “choice” in where they were born. I hope someone can bring up international law and ask ‘what is the the status of a Canadian Citizen in Canada who has lingering/clinging/unwanted nationality of a foreign power?’. This is entangled with foreign law imposed by a foreign power.

    Sincerely,

    Not too professional but then, I’m not a professional.

11. @Em, Others: Exactly! Finance Canada has told me our submissions will not be provided to the Finance Committee of Parliament. Please note, there was no requirement to keep the original submissions under five page. That seems to be a new requirement hidden wherever it was they hid the request for submissions for C31.

    I have alerted Brison, Rankin and Cullen that there are over 400 pages of submissions to Finance Canada that they won’t provide to me until probably after the Act is passed. They are also not planning to share them with the Finance Committee of the House of Commons. However, Murray Rankin’s Assistant is trying to get them now that I made her aware there were submissions.

    Hwowever, my suggestion is that people send their original submissions directly to the Finance Committee members so the Cons can’t say we didn’t tell them what the issues are.

    Send them soon! They are meeting on the FATCA implementation Act May 13 and 14, but it would be better if they have them before that. The Senate certainly seems to be aware of what we sent. MPs should have at least the same information.

    Does anyone else get the sense they are just trying to wear us out and make this so complicated we will all just give up and go away. That is not going to happen!

    So Brian E thinks FATCA IGA complies with the Charter, does he. Last time I checked, the Cons are not exactly hitting it out of the park on constitutional issues at the Supreme Court. In fact, they are not even hitting in the park. They are striking out on all the cases they were convinced they would win–including sex trade workers, appointment of Supreme Court judges and Senate reform.

12. I had a return email from Senator Cicchini saying they couldn’t open my PDF file attachment and to send it in the body of my email. I sent all of them that way and got only one complaint. Go figure…the others probably just either didn’t bother to tell me or it worked fine, who knows. Just resubmitted to finance as well.

13. Thanks Blaze and calgary411. I’ll get my subs and cc’s and pdfs off tomorrow. I’m tired today but I’ll get another bolus of energy tomorrow to send out more e-mails. Not giving up. Not going away.

14. @ Charl
    I did the same (brief cover letter with attached pdf of my senate submission) and got this from Loren Cicchini (Sen. Buth’s assistant):
    “On behalf of Senator JoAnne Buth, thank you for your e-mail and be assured that it will be brought to her attention.
    There should have been no problem with your pdf.

15. Why not error on the side of caution and put your submission in the body of your email and as an attachment?

    I’m absolutely inspired by everyone’s determination in getting his before our lawmakers. Harper cannot be allowed to slip this one by. As planned, mine was a couple of well chosen quotes from two people close to the IGA negotiations, Minister Flaherty and CBA president Terry Campbell. They did my work for me.

16. Please note a correction to one of the Finance Committee member’s e-mail addresses that Blaze provided. It should be:
    randy.hoback@parl.gc.ca
    I got a failed delivery with “hobak” so I sent MP Hoback a separate e-mail after I cc’d all the members with my FINA submission.

17. @Em

    It would be great if you would post a link to the Senate hearing transcript if one is available

    To site administrators- I was having difficulty posting here last night as well. I don’t if it’s a technical problem
    or someone is interfering (paranoia!)

18. @EM or others – I am utterly unable to make the link to yesterday’s committee hearing work. I keep getting a Windows Media Player error: “Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file.” It is a .wmv file (windows designed, in other words). I WAS able to play it live until it froze on me (just when the fun was beginning). I’ve tried the usual (rebooting) without success. If anyone has any bright ideas, let me know. Don’t want to get frozen out again at 1:45.

19. Thanks Em for that link, I otherwise didn’t know how to access video of the Senate Committee. For those having problems with the link, Safari worked better than Firefox.

    I am ready to watch today’s session too and have sent my submission in to the contact noted here.

20. Try this link of yesterday:

    http://hocca.wmod.llnwd.net/a4502/e2/20140429142559_9411_1103.wmv

21. @Anne Frank

    I can’t get it to work either. My tech support (husband) tried, and couldn’t either…says its because I have a Mac. I’m hoping some transcripts will be released.

22. badger,

    Yours should also go to the individual members of today’s committee, National Revenue, as well as the Finance Committee and all of its members per Blaze’s previous comments:
    https://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2014/04/22/another-important-submission-this-one-to-the-senate-committee-on-banking-trade-and-commerce-on-omnibus-bill-c-31-which-allows-implementation-in-canada-of-the-fatca-iga/comment-page-2/#comment-1589655
    and
    https://isaacbrocksociety.ca/2014/04/25/kevin-shoom-testifies-before-senate-national-finance-committee-on-tuesday-on-fatca-bankers-come-wednesday/comment-page-1/#comment-1552125

    Copy and paste into your email:

    National Revenue Committee (continuing meeting today):
    nffn@sen.parl.gc.ca; joseph.day@sen.parl.gc.ca; joanne.buth@sen.parl.gc.ca; nicole.eaton@sen.parl.gc.ca; percy.mockler@sen.parl.gc.ca; larry.smith@sen.parl.gc.ca; catherine.callbeck@sen.parl.gc.ca; irving.gerstein@sen.parl.gc.ca; asha.seth@sen.parl.gc.ca; diane.bellemare@sen.parl.gc.ca; maria.chaput@sen.parl.gc.ca; celine.hervieux-payette@sen.parl.gc.ca

    Finance Committee: FINA@parl.gc.ca; murray.rankin.a1@parl.gc.ca; nathan.cullen@parl.gc.ca; scott.brison@parl.gc.ca; james.rajotte@parl.gc.ca; shelly.glover@parl.gc.ca; mark.adler@parl.gc.ca; cathy.mcleod@parl.gc.ca; guy.caron@parl.gc.ca; randy.hoback@parl.gc.ca; raymond.cote@parl.gc.ca; brian.jean@parl.gc.ca; dave.vankesteren@parl.gc.ca

23. Thank you @calgary, having them all listed is very helpful.

24. @ Hazy
    I got the transcript today but it is in a Pages file so I can’t post it here. Here’s what the e-mail that came with the transcript said:

    Please find enclosed the unrevised transcripts for the meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance which were held on Tuesday, April 29, 2014 at 2:30 a.m., first meeting on the subject-matter of Bill C-31.
    Please note that the transcripts are unedited verbatim of proceedings, in the original spoken language. The fully translated and edited copy of the evidence is posted on the Committee’s site at http://senate-senat.ca/NFFN.asp (under “Committee Proceedings”) within a few weeks of meetings.
    If you wish to cite an unrevised transcript, please obtain beforehand the consent of the person who spoke.
    If you would like to unsubscribe to future transcripts, please reply to this e-mail with “REMOVE” as your subject.
    Thank you.

    That means I still don’t know what the French portions of the meeting were about and obviously it will be a few weeks until we can find the edited version online. About all I can do is forward the Pages file attachment to someone like calgary411 who could pass it on to you. I don’t think that would be “citing” would it? Otherwise, anyone can request the transcript from Jodi Turner (committee clerk) at nffn@sen.parl.gc.ca. To identify which meeting I included:

    Title: NFFN Meeting No. 34
    Location: Room 160-S, Centre Block
    Event Date: Tuesday, Apr 29, 2014
    Description: Meeting No. 34 Senate Committee on National Finance

    @ Anne Frank and bubblebustin
    That link is working today for me on our Mac — on both Camino and Safari. I don’t how the internets work and sometimes my tech support husband (trained to maintain Macs) is baffled too.

25. @ calgary411
    Thanks for including the correction for Randy Hoback’s e-mail. No need for someone else to get a failed delivery like I did, even though it was easily fixed with a separate e-mail. On the FINA cc list there will probably be a space needed before “nathan” and “cathy”. It’s really helpful to have the cc’s all set to copy and paste. It took me a bit of time to do that last night.