Today, as Professor Alain Deneault of the University of Moncton puts it, “The government has legalized [tax haven] use.” What was once covert has become routine. Decades of policy choices have normalized profit-shifting, leaving corporations free to route income to low-tax jurisdictions and bring it back to Canada at a steep discount, and with no fear of being challenged by the CRA.
This practice is widespread. More than three quarters of companies listed on the S&P/TSX 60 index have at least one subsidiary located in a tax haven. By exploiting the gap between Canada’s tax rates and those of their subsidiaries abroad, these firms avoided an estimated $7 billion in Canadian taxes in 2024 alone
A 2021 poll found that 92 per cent of Canadians support making it harder for corporations to exploit tax havens. This is a political no-brainer. Yet Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, was formerly chair of Brookfield Asset Management, part of the Brookfield Corporation, a behemoth which maintains at least 44 subsidiaries in tax havens around the world. Despite persistent questioning on the campaign trail, Carney refused to commit to any additional measures to curb their use.
$15 billion lost for an entire country is a crisis… Yet there are individuals who have hoarded hundreds of billions of dollars. Some will be trillionaires.
You can tax corporations and the rich, but they will always find a way to screw everyone else over.
Or, we can cap wealth and stop incentivizing wealth hoarding. Give them no reason or means to do it.
There is massive imbalance of wealth, and not addressing that means we’re all just wasting opportunities.
Completely agree about the imbalance being a massive problem, and agree that taxing is likely to wind up missing these people, I don’t see a clear way to cap wealth that doesn’t have the same result.
If we could do that, I don’t see a way with our current system that this would ever happen. Even if we put the NDP in power I’m suspicious that some of them would cave under wealth pressure.
Sorry to be a bummer
I think this is a very good example of why we cannot depend on reform. This system will never work in our interests because it is not designed to. NDP might help a bit in terms of social welfare programs that can enable more time to people who want to participate in mutual aid, but the amount of effort it’d take to get them a federal majority would be enormous and would not resolve the issue of MP and Senator capital interests.
We can’t punish the economic engines and job creators! We have to think of the economy and the share holders!
Too bad the leadership of the red and blue teams are bought and owned by these same rich corporations and assholes.
Carney ain’t doing 💩 about this problem, and if you think PP would, 🤣😝🤣
