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Bill 53 – Corporate Statutes Amendment Act (Third Reading)

Ms Blakeman:

Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker. I was hoping that there would have been answers back from the sponsoring member. The questions that I’d raised in Committee of the Whole fit into two sort of categories. One was around making the set-up for small businesses the same for Albertan companies as they are for B.C. companies. In other words, it was about TILMA. It was my understanding that this was supposed to harmonize – that’s the word I’m looking for – and this was one of the areas that was supposed to be adjusted. It’s being adjusted, but it’s not being adjusted to harmonize with TILMA. I didn’t get an answer about why the adjustments were being made in this bill, but they weren’t being made so that they harmonized with B.C. What was the thought process behind that?

The second piece was sort of a part A and a part B, which was around there being no allowable use of holding companies, which is something that’s pretty common for small businesses. Without that, they have to do a sort of little jig every couple of years to stay in adherence. I was curious about why that didn’t happen. Then there’s the use of family trusts. It’s very limited in this bill. My question was: why wasn’t it more? Indeed, a number of issues have been raised by an accountant that had approached me with some very specific questions. Then the last part was: what was the government expecting from the forgone revenue? That is somewhat linked to the question of my colleague who spoke previously. You know, forgone revenue is revenue that you give up when you put in something like an incentive.

Tax incentives – let’s face it – are a way that government can drive change. An incentive will cause people to want to do something. A disincentive will cause people to not want to do something. When you give up what would have been revenue into the general coffers by offering a tax incentive or disincentive, but in most cases an incentive, it means there’s less money coming into the coffers. You have to have a way of measuring the effectiveness of that program, so you need to be able to say: “Okay. We’ve got X number of dollars not coming into the coffers. That’s okay because the difference in that money we expect is going to get us X, Y, and Z.”

We have not had anything put in front of us that would be able to justify that, and that’s what I was looking for. Surely, a member of the government would not be bringing forward a bill without having considered that. You start to say: “Well, then, why are you not bringing it forward? You must have considered it. Why didn’t you bring it forward? Why can’t you answer my questions?”

I didn’t start out having huge problems with this bill, but the more information that’s being not delivered, the more problems I have with it. I think at one point there was probably an agreement that there would have been support for it, but that’s kind of ebbing away now, both because it didn’t do what it purported to do and it also fails to be able to set before me as a legislator some measurable targets to be able to say: this is what we expect to gain by having this bill in place. You know, if we’re going to forgo, as my colleague said, a million dollars worth of tax revenue – other people say it’s more. Fine. Whatever. Whichever it is, what are we getting for that? What do the people of Alberta get for the fact that they weren’t able to collect that money into the general coffers and use it in another way. Okay. Then what are they getting? What are we getting for that forgone revenue?

It’s the same as paying it out. Not taking it in is the same as paying it out, and when we pay it out, we have performance measurements about what benefit the taxpayer gets for that money that’s paid out. If you don’t bring the money in deliberately as a policy, you should be able to measure that as well. This is not new. This is a fairly accepted accounting practice, so why can’t I get that information on this bill? That’s all I was looking for, and I didn’t get it.

Thank you.