Auditor General blasts cuts to needed services while thousands of tax staff axed.
by Samantha Bayard
OTTAWA, April 30, 2013 (Straight Goods News) –Auditor General Michael Ferguson reported today that federal search-and-rescue (SAR) services are badly in need of money for staff and equipment at the same time as the government is losing millions due to staff cuts at the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Ferguson is concerned with sustainability of SAR due to staffing and training issues and continued use of older planes and insufficient amount of helicopters.
For the NDP's Jack Harris (St. John's), SAR and the lack of support for it has been a personal priority for years.
"I was particularly concerned when [Ferguson] suggested that the response times and the availability posture of search and rescue in Canada was determined by the equipment they had, not by the need itself. That’s something that I discovered myself a couple of years ago in a report. I’m glad to see that the Auditor General has verified that. But what that means is that we’re setting our response times and our capability based on the equipment we have, not based on the needs that exist. This, perhaps, explains why we’re looking at a two-hour response time after four o’clock in the day and on the weekends when 83 percent of the calls occur."
Search and Rescue response times based on equipment, not need — Jack Harris.
In the House, Liberal Gerry Byrne (Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte, Lib.) was equally outraged. "In 2009, Canada's vital search and rescue software was corrupted and faces repeated risk of failure after being critically damaged," he said. "The system can no longer support daily operations, according to the Auditor General, and is 'near the breaking point.' Free smart phone apps are now the tools that plan search and rescue missions. This was never revealed to the public until this morning."
NDP national revenue critic Murray Rankin says the staff cuts make it impossible for government to do its work. "They’re cutting 3,000 people from the CRA over three years, $250 million and we’re supposed to think they’re taking this seriously? We have a trillion dollar problem globally, trillions of dollars according to the experts, Tax Justice Network, Canadians for Fair Taxation, experts who testified before our committee," Rankin told reporters. "Their response, cutting the CRA, is simply deplorable."
Liberal public works critic John McCallum said, "The Auditor General’s report yesterday said the amount of tax still out there, not necessarily evasion, but tax that should be collected is 60 percent higher today than when this government came to office."
Uncollected taxes are costing Canada billions. John McCallum
Rankin says many corporations are evading taxes and see the cuts to tax collection services as an opportunity.
Cuts to CRA represent a profit centre to tax-evading corporations — Murray Rankin
"Every subsidiary, we’re saying, of a multinational company ought to disclose exactly where it’s paid taxes and how much so we can get a handle on the problem. That country by country reporting is one of the central recommendations that the NDP minority report has made. Other countries do it. We think it’s time for Canada too."
About Samantha Bayard
Samantha Bayard is a young journalist living and working out of Ottawa. She has been a contributor to the Straight Goods News family of websites since 2009. She is an avid cyclist and lover of animals.
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