Adam Chambers is excited about the new feather in his political cap.
The Simcoe North MP was named Wednesday to party leader Pierre Poilievre's shadow cabinet, becoming shadow minister of national revenue.
“It’s exciting to be honoured to have the opportunity to be part of the team,” Chambers said.
As the official opposition leader, Poilievre named 51 critics and 20 associate critics to his shadow cabinet a little more than a month after being elected Conservative Party of Canada leader.
Chambers, who has experience with finance in the private sector and also served as adviser to former finance minister Jim Flaherty, previously served as the party’s deputy shadow minister for finance and middle-class prosperity under former leader Erin O’Toole.
Chambers says the new role is a perfect fit, given his work on the money laundering and tax evasion files that have obvious Canada Revenue Agency implications.
“These are things I’m already talking about,” Chambers noted. “It’s also nice to remain part of the finance committee. I will have the opportunity to hold the government accountable on some of these files and be a spokesperson on that particular issue (in the House of Commons).”
Just this past July, Chambers introduced a private members’ bill in the House of Commons to toughen Canada’s stance on white-collar criminals and so-called 'snow-washing,' a term coined to refer to money laundering in Canada.
Chambers said money laundering is out of control in the country and needs to be addressed as quickly as possible by adding greater penalties and better safeguards to stop it from happening in the first place.
“Canada is a money-laundering paradise,” said Chambers. “Canada is one of the primary destinations in the world for global criminals to clean their money. We are an outlier.”
According to the local MP's research into the issue, more than $100 billion is moved through Canada every year.
And tax evasion remains a very real problem in Canada as well, according to Chambers who pointed to the Canadians for Tax Fairness's estimation that up to $30 billion in business taxes went unpaid just last year.
“These are the kinds of things we want to focus on,” Chambers said, noting that the government’s failure to collect this kind of money affects regular taxpayers in the long run.
“Why should those who follow the law pay more? There’s a fairness element to this.”
Chambers said he’s also hoping the government keeps working to make long passport waiting periods a thing of the past.
For the past six months, he said that’s been the number one issue being handled at his constituency offices since more people are travelling again.
Chambers is also interested in seeing how well the government’s new passport service announced Tuesday will work. Under that plan, anyone can get a passport in 10 days without an appointment by visiting the Barrie office.
“It's a Catch-22. If you’re getting 100,000 (applications a week) and you can only process 60,000 to 70,000, you’re going to have a backlog,” Chambers said, noting the previous wait times of about three weeks are now sometimes stretching into five months.
“Travelling is already stressful enough.”
