Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
The useful information you provided us with shows that this is a somewhat daunting problem. Ms. Alepin, you said earlier that, despite all your knowledge in the field, even if you were the prime minister of this country, you would not be able to eliminate tax havens or tax evasion. That seems to be an admission of impotence. I hope that's not all there is to it. If that's the case, we might as well stick our heads in the sand and let things be.
I would like to ask you a question, but don't be afraid to give me a glimmer of hope that things will improve. Let's take the example of our five major Canadian banks that have 79 subsidiaries set up in tax havens. Since those countries have been identified as tax havens, this means that we are letting our Canadian chartered banks set up their branches in tax havens. They told us themselves that they saved their clients $1.3 billion in taxes by setting up shop in these tax havens. It doesn't make any sense. Words and actions don't match. We want to eliminate tax evasion, but we let our financial institutions get this whole system going.
Could you explain why our government allows chartered banks to operate this way, since this is official information?