I could listen to this witness all day.
Thank you, Auditor General, for being here.
We all agree around this table, I assume, that this is a pretty complex area. I was rather interested in what you said to Mr. Brison, that you weren't aware of any study that had been done—that was, at least, made available to you when you were writing your reports. It seems to me you've done yeoman's service in producing that report, but in some respects what it does is look at one side of the equation, and what we need to see is the other side of the equation.
We had a witness here from the University of Toronto last week. He said there's a widely held view that the use of offshore financial centres is bad simply because of the tax advantages that come with their use. Then he went on to say that when these financial centres are used, in effect their use stimulates economic activity back in Canada—obviously in head office jobs but frequently in back office jobs.
Financial institutions here in Canada are a classic example, when they invest offshore but the head office work is done here and the back office work is frequently done here. That stimulates people who are technicians; it stimulates all kinds of clerical work, and things of that nature.
My question to you is, when you are preparing these reports, are you caveating your report, or are you familiar with, if you will, the macroeconomic picture of how these offshore financial centres actually stimulate economic activity in this country?