Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It is a pleasure to meet with the finance officials again. I would like to know whether they can describe the current efforts being made to reduce the opportunities for Canadians to use tax havens, which, for lack of a better term, I will call opaque jurisdictions. According to the OECD, the figure is in the neighbourhood of $6,000 billion, or $6 trillion, which, in proper French, would be “6 billions”. That can lead to confusion here, in Canada, because the English “billion” is not the same thing; the difference is a factor of 1,000, so it can be a bit complicated. The Tax Justice Network in the U.K. estimates that the amount of money being hidden in these opaque jurisdictions is more along the lines of $10,000 billion.
What are we doing in terms of strictly enforcing legislation? Do we need more resources? Should we do something on that front?