Thank you.
I certainly appreciate the comments from my colleagues across the way. Ms. McLeod indicated that it's important to find a balance, and I think this is exactly the point I was actually making a while ago. It was about finding a balance on whether you should be removing investigators that are actually making a difference.
Let's just look. In 2008-2009 there was $7.4 billion that was actually recovered. I think this is an excellent return for the investment we have in having investigators there. So it's evident that investigations so far indicate that.
As you've mentioned as well, the loss of taxes to Canada is extremely substantial. That's what you've indicated, that you can only estimate that it's actually extremely substantial. Based on the amount of money that these investigators did find in 2008-2009, it's very evident. At the end of the day, it's really the honest taxpayers who are being shortchanged.
This loss of revenue impacts on the government's ability to provide public services such as health care, education, and job creation. For every dollar not collected, it actually means a dollar that someone else has to pay or a dollar that has to come out of the programming of the public services.
In the United States, they actually publish where the revenues are lost each year. They've indicated at one point that there was $100 billion in revenues lost, and this is to tax havens. So do you think this is a good practice, an effective way to ensure that government is actually transparent?