That's a lot of pressure. But one thing I would say is that the returns are taxable, so.... Anyway, that was a joke.
As we talked about corporate tax rates going down and moving us in the right direction, we know that reducing taxes, corporate and personal, move us in the direction towards reducing the size.
But let me speak to the legitimate use of these offshore centres. I'm going to give you a few numbers. We have about $500 billion in the global economy; about 20% goes through offshore centres.
Let's say there's $100 billion. Let me just put some rough numbers to this. If I have $100 billion going through offshore centres...and suppose the return, the income generated, is 8%. So there's $8 billion a year generated in income from those investments we have in those offshore centres.
Let me throw a 40% tax rate on there. So I have $100 billion in offshore centres, I have an 8% return, so $8 billion in revenue, and I have a 40% tax rate. Many people believe that if we could tax all of that income that's generated in offshore centres, that would be about $3.2 billion. That's the sort of number I've seen thrown around by some people. That's sort of an upper bound. If the Canadian government were to limit the ability of Canadians to use those offshore jurisdictions, many people I've talked to think Canadian tax revenue would go up by about $3.2 billion. I argue it would go down. I argue it would go down because the income generated would fall because Canadian companies would not be as productive and competitive.
Secondly, many Canadian companies would actually leave Canada—