Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have a comment to begin with. First of all, welcome to all the witnesses. Bienvenue.
I have a comment about the recommendations that Monsieur Larin has made. I've noted, when I was reading them, that as a professor you've suggested study, study, review, review. Yet that, to me, is not going to be actionable to actually get to the source of the tax evasion and, frankly, hold them to account. We can do all the reviews and studies and whatnot we want, but in the end we have to go after those people who are responsible for these criminal activities. It's criminal. Tax evasion is criminal. I just wanted to make that comment. But I do appreciate your research, and I know you spent time at a conference recently in June 2010 with some other experts, and I would love to have more than seven minutes to talk about what those experts had to say as well.
I do have to look at what was said in committee already, and I'm going to focus more on some of what the other witnesses have said who are not interested in just studying the issue but are actually looking at some tangible steps forward. Dr. Hejazi was here and he talked about the fact that the Canadian government has a record for trying to do the right thing, which I appreciated hearing. But he had a quote, and I'd like to read that: Canadian tax revenue “would go down”. He's referring specifically to the fact that Canadians talk about using offshore jurisdictions legally, and if we removed the ability of Canadians to use offshore jurisdictions legally, Canadian tax revenue would go down. He also said, “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....”
I'm going to ask the banks if they agree. If legislation were changed to prevent Canadian companies and banking institutions from accessing offshore financial centres, would Canadian competitiveness suffer? And do you believe that some companies would actually leave? We do have examples of Canadian companies that come back because of our system, but if we eliminated the possibility of them actually using legally those offshore systems, what do you think would happen to those companies?