Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning and welcome to all of our witnesses. Thank you for being here.
I'm the finance critic of the official opposition, the New Democratic Party. We have been pushing to get this study of tax evasion and tax havens for some time, because we're committed to addressing the integrity of our tax system and ensuring that we are dealing with taxes that are not properly being collected by our country.
Obviously we recognize that there are legitimate reasons for investing in foreign countries. Mr. Hejazi and Ambassador Delgado Murillo, you both made the case for that, and we appreciate it. But I guess I come from the perspective that if you don't measure it, it's difficult to tax it, and we know that a quarter of all Canadian foreign direct investment is going to tax havens, or countries that provide tax havens.
In 2011 alone, Canadians invested $53.3 billion in Barbados, $25.8 billion the Cayman Islands, and $23 billion in Ireland, just as some examples, and banking and financial services now account for 51% of Canada's total direct investment offshore. We've heard from both the Department of Finance officials and the Canada Revenue Agency that they do not measure the international tax gap, unlike the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.
My question is both to Professor Collier and to Mr. Saint-Amans. Should Canada be measuring the tax gap in order to help us address the issue of tax evasion and tax havens, and tax this revenue as effectively as possible?