Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for coming out today. I really appreciate it.
Mr. Purre, I was startled to learn that RBC does not work in tax havens, if I understood you properly.
I would therefore suggest you must not agree with the Canada Revenue Agency's definition, in a study called “Using Tax Havens to Avoid Paying Taxes”, where it defines as a tax haven a jurisdiction with one of the following: no tax, or very low rates of taxation; strict bank secrecy provisions; a lack of transparency in the operation of its tax system; and a lack of effective exchange of information with other countries.
You seem to say that if there were a TIEA, or some information exchange agreement, that would be sufficient, but how do you account for places like the British Virgin Islands where there are more than 400,000 corporations and no financial records or personal information records need to be kept whatsoever?
If your definition is predicated on the existence of an exchange agreement where there's no information being exchanged, it seems a little odd and contrary to at least what our government appears to take as a tax haven jurisdiction definition.