Thank you to the officials for being here. It's much appreciated.
Mr. Castonguay, you said that generally the treaties that are before us are patterned after the OECD model tax convention.
On May 29 in the Guardian, the current Secretary-General of the OECD, Mr. Ángel Gurría, said that rewriting these international tax rules has become one of the greatest challenges for finance ministers of our time. He was specifically quoted as having said the following, which I'd like your comments on:
The [international tax] rules which we have built since the 1920s were meant to avoid double taxation...the problem is we've moved from double taxation to double non-taxation.
Now we don't tax anybody because we've built a set of codes and regulations and law…and culture…where we facilitate the fact that co-operations, through transfer pricing practises, put their profits in low-tax jurisdictions and therefore do not pay what would be considered to be their fair share.
So countries are moving from double taxation treaties like this to double non-taxation treaties, according to the secretary-general.
What would your reaction be to that comment?