I appreciate this. I had questions actually on what Mr. Keddy was saying because there was a mixing between the specific ones that Swiss Leaks pointed out and the general efforts of government for tax evasion, so I feel like what was offered back for the government not to approve this motion was a mixture.
I'm looking through the countries that have launched criminal investigations on this exact same file, which Canada has not, and they include Belgium, Britain, Switzerland, France, the U.S., Argentina and on down the list. So for a government that shows aggressiveness on this, they're not showing it. Voluntary is nice, but with this we were handed, as the British said in their case, 6,000 files ripe for investigation in Canada. Mr. Keddy is going to claim some number less, but there are apples and oranges being mixed in terms of how many of the Swiss Leaks accounts have actually been followed up and what is the actual amount the Canadian government has recuperated from this and mixing that with other voluntary disclosures on files that are not at all connected to the motion Monsieur Dionne Labelle put forward today.
I feel like the government is evading the question, not to use the term too much, as to our ability to get at this. For a government that is facing budget shortfalls, I would imagine that being aggressive on some of these things would be directly in the interests of making their promise to balance the books by going after some of the biggest tax cheats, who, by the way—and I'll end on this, Chair—may be very much connected to the international terrorism that the government seems consumed with right now.
That's what some of these exact accounts were used for. They were for funnelling money through legitimate accounts to illegitimate accounts then funding some of the worst and heinous acts going on around the globe. That's what the British and the French and the Americans have been finding. Why this Canadian government seems so interested in voluntary action is beyond me.
I know you want to get to a vote, and we can move on to Parliament.