Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Before I get to my questions, I'd like to say something. It's perhaps a detail, but not one I can overlook.
Mr. Bédard, we don't necessarily agree on the idea that an oil pipeline is merely liquid moving through a pipe. The Montreal Economic Institute provided an English-only presentation, even though we are in Quebec. I can't believe it. I want you to know for the next time that we have interpreters who provide simultaneous translation. Therefore, we can conduct our discussions in both official languages.
Mr. Patry, turning back to you, I'd like to talk about tax havens. In the House, the NDP put forward a motion that was supported by our friends in the Liberal Party. We are still waiting to see what measures the government is going to take.
You are absolutely right about the fact that Quebec and Canada are losing huge amounts of tax revenue because of tax havens. I believe that, thanks to the agreement with Barbados, which came into force in 1980, some $83 billion is invested there. There is more Canadian foreign direct investment in tax havens than in the BRIC countries, in other words, Brazil, Russia, India, and China. That's pretty staggering.
You put Canada's tax revenue losses at $6 billion, but some say the figure is even higher. Statistics Canada, for instance, estimates the losses in tax revenues to be somewhere between $5 billion and $8 billion a year.
You also talked about the Canada health transfer, saying that the increase cap was too low. The new government is more or less sticking to the same rules, in other words, increasing the transfer by about 3% a year, even though health care cost forecasts show that an annual increase of 5% to 6% is needed. As a result, the strain on our public health care system will grow even further over the next few years.
Numerous researchers, including Alain Deneault, Marwah Rizqy, Brigitte Alepin and Alain Dumas in Trois-Rivières, have shown that the government could raise revenues by going after the outflow of capital into tax havens.
How could going after tax havens give our health care system a boost?