The people involved will tell you what they're doing is legal. If it's legal, it's because we've turned a blind eye to certain abuses, or we've legalized processes that may suit some of the country's powerful players with strong voices.
I want to remind you that, a few years ago, an influential finance minister in this country created an advisory group. The formal advisors in the group were retired administrators and retired people who had established ties to companies such as Scotiabank, Royal Bank of Canada, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Barrick Gold Corporation, SNC-Lavalin, Rogers, and Shell. However, the group did not include a single tax expert, sociologist, obviously, or union official. Forget it! It was made up of business people who were no longer even lobbyists but, despite all that, were the minister's official tax advisors. And we wonder why the legislation has so many shortcomings!
Now I want to come back to the key issue I wanted to discuss. What does it mean when countries like Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, and Panama make laws for capital that is never present in their jurisdictions? It means that, here in Canada, specialists in the offshoring of assets will say they are Canadian. They will tell Canadian clients who have assets in Canada and who have been here a long time to enter property titles and capital into a sort of protective glass bubble that's been created. The contents of the glass bubble are covered by the laws in Panama or Bermuda. The assets do not come under the authority of any country because in those countries, it's considered that the assets must not somehow interfere with the country's real economy. A type of legal system was created that's nowhere to be found. This was accomplished by designers who were often the creators of the tax policies of tax havens in the first place.
Keep in mind that, for the most part, Canadians were the ones who created tax havens in the British Caribbean. A former Canadian finance minister, Donald Fleming, is well-known for promoting the establishment of tax laws in the Bahamas. The Bahamian finance minister in the 1960s, Sir Stafford Sands, was also on the Royal Bank of Canada's board of directors. Back then, Jim MacDonald was living on the Cayman Islands. He was closely tied to the Progressive Conservative Party, and he did roughly the same thing. They all worked with Canadian banks that have a long history in the British Caribbean, as we know. They were responsible for designing the tax havens, and they specialized in transferring assets there.