I reiterate that, at best, these measures are slightly effective in that they can only change a few variables and, at worst, they are cosmetic. I am not using all the technical terms, but I can provide them to you in writing.
With regard to Canada’s tax information exchange agreements, as I mentioned earlier, Canada has made a regulatory change to ensure that transactions subject to mandatory information transfers are legalized by the Canadian government. In fact, we are legalizing the ability of beneficiaries to receive assets transferred to a tax haven that signs a tax information exchange agreement in the form of dividends.
This means that, as the minister himself said at the time, we need to find incentives for tax havens to co-operate with us. That is essentially what I understand from what he said. If we want to tackle tax havens, we need to consider the scale of the problem. This is not a technical issue that requires minor adjustments here and there; it is a fundamental problem that affects Canada’s very ability to fulfill its social mission.
Do politicians want this? Are they embarrassed that Canadians don’t have family doctors, that there is mould in schools, that poverty is on the rise, that there are no environmental programs, that our train service is so poor that travelling by train feels more like a journey into the past than a step towards the future, that our society is eroding? Are Canadian leaders ashamed that they cannot fund public institutions because they do not have the courage to tax businesses properly, in accordance with the spirit of the law? Have we reached a point where we are burying our heads in the sand and telling ourselves that it is only a technical issue and that we have signed a more or less insignificant agreement with a particular state?