It's the same as well where.... For this bill, the reason I table amendments that continue to be ruled out of order is that this bill is a damned disgrace for what it says it does. When I spend my time here, I think it's important that I'm trying to change things and make them better, whereas this has become real gamesmanship. Quite frankly, here are things that we have control over—immediacy—whether it be increasing the numbers of men and women on corporate boards or in governance. Whereas other models across the world have shown very progressive and very successful ways of doing so, the path this bill is going towards is basically one of shelving it for several years.
In fact, on corporate tax evasion as well, we've seen what's happening with tax havens and the Panama papers. I'll touch on this here, and you'll hear more on that with the bearer shares and so forth. It won't cost Canadians or Parliament money to close these loopholes.
In terms of the leadership we can take with regard to the corporate boardrooms, we've seen and heard testimony from the Fortune 500, for example, where the level of women on boards has actually decreased over the last couple of years, as opposed to increasing. What's happening now is that we have a bill here that's going to go through the facade of arguing those points and taking a pass on anything that's substantial and significant. I don't want to leave any stone unturned here, certainly, because this is how I'm spending my time. I'm trying to improve these things, and my belief is to have them done is a responsible way.
This bill has become an empty shell of maintenance that isn't going to affect the many people that it could. In fact, it leaves the word “gender” right out of it. I think that's interesting in itself. If that doesn't tell you a lot, then what else would? Second, we still have issues. We have so-called champions of race, ethnicity, and inclusion, but I see nothing coming to the table in any amendments so far. I know that we'll have discussion on some of those.
Lastly, and again, we have the issue of bearer shares, which is something that can be changed simply with basically a signature here without costing the taxpayers money and registering all those things.... For those reasons alone, I'm keeping on with my amendments. If they're going to be ruled out of order because we don't want to deal with the significance of this bill and want to parcel it down to being an empty shell, it won't be on my watch that it happens without a voice.