Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's speech and I appreciate it. What we mostly wanted to consider in this House today is the motion put forward by my colleague, the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, with regard to the famous committee set up by the Minister of Finance, which-as the hon. member for La Prairie pointed out-is comprised of friends of the government. This is not a bad thing per se. This is not so terrible. These friends of the government are there to give advice to the Minister of Finance. They also make large contributions to the Liberal Party's coffers.
What the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot proposes is to include in this committee parliamentarians from all political parties represented in this House, including Reform, who will be happy to attend and participate, as well as the Bloc Quebecois. Of course, the party in power, not wanting to be left behind, will also delegate some of its members.
The hon. member refers to parliamentary committees. It must be pointed out that most parliamentary committee members come from the party in power. It is simply human nature. If I were in their shoes, I would probably do the same. However, they sometimes make decisions that are contrary to common sense just to avoid embarrassing the government. Government members on the committee will use their majority to give priority to their own interests. This is what is happening in the parliamentary committees the hon. member was talking about earlier.
I would remind the hon. member that, despite all the good faith shown by parliamentary committees in the last 30 years, we still have to deal with a $600 billion debt. Whether the hon. member likes it or not, this $600 billion debt was not run up by the Bloc Quebecois. Yet there it is, bigger than ever.
The hon. member wanted to know why we wanted parliamentarians to sit on this committee set up by the Minister of Finance. It is precisely to explain things to those outside the party in power who have expertise in this area. Bloc and Reform members would simply like to show these people the auditor general's 1994 report, which referred to some cases of abuse by corporations with foreign subsidiaries.
Let us take an example: suppose it costs a mining company on Quebec's North Shore $20 to produce one tonne of iron ore. The company sells that ore to its affiliate in Nassau, Bermuda, or somewhere else, for $21 a tonne, thus making a profit of one dollar, which it reports to Revenue Canada and on which it is prepared to pay tax. However, the Bermuda affiliate did not do anything with the ore; it did not pay anyone. It resells the ore for $75 a tonne, thus pocketing a profit of $55 without having to pay any tax in Canada.
The hon. member says that the affiliate should not have to pay anything, since it did not do anything in Canada. Why should we tax some poor foreigners? The Auditor General of Canada raised the issue in his 1994 report. This is precisely what the Bloc Quebecois is discussing.
Obviously we have no interest, nor any right, in taxing a company in Timbuktu that does not even know that Canada exists. This is not the idea. We want to target Canadian affiliates that are set up on the sly, in a tax haven, to avoid paying considerable sums of money to Revenue Canada.
This is our goal, and I ask the hon. member who just spoke if he realizes that there are many such cases and that something ought to be done.