Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for Trois-Rivières for his question. I think the government has gone half the distance. I concur with the Minister of Finance, who this week told the member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot, the official opposition finance critic, that the government wanted tax haven expertise in setting up this committee.
I agree with him that the members of this committee on corporate taxation, a committee of experts, are well qualified in matters of tax havens. But only half the distance has been covered. In technical terms, the necessary expertise will be there. What the committee lacks, however, is political credibility-the other half of the distance to be covered.
For it to have political credibility in the eyes of Canadians and Quebecers, I think it would have to include-and this is what the member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot calls for in the motion he tabled this morning-elected representatives, members of Parliament, to show Canadians and Quebecers that the committee would not be just in the hands of tax haven experts.
I would also like to point out that, in terms of credibility, the greatest weakness, as the opposition pointed out in question period yesterday, lies in the fact that six of the eight members of the committee annually contribute, and contributed in 1994, $80,000 to the Liberal Party.
I would have included parliamentarians, which is what the Minister of Finance should have done to increase the committee's credibility. With what we see of contributors to the Liberal Party, they-and I showed this earlier in my speech-will save tens of millions of dollars a year for their clients investing in tax havens. There is no credibility because there are no parliamentarians on the committee.