Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank my dear colleague from Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup for his eloquence and his excellent question.
Yes, the government has things to hide. If the government had nothing to hide, when the auditor general published his report on the scandal of the $2 billion transferred out of the country tax-free, if this annual report had been dealt with in the usual way, that is to say, if it had been referred to the public accounts committee, my colleague, the hon. member for Beauport-Montmorency-Orléans, who chairs this committee, would have shed light on the reasons behind this decision with the help of his colleagues from Trois-Rivières and Portneuf. Such is not the case.
As I said earlier, this matter was referred to the finance committee, which was asked to make recommendations on future policy but not on the 1991 case. So the government has things to hide and there are sources close to the Liberal Party of Canada, close to the Prime Minister's office or the finance minister's office who have everything to gain by sidetracking this case.
Let us not forget that this 1991 advance ruling by public servants, which was only made public in March 1996, created a precedent. Since then, anyone could have transferred millions or billions of dollars to other countries around the world. Of course, the government has things to hide.
To answer your second question concerning the loophole, no it was not plugged, it was actually enlarged by the Liberal majority proposals, since the twisted interpretation of what constitutes taxable Canadian property obtained from Revenue Canada and the Department of Finance on the basis of the transfer of these $2 billion to the U.S. was allowed by senior officials, this twisted interpretation has become official government policy, an equally twisted policy serving millionaires and billionaires at the expense of taxpayers in Quebec and Canada.