Mr. Speaker, of course we believe in honouring our tax treaties but I simply must respond to some of the things the hon. member said.
She spoke with some conviction about how wonderful it was to be involved in international trade, how it was providing jobs and that kind of thing. I agree. It is a very important aspect of what we do in Canada.
I am just curious to know why the hon. member and her colleagues fought so hard against international agreements like NAFTA and actually broke their promise to renegotiate it. Again I find it fairly strange. I was talking about broken promises. I thank the hon. member for reminding me of a major one that the Liberals broke which was that they were going to renegotiate the NAFTA agreement. Of course they completely and utterly failed to do that. I do not know who they are going to blame that one on. They cannot blame the auditor general for that one. I guess they will have to accept some responsibility for that one themselves.
With respect to the complexity of the taxation system, we are not suggesting that we can reduce thousands and thousands of pages of tax rulings down to a single page. Hardly. We are suggesting that after three years in government the government should have done something to clarify that particular piece of tax legislation. The government employs batteries of lawyers and accountants. By this point in the government's mandate it is important that it look at all its taxation policies and ensure that there are not big loopholes or at least there are not issues that are up for dispute which would allow people potentially to ship $2 billion out of the country without it being taxed.