Mr. Speaker, the member is right about not hearing witnesses in order to speed up passage of the bill, given the Bloc Quebecois' repeated demands, given that we understood that we would not be getting separate bills, as I was saying we would have preferred, but so as not to further delay implementation, given that the government had not acted as quickly as we would have liked.
The federal machine can only move so quickly, however. We therefore did agree with the government not to hear witnesses. These were issues the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberal government looked at very closely. We therefore knew where we were headed. There were precedents: Canada had signed several international treaties; that was also on the agenda. There were also treaties with the OECD.
What it all boils down to is that we have this bill. It is not what we would have liked, but I think that at this stage, in the interest of speed, all parties, government and opposition alike, should cooperate in order to ensure the speediest possible passage of this bill, the purpose of which is to have everyone paying their fair share of taxes.
This does not mean, however, that there is no need for vigilance. It does not prevent the government from taking a very close look at its tax system to ensure that corporations taking advantage of tax havens are not encouraged but, on the contrary, watched very closely. We are therefore going to cooperate in ensuring that this bill is passed as quickly as possible.