Mr. Speaker, this concurrence motion on the third report of the public accounts committee deals with a very important issue. The issue is the fact that tax havens are a big concern to the government. I got that straight from the mouth of the Minister of National Revenue. I know she is concerned about this, as we should all be. It is a very important issue.
Apparently the government feels that it has closed this loophole, that the matter has been handled very fairly, and that in no way, shape or form will rich people be able to transfer assets within trusts, or assets outside trusts, outside the country without paying a fair percentage of taxes that one would consider to be right and fair.
My big concern is with the way the matter was handled. Right from the start the government was upset with the auditor general, our watchdog on government. Lord knows we need a watchdog on government. When we have cabinet ministers loose with a bunch of money, billions of dollars without having someone audit them, we can imagine what they could potentially do with it.
It should be the same as what we do with private citizens and corporations. We audit large corporations and small corporations. We audit individual taxpayers to ensure, as the Minister of Natural Resources likes to say, that we have integrity in our tax system and the volunteer system continues forward.
I do not think the government was very smart in attacking the auditor general. After all, there was confusion with respect to this family trust. It was a very wealthy trust. If the government is worried that they have done something wrong then it should have complained. If it was not worried it should not have complained. It looked bad for the government.