It was three years ago. Time flies when we are having fun.
It was quite enlightening. I think the finance minister supported the Tobin tax at the time was because he thought it was a Tobin attack. He did not realize it was a tax. Perhaps he thought it was an attack on Tobin as opposed to a Tobin tax.
Second, there is a fundamental flaw with the proposed Tobin tax. It is a tiny tax that would apply to all currency traded. It requires speculation for a floating exchange rate mechanism to work. Not all speculation is bad. If we did not have some level of speculation we would not be able to have individual floating exchange rates at all.
The margins on the good kind of speculation on which we depend are so tiny that applying a tax to it would have a significantly negative impact, particularly on currencies like Canada's which have become increasingly marginalized as the U.S. dollar and the Euro have become more important.
The margins on the kind of negative speculation the hon. member would like to reduce are so great that a tiny tax would not reduce the incentive to pursue such speculation. It would reduce the incentive for the good kind of speculation on which we depend. I would appreciate the hon. member's feedback on that.