Yes, as my colleague from Winnipeg Centre said, a Canadian hero who took up the matter of a decision by the government of the day back in the early 1990s to allow a wealthy family in Canada to ship $2 billion out of the country to avoid paying taxes. In fact that family, that corporation avoided paying taxes to the tune of $700 million.
That was $700 million lost to this country that could have been put to good use in terms of restoring important programs in the areas of health, education, social services, agriculture, urban infrastructure, the elimination of poverty and the list goes on and on. Yet this government permitted that loophole. Of course, typical Liberals in Canada today do nothing and organizations have to find the money to take these issues to court, to fight it all the way through, as George Harris did, to the Supreme Court.
I think it is interesting to note that on December 19, 2001, Judge Eleanor Dawson made a ruling and at that time she stated:
It is astonishing that senior officials at Revenue Canada failed to keep minutes of certain meetings where crucial decisions were being made. It is axiomatic that poor practices of this sort has the potential of compromising public accountability.
Here we are today in 2003 dealing with a blatant example of that kind of axiomatic practice, the kind of issue that causes Canadians to question the very purpose of elections and democracy in the country. This touches on a very important issue in terms of not just finances and fiscal policy and revenue, but in terms of confidence in this place, in Parliament, in the democratic process and in electoral procedures. We have to address this.
I hope that although it has taken a heck of a long time to get to the point where we are having a wide open debate on this issue the Liberals will once and for all try to resolve this issue, although it will be very difficult for them to do so because I think one of the reasons we are in this mess today is because the former finance minister, who is soon to become the next leader of the Liberal Party and possibly even the prime minister of this country, is really the mastermind behind this kind of unacceptable behaviour and practice.