Madam Speaker, the member for South Shore wants to be very partisan and drag someone through something because he is not here to defend himself.
I know from my personal experience that the former minister of finance was absolutely pristine when it had to do with recusing himself from any decision that had anything even remotely to do with shipping.
It is interesting that the member raised Liberia. Liberia is one of the countries listed on the OECD list as a jurisdiction that has an unco-operative tax haven. These are jurisdictions, as I outlined before, that are currently unwilling to provide a commitment to exchange taxpayer information and to eliminate any non-transparent features of their tax system. It was quite appropriate that we dealt a blow to the tax treaty with Liberia.
I have not followed the former minister's business operations but the department was much involved in these discussions. In fact, I think the business operations initially were in Liberia. I am not sure about that but these are questions I know the former minister of finance was absolutely pristine about in terms of recusing himself from anything that was even remotely related to shipping. Even though the department might have concluded or not concluded various tax treaties, I am sure the minister had nothing to do with them, or he did not express his opinion one way or the other.