I totally agree with my colleague. That is dishonest on the part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
If Canadian businesses want advice in that regard they can call their tax accountants. It should not be given by the federal government.
We have to do more than simply cancel one tax treaty. We should not only be renegotiating that tax treaty, but we should also working with other countries that have tax treaties with Barbados to ensure that we are not putting our own Canadian companies at a disadvantage.
The discussion today has been about one specific group of companies, those companies connected with the member for LaSalle--Émard. However the fact is that if we look at corporate Canada and the number of Canadian companies that have relations offshore with countries like Barbados, I would argue that we would find a lot of Canadian companies. This is a very broad based issue. If we simply arbitrarily close that loophole, we could be sending some of those Canadian companies to the U.S. which has a tax treaty. Anything we do has to be multilateral. We have to work with countries like the U.S. to ensure we do not put Canadian companies at a further disadvantage.