Mr. Speaker, the point I would like to make is that minority Parliaments usually offer good opportunities for opposition parties in that we actually have the balance of power. In fact, we could have effected meaningful change to the 2006 budget if the Bloc Québécois had not walked outside. The leader of the Bloc Québécois walked out of the chamber five minutes after the budget was tabled and said, “I like it, we will take it, it sounds good”. At that very moment all negotiations ceased. There was no longer any opportunity for the three opposition parties to collaborate and make this budget better because the ruling party had its partner. All it needed was one dance partner and it had it within five minutes.
My colleague is a trade unionist. He comes from a trade union background, as do I. Both of us have probably negotiated dozens of collective agreements in the trade union sector. Will he not accept that it is a bad negotiating strategy to give up in the first five minutes of a negotiation and say, “Whatever you offer, I will take it”, even though it is completely deficient in this area, that area and the other area, all for a pig in a poke, all for a promise that fiscal equalization will in fact be addressed? My mind reels at the lost opportunities.
I will ask the member about one specific example. He knows full well, as he and I have harped on this in the past, that the government loses $7 billion a year to tax havens, tax motivated expatriation, sleazy, tax cheating loopholes. Tax fugitives from Canada hide their assets offshore so they can avoid paying taxes in Canada. It is an atrocious thing.
In this budget the finance minister could have terminated or torn up the remaining tax treaty in this country and put $7 billion of revenue back in the coffers of Canada that he could have perhaps used to deal with the fiscal imbalance, but, no. We lost the opportunity to even raise that as an amendment. We could have amended this budget to make it a damn good budget written by the opposition parties and the Bloc decided to sell us out by walking out the door and accepting it at the very first opportunity.