Mr. Speaker, my colleague makes another excellent point and there are two aspects of this I will touch on briefly.
The first is that he used the word “disclosure”. On this argument of the finance minister about tax leakage, we had a battery of witnesses, highly reputable people who know what they are talking about, who said that all of his numbers were wrong. What was the finance minister's response? It was a blacked out, censored document from the Department of Finance without one legible number. Talk about disclosure. If he wants to convince Canadians that he is right, the least he could do is disclose that blacked out document, because he cannot win the argument when there are six experts against one blacked out document with no numbers in it.
On the other point that my colleague raised in terms of availability of instruments, we do not have to go further than the governor of the Bank of Canada to find an expert witness who has said that the income trust sector has been useful for seniors in particular. It is virtually the only instrument that we in Canada have, unlike the U.S., which provides a relatively high yield to savers. Many Canadians, particularly seniors who have to pay their bills from the proceeds of the savings they have generated over a long lifetime, were extraordinarily dependent on income trusts.
The governor of the Bank of Canada himself has said that this vehicle is a useful savings instrument, particularly for those individuals. The Conservative government, through its reckless behaviour, has in fact destroyed income trusts.