Mr. Speaker, my colleague makes a very important point concerning the length of time it takes for anything to happen in this place under either a Liberal government or a Conservative government to deal with tax havens and tax loopholes.
The record, obviously, of the Liberals, who had 13 years to fix these problems, is the most egregious one. The Conservatives are just beginning and their first big mistake was to backtrack on the interest deductibility issue. Since the Conservatives have talked about cracking down on tax havens, and since the Liberals refused to do anything, we now have a chance in this House to do something.
I want to mention that I think the inaction by the Liberals over the years was directly related to their ties with big banks and big corporations. I think the fact that their own members had investments in big corporations that wanted to take advantage of tax havens had something to do with it. However, I do not know for sure.
I tried earlier to read a quotation but I was talking too fast to get it out. It was in response to a question from my leader, the member for Toronto—Danforth, back in 2003 when we were concerned about the member for LaSalle—Émard still running the Canadian Steamship Lines even with the apparent conflict of interest. In response to that question, the member for LaSalle—Émard said that he would not be able to live with himself if his dream were turned over to another country. He said that he would not be able to bear Canada Steamship Lines suddenly finding itself nothing but a collection of ships being run from the States.
It was not too long after that when the member decided that it would be important to have his sons run the company but they made no changes with respect to the flags of convenience and with respect to the tax evasion policies. They continued to accumulate revenue because they were not paying their fair share of taxes.
On the issue of the Auditor General, let us note that we are talking about several reports that go back to 1999, 2002, and now another one in 2007, and still the concerns raised by the Auditor General have not been fully addressed by any government. We are still waiting for some plan of action. We are waiting for more than studies. We are waiting for the Conservative Government of Canada, Canada's supposedly new government, to do something new and different. We are waiting and waiting and waiting.
When will the government decide to finally shut down Barbados as a tax haven? When will it decide to take on all of these loopholes and ensure that Canadians have the resources they need to build the programs they need to have a strong united country?