Mr. Speaker, a question came up this morning about what the government is doing to recover money from tax havens around the world. There is no action at all on the part of the government. In fact, the government basically gives an amnesty to people with money in tax shelters who come forward and report their ill-gotten gains. For example, last year a Liechtenstein bank employee turned over tax records to the German government, and 100 Canadian names filtered back to Canada. That is how we found out about it. Just the other day, there was an article in the Globe and Mail in which a Swiss bank employee was reported to have turned over computer discs resulting in about 1,800 Canadian names being forwarded to Canada. Once again, I believe the amnesty applies.
The government is not doing anything concrete to try to shut down the tax havens. In fact, it is negotiating free trade deals with Panama, which is a known tax haven, having over 350,000 foreign companies doing business there. Mexican drug dealers are laundering money through Panama. Meanwhile, we are working on trade deals with the Panamanians, when Conservatives should be doing something to shut down these tax havens and collect from Canadians who have money in them.