Mr. Speaker, regardless of the OECD protocols on sharing financial information, which I do not think have been that successful, the fact is that over the last two years it has been a bank employee of a Liechtenstein bank who has simply taken computer diskettes and sold them to the German government, which has resulted in a lot of taxes being collected by the German government and other European governments and 100 names being submitted to the Canadian government. The Canadian government has chased perhaps 100 people for money.
The government has also given an amnesty that if anyone wants to walk into a Revenue Canada office and avoid any problems they can do it. Evidently people have been doing that.
Just recently we heard of another employee of a Swiss bank who gave out diskettes listing hundreds of people, in this case 1,800 Canadians. This information was just made available now and we hope Revenue Canada is doing something to collect some of the taxes that are owed. As a matter of fact, more Canadians were found in this net than Americans. Even with the population of the United States, only 1,600 Americans were caught in this net.
Why must we rely on disgruntled employees of banks to get this information? Why can the government not do things to get this information that Revenue Canada needs?