Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, who mentioned our tour.
Indeed, we toured extensively throughout Quebec. We met with over 400 people representing 317 different organizations. We met with more than just chambers of commerce, the Conseil du patronat and special interest groups; we met with the entire population.
Indeed, on many occasions, people wondered how the banks got this information, since it was sudden. The answer is very simple: the Minister of Finance, who is responsible for the budget, is also responsible for the Bank Act. The Bank Act requires that all Canadian chartered banks publish their tax statistics once a year in an annual report.
Consider this example. On page 122 of the Royal Bank's 2009 annual report published recently, the Royal Bank states that taxes that would be payable if all foreign subsidiaries’ accumulated unremitted earnings were repatriated are estimated at $821 million as of October 31, 2009. These figures are for the Royal Bank alone, so we can imagine the figures for all the banks.
We simply did the math. We added the figures of the Royal Bank to those of CIBC, TD, Scotiabank and the National Bank, and that was the total.
In closing, I would ask the Minister of Finance to make sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing.