Madam Speaker, that is a very good question from the member. I would like to see what these 87 tax treaties have accomplished in the first place. I asked the government that question this morning. Members were not able to give me even one example of their being able to collect some money owed to the government because of tax evasion or tax avoidance. Why would they promulgate more of these agreements when they do not even have results to show for the first 80?
I already suggested that the government should split them off, if it wanted these bills to pass. There are three treaties here. The Conservatives should have introduced one bill for the treaty for Greece, a second bill for the treaty for Turkey and a third bill for the treaty for Colombia. But they introduced all three together under this bill. One wonders why they would do that, given that they should have known there would be questions about this. Clearly they do not want their legislation to go through as smoothly as it could have if they had simply split it up.
Having said that, we would still want to know what sort of results we have obtained from all the other treaties we have signed. Why are we signing treaties if we cannot show any results from the first 80?
The next question is about the treaties themselves. I checked over two separate treaties and they are not the same. Are the Conservatives taking the OECD model and basically adjusting it based on how good the negotiators are with the other countries? I am really at a loss to explain that one.
We have said that, when the bill goes to committee, we will try to make some amendments to it and separate and divide it, but we are not happy with what the government has done and we think members knew in advance the trouble they were going to get into on this bill.