Madam Speaker, it has been rightly pointed out that when we go through the list of the 87 countries that have signed these tax treaties, there is only one that looks as though it qualifies as a tax haven.
If the member for Kings—Hants is correct, that the way to get these rogue countries in line is to sign tax treaties and free trade treaties with them, which would somehow alter the way they do business, then Barbados should be a perfect example of a country that is totally reformed, yet we have lots of evidence to the contrary. It is still as big a tax haven as it was before.
Then we look at the real tax havens and we find that we have tax treaties with none of them. If we are trying to stop Canadians from putting their money in tax havens, then one would think we should be sending our negotiators off to sign treaties that will turn these practices around with those countries that are known tax havens.
How do we treat Canadians who engage in investing in tax havens? We give them an amnesty. When the Swiss bank employee gave out all the information from the computer disk last year and we uncovered all of the Canadians' undeclared income, thousands of Canadians rushed into the nearest Canada Revenue Agency office and took advantage of the amnesty. What sort of message are we sending to Canadian high rollers? We are telling them to go ahead and invest in tax havens, because what is the worst that will happen? When they get caught, all they have to do is go to the nearest Canada Revenue Agency office and the amnesty applies. They declare that they have been bad, they declare the income, pay the tax and they are scot-free.
That is not the way to run the system. We should not be giving tax amnesties. We should be shutting the door on these tax havens and saying that if people take a chance and send their money to a tax haven, then when they are caught they will do time in jail. That would be tough on crime, but the government is not tough on crime.