Madam Speaker, one of my colleagues from the Conservatives said, “Was that not the Paul Martin scheme?” No. He had set up an entirely different scheme to avoid paying taxes and avoid rules. He orchestrated multiple tax havens.
It is somewhat ironic but I remember asking him at one point that as the finance minister of the country, the person in charge of tax policy, how did he feel about avoiding taxes while imposing taxes on Canadians. He had his own company which was doing quite well. This was not a company that was on the ropes or dying and he needed to do something about it. The company was doing quite well. He just wanted it to do a fair shake better. He was avoiding taxes while he was imposing taxes on Canadians.
We can remember that the 1990s, and this was raised during oral questions today, was a time when we were making very difficult decisions in this country about cutting back on folks. The hypocrisy of that moment, which was not felt by the then finance minister, someone hoping obviously to become the leader of the country, is so discouraging to Canadians.
The idea of having tax-motivated expatriation, the idea that one can make a whole whack of money, move it out of the country and pay a one-time small penalty on it and then slowly move it back in for generations to come is tax avoidance. Tax avoidance in most places is against the law because if one person does it, everybody does it and the whole system starts to fall apart.
The impression is that it is the wild west down on Wall Street and that Canada is the land of bliss and tight rules and serious governance. The OECD, a group of the most developed countries in the world, came out with a report citing all of the different barriers to trade and investment of each of its member countries. This is an exhaustive report. The number one reason that it cited not to invest in Canada was the lack of fair rules and regulations. Our markets were seen as too risky because we did not apply the rules consistently to companies. Investors were shy about putting their money into the country.
It was not high labour rates. It was not high environmental standards. Lord knows those are all being watered down. It was the simple fact that our market was not being governed properly. With Bear Stearns in the United States, the folks got caught and they did what is called the perp walk. We have seen this. The CEO is put in handcuffs and is walked down Wall Street in front of the cameras. They do it for a reason. It is to send a signal to the other guys to say, “Try this and we will do the same thing to you. We will humiliate you. We will put you in jail. No more golf memberships for you”.
In Canada, what do we do? We have a self-governing, self-regulating body. I cannot remember seeing any CEO, and there have been a few, who have completely ripped off--