Mr. Speaker, it does speak to a larger problem. It is an attitude problem, I suppose. The government is willing to forgo this lost revenue to tax havens. Even Diane Francis, not exactly a left-wing author, did a five-part series in the National Post, calling on the Conservative government to plug egregious tax loopholes that are just fundamentally wrong, that no decent person would avail themselves of if they had any conscience or any pride in being a Canadian.
One of those was the family trust loophole where we give a one-time payment of 25% and that gives us permission to send the whole family trust of billions of dollars offshore, and from that day on, all the revenue from that investment comes back into the country tax-free. We can have all of our family and friends living on these tax-free earnings offshore for the rest of their lives for generations.
Why would anybody craft such a thing that is clearly against the best interests of all Canadians except for that one billionaire? Why would we tolerate giving money away like that? Can we really afford to be so generous?