Mr. Speaker, clearly, if the corporate sector and the wealthy are not paying their fair share of taxation in any country, in Canada or in Panama, then there is a huge gap in what is available to the government and to the people of that country to improve their situation and deal with the developmental issues that they face.
We face that here in Canada. We make difficult choices about how we use our resources, where those resources go and the kind of revenue the government has available to do that important work, but when wealthy individuals and big corporations are allowed to avoid paying taxes and to ship their money offshore into a tax haven, it gets even worse and it exacerbates all of those problems.
It is not an appropriate way for us to behave and it is not an appropriate way for Panama to behave. Panama has not responded to the international pressure that it has received to clean up its act on this part. There is no way that we should be entering into an agreement with a country that has been reticent to do that and has outright refused to do that. It has made absolutely no progress toward those goals.
It would not serve our people and it would not serve the people of Panama to enter into that kind of agreement and reward a government that has refused to work on those important issues.