Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have this chance to revisit the issue of offshore tax havens and put a little more meat on the bones of this topic than we get a chance to do in question period.
Tax havens are nothing new. They are a phenomenon that dates back to the 1960s. Given our financial challenges and the spending we have incurred in order to stimulate our economy, it is galling that people will go out of their way to hide money from Revenue Canada. It is estimated that offshore tax havens siphon $500 billion away from the tax man every year around the world. Places like the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Panama, the Channel Islands, Monaco, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Singapore and Switzerland provide banking beyond the reach of institutions like Canada Revenue. We can see that it is not a phenomenon unique to Canada, but that does not mean we should condone or accept it either.
New Democrats have long been critical of the Canadian government's seeming indifference to tax cheats who use offshore tax havens to bleed our economy for their own benefit. We see how small tax offences are prosecuted thoroughly, and these bigger and more egregious offences are largely left alone. I have joined other New Democrats in asking a number of questions on the subject this year.
In September, my leader pointed out that the top five Canadian banks use tax havens to avoid paying $16 billion in income tax. Sadly, and far too often, we receive dismissive answers from the government and promotion of their incomplete efforts on the issue, rather than an admission that there is so much more to do with respect to battling this white collar crime, which is exactly what it is. It is a crime perpetrated on all Canadians, and the only reason it persists is the lack of political will to do anything about it. It is clear that the government is not even aware of the scope of the problem. If it is, it is not telling Canadians about it. This is despite the examples of some of our closest trading partners. The United States, Mexico and even Britain can be cited as countries that are showing their citizens that they are serious about combatting this type of tax evasion.
We speak at length about transparency, and although it is clear that the government has difficulty with transparency, it actually has a chance to do something about it. We hear the minister bragging about locating more money offshore than the Liberals did when they were in power but we do not hear him bragging about the increased government attempts to locate tax cheats. That is because it is not doing much. We do have a voluntary disclosure program that will tempt a few of the more honest tax cheats to volunteer their information. However, I would imagine that the WikiLeaks documents naming 2,000 individuals with Swiss bank accounts will scare more people into disclosure than any voluntary program the government has in place.
What makes matters worse is that we receive reports that the CRA is cutting back 200 investigators charged with looking into offshore accounts. How does this send a strong message to Canadians hiding money in offshore accounts? Where is the consistency? Why not add personnel to the unit that investigates these crimes, not reduce them?
For every dollar that we spend tracking down tax cheats, we recover five dollars. It is a no-brainer and really speaks to the government's priorities that it has not done this already. How is it that the government, which bills itself as tough on crime, will not roll up its sleeves and do the hard work now when the economy needs these funds the most?