Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to stand today as it is my first time in the late show as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Revenue, but, more important, to negate some of the inaccuracies in terms of what my colleague just stated.
I am pleased to share with her that the finance committee did a non-partisan study, which we all had the opportunity to enjoy, as all of the members are very concerned about the issues of tax havens. What we are finding out is that phenomenal progress has been made, especially in the last five years. Therefore, to say that nothing has been done is absolutely inaccurate. We have had many witnesses come and talk about the phenomenal progress that has occurred in the last five years.
What we learned in the committee is that it is very important to look at tax avoidance and tax evasion in two very different lights. We must also recognize that there are companies in Canada that do legitimate business offshore and we should not be painting everything with the same brush. No one is saying that we should not be doing legitimate business offshore. Everyone believes that tax evasion is wrong and we need to bring in the full power of the law.
Again, committee members have been learning very interesting things. I would like to quote from Jeffrey Owens of the OECD who said:
The other thing that's important is the deterrence effect. I talk to a lot of business people, financial advisers, and investment banks, and the one thing that clearly has changed here is that if they get a Canadian client who comes to them and says, “Look, I want to evade taxes; perhaps I could use Barbados or somewhere else”, they'll say, “Forget it. Those days are gone.” There's been a change in attitude on the part of the business community, and that should not be underestimated.
One would expect that this recognition of change in attitude of the Canadian investment advisors is, in large measure, due to actions undertaken by the Prime Minister and the current Conservative government. Among these, Canada has been a world leader in battling this global program.
The CRA is a member of many international organizations and forums that work together to counter aggressive international tax planning. These include: the OECD Working Party on exchange on information and tax compliance; the global forum on transparency and exchange of information; the forum on tax administration; the Joint International Tax Shelter Information Centre; and, the Seven Country Working Group on Tax Havens.
Canada is one of 95 jurisdictions that have agreed to the international standard for exchange of information, including access to bank information.
Canada has an extensive network of tax treaties, one of the largest in the world, with 87 treaties in force.
The Finance Minister announced in the 2007 budget that all of Canada's new treaties and any revisions to existing treaties must include the new OECD standard for exchange of information. The 2007 budget also announced measures that would encourage jurisdictions to enter into tax information exchange agreements, TIEA, with Canada. The TIEA is a relatively new type of agreement used to exchange information in jurisdictions where there is little or no tax and a full tax, partly to prevent double taxation, is thus not required.
Currently we have 11 signed TIEA agreements and 14 in negotiations.
This is where there are a lot of inaccuracies in the members' statements. Since 2006, the number of full-time employees working in the CRA's aggressive tax planning program has doubled and the number of full-time employees working on international audits is up 44%.
An additional--