Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for raising an important aspect of our financial institutions review that will not get the attention it deserves. That is something chartered accountants call tax-motivated expatriation. New Democrats call it a sleazy, tax-cheating loophole when people can put their money offshore so it is out of reach of the taxman. The former prime minister, unfortunately, was the undisputed champion of this when he closed down 11 tax havens with which we had tax treaties. He left one significant one, where the prime minister of the day happened to have 13 shell companies.
There has been an appalling lack of due diligence. We leave money on the table that should rightfully be paid in taxes. It is estimated that as much as $7 billion a year slip through the fingers of Revenue Canada due to these tax-motivated expatriations. Plugging these loopholes should be the simplest first thing that any minister of finance would do when trying to balance the budget. Yet when New Democrats introduced a bill to that effect, we were not allowed to introduce it in the House because, apparently, it would have the effect of increasing a person's taxes. Plugging a tax loophole Conservatives equates to increasing a tax and the bill was thrown out as being deemed non-votable for that reason.
There is a lot of work to do and we are not going to get it done because Conservatives keep ramming through legislation using closure. It is undemocratic and wrong. We should condemn them in the strongest possible terms.