Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Québec.
Unfortunately, Bill C-48 is a story of failure. It is the story of our tax laws that have never been updated. This bill is currently over 1,000 pages long, which is a significant number. Although the previous member's speech was excellent, if I were to ask him to quickly summarize the content of these 1,000 pages, he would be hard pressed to do so. It would not be easy. I will not ask him to do so, but I tip my hat to anyone in the House who can tell me that he has a perfect understanding of Bill C-48, the bill on which we are going to vote. Understanding a 1,000-page legal document about taxes is quite a feat.
There is a backlog of 400 technical amendments. Bill C-48 will address 200 of them. The other 200 will not be resolved, mainly because they are outdated and no longer necessary. The law is so old that the regulations are no longer relevant. In 2006, we wanted to close a tax loophole affecting airlines. The airlines took advantage of that loophole and are now increasingly making use of tax havens. What was proposed in 2005 and 2006 has therefore lost its relevance because the law is too old. For five or six years, there was a tax loophole that was not closed. That is unfortunate.
This situation dates back to 2001. I understand that our Liberal colleagues are not always present, but I hope that they will wake up. They were in power in 2001. The boom in tax loopholes occurred under the Liberal government. It was actually quite embarrassing. With regard to shipping companies, the finance minister at the time had the House pass a bill that allowed him to avoid paying taxes. His shipping company no longer had to pay very much in taxes to Canada.