Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking my colleague from Don Valley West, who gave a very technical approach to this very complicated issue of tax treaties.
As my friend knows, Canada has been very aggressive in terms of negotiating tax treaties with other countries around the world. In fact, we have 90 tax treaties and 16 TIEAs that we have negotiated with other countries around the world. TIEAs, of course, are done in the absence of a tax treaty.
I would like to just raise a couple of ironies here and I would like to get the member to comment on them.
First, I would like the member to comment on the importance of individual Canadians paying taxes. I say that for two reasons. One reason is that I sit on the finance committee and we had the revenue critic for the NDP come before the finance committee and ask us to do a study on tax evasion. It turns out the member has not been paying his taxes.
Second, I would like the member to comment on the second NDP member who also has not been paying his taxes. He put forward a private member's bill to serve his own advantage in terms of averaging his income out over a number of years, claiming that he worked in the cultural industry and that it would be fairer to people who worked in the cultural industry to do that. In fact, he was doing it to benefit himself.
I would like to ask my friend if he could comment on the importance of what the NDP is claiming to be huge tax evaders, when the NDP has tax evaders within its own caucus. Could he comment on the importance of all Canadians paying their fair share of tax?