Mr. Speaker, there go those penny pinching Conservatives again. They sign a major tax treaty with the United States without understanding the costs, even while they knew the charter banks had talked about the capacity to accumulate all this data. For one bank it was $100 million. The Canadian government, when asked, said no, that it did not do an estimate and it did not know the costs. That was at the briefings as well.
We know the Privacy Commissioner has looked at this and is deeply concerned. We know constitutional experts have looked at this and have said that this is likely going to head to a charter challenge. Again, the Conservatives who have such a wretched record with presenting laws that are able to survive a constitutional challenge, have once again brought in a bill with eyes wide open. They said that this was likely to hit a constitutional challenge, likely to get undone by the high court in Canada and they introduced it anyway.
The Conservatives are going to ram it through and they will all vote for it happily because the Prime Minister told them to do so. Why not listen to the evidence for once? Why not protect those million Canadians who are going to have their private banking information passed on to the IRS in Washington without them even being notified? Why not stand up for Canada just this once?