Mr. Speaker, I listened with some amusement to my friend's speech, because so little did he reference the bill in front of us. However, this is the way of talking points from the Prime Minister's Office.
A question about the bill and the legislation before us may be pertinent, and so I will try one.
This is an omnibus piece of legislation of over 360 pages. It would affect more than 60 Canadian laws all in one bill, which is something the Conservatives, when in opposition, used to decry and sing to the heavens about, saying how unfair and unjust it was. However, it is something they have taken up and put on steroids.
Buried within the omnibus bill is a tax treaty, an intergovernmental agreement with the United States, our largest trading partner, on a piece of legislation that was pushed through Washington, much to everyone's disdain and anger. It is called FATCA. It would be used to try to grab money from Americans living overseas.
Now Canada is obviously not a tax haven, and the Americans admit that, but lo and behold, Canada has to do something about this. What the government has done is shield the banks from any expenditures. The banks estimate that a single bank would need $100 million to go ahead and collect all this information about Canadians, dual citizen Canadian Americans living in Canada. In fact, there may be up to one million people.
My simple question to my friend is this: has the government estimated the cost? The banks are saying that it is $100 million per chartered bank. Now that the Government of Canada is going to collect this information and pass it on to the IRS, has it estimated the cost to the Canadian taxpayer of collecting all this data on behalf of the IRS?