Mr. Speaker, let me deal with the hairstyle question first because it is obviously the most important one. If precedence is important, then I think he has to give some credit to the member who is sitting just in front of him. Let us deal with this and honour those who have gone before us in breaking that style into common and very stylish usage.
If the Conservatives are going to compare themselves to the Liberal record before, it is just not really a high bar to set. We need better standards than that because we know through the 90s that the way that the great deficit slayer Paul Martin did that was by cutting transfers massively to the provinces and territories while handing out tens of billions of dollars to the wealthiest corporations and allowing billions more to go into offshore accounts. What that did was haemorrhage the abilities of the provinces and territories to pay for things like roads, schools and bridges. That was the choice that the Liberals made.
That was then, this is now. This is an important point that has not yet come up. What we are dealing with now is if we look at foreign direct investment coming out of Canada right now, out of the top five nations that Canadian corporations and the wealthiest Canadians are sending their direct investment to, three are tax shelter countries, such as Barbados and the Cayman Islands. The Conservatives have not done anything about this. We are not talking about a small amount of money, we are talking about $57 billion to $65 billion going out the door every year to be invested in Barbados. I am sure it is a nice place, but the reason wealthy Canadians and those corporations are doing it is to avoid paying taxes here.
I would have thought that my friend from the Yukon and others would have been raising this point and hammering it away. However, there has been nothing about tax evasion here. Rather, there are cuts to the CRA, which would go after those same tax evaders. We think that should be changed.