Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, who is doing very constructive work on the Standing Committee on Finance.
He is well aware that combatting tax evasion was an important theme of the last 2016 budget. We have invested $444 million in the Canada Revenue Agency precisely in order to combat tax evasion. We want to be sure that the Canada Revenue Agency is given the resources, the teams and the technology to fight tax evasion.
Members may recall that in our statement we spoke of international co-operation, as my colleague well knows. One of the things that these conventions do, and we have over 92 of them all over the world, is to permit information sharing among tax authorities.
Members will agree that this information sharing makes it possible to combat tax evasion. This is the right thing to do for Canada. These agreements promote trade among jurisdictions, but they also give us one more tool to guarantee the integrity of our taxation system in Canada.