Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to answer the question raised by my hon. colleague.
First of all, we should understand that the offshore tax avoidance scheme set up by KPMG was discovered thanks to the efforts of the Canada Revenue Agency. Many of the participants have already been identified and the file is still active. There will be no amnesty for tax evaders who, unlike the majority of Canada's middle class, do not pay their fair share of taxes.
As the opposition member knows, the KPMG case is before the courts and the Agency's work on this issue is not yet complete. Therefore, I am unable to comment further on this matter as this could undermine or influence the judicial process underway.
The member asked a question about what the current government is doing. Rather than talking about incidents or events that occurred 10 years ago, let us look at what the current government is doing. We decided to allocate an additional $444 million to the CRA so that it could do more to combat international tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. This historic investment will produce real results for the good of all Canadians.
Thanks to this investment and targeted surveillance activities that will be carried out by the CRA, we expect to see an increase in revenue of $2.6 billion over the next five years. That is, without question, an excellent return on investment.
In the future, the CRA will put a stop to the activities of those who develop and promote similar tax schemes. The CRA will hire more auditors and specialists to review the actions of high-risk wealthy individuals. By so doing, the CRA will be able to collect $432 million in new tax revenue. The CRA will hire 100 additional auditors to examine high-risk multinational corporations, which will allow it to recover an additional $500 million over five years.
The new funding will also help the agency develop solid corporate intelligence infrastructure to collect and analyze any information that will allow it to detect tax evasion and avoidance activities.
To ensure that these investments achieve results, the agency will include lawyers on its investigative teams. When prosecution is warranted, the lawyers forward the case to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada so that it may be tried quickly.
In closing, the Minister of National Revenue has already announced a series of concrete measures the agency will be taking to ensure compliance with Canada's tax laws. Briefly, they include: expanding international co-operation to combat tax evasion; creating an independent advisory board on offshore compliance; and finally, beginning work to estimate the tax gap. Those are just a few of the measures our government is taking.