Mr. Speaker, five minutes is not a lot of time to go over the reasons why we must oppose the bill.
To me, we must oppose this bill for many reasons, including for its lack of substantive measures for fighting tax evasion and for the problems raised a few minutes ago at the Standing Committee on Finance regarding the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. We have a lot of problems with this bank. It raises a lot of questions.
Let us start with the fight against tax evasion. Yesterday, there was another leak regarding the Paradise Papers. According to an army of lawyers representing wealthy Canadian clients, everything is legal, there is no problem, everything is fine. They are entitled to do this, there is no problem.
That is precisely the fundamental problem that we tried to address in question period in the House today. The government should have addressed this issue in its Bill C-63, the budget implementation bill. It failed to so yet again. There is no measure in place to make illegal what is morally unacceptable or what we might describe as legalized fraud.
They use tax treaties like the ones with the Cayman Islands and Barbados and tax agreements to avoid double taxation. Those tax information exchange agreements are supposed to give us information about taxpayers who have interests and accounts in the Cayman Islands, but the fact is, the government has had a tax information exchange agreement with the Cayman Islands since 2010. That is where Mr. Bronfman had his tax-free trust, which apparently netted him some handsome returns.
Agreements like those, like the one with the Cayman Islands, legalize what should be illegal. Those information exchange agreements were supposed to provide information to the revenue minister and the finance minister in exchange for that tax benefit, if I may call it that.
It is becoming clear that the revenue minister is once again completely in the dark with respect to the information hidden in those tax havens. She never got any information. Information leaks and data about Canadian companies and interests in that country reached her at the same time as they reached the rest of the public.
What, then, is the purpose of these tax information exchange agreements? We get no information, but those who register their trusts, their companies, their subsidiaries, and their shell companies over there get tax benefits. We get nothing at all out of the deal.
It is time for our government to step up and review our tax treaties. It also needs to review schemes like these, which allow rich taxpayers to get out of paying the Canadian government what they owe. These people benefit from our infrastructure, our roads, our public transit, and our health and education systems, but what do they give back to society in return? Zilch. They stash their wealth in overseas accounts and contribute nothing to the development of our communities and our country.
Now more than ever, it is time for the government to take action on this issue. With Bill C-63, the government missed its opportunity to take action and show that it really does intend to solve the problem. Now we see that it has been infiltrated by people who are exploiting the system and the status quo to get out of paying their fair share of taxes. Today, we really have to wonder what the government's true agenda is.
The other thing I wanted to mention is the Asian infrastructure bank. Close to $500 million of Canadian taxpayer money will go to creating a bank in China that will be controlled primarily by China. This bank will invest in Chinese interests and in privatized Chinese infrastructure projects. We saw the same thing here with the Canada infrastructure bank. This is shameful. We need to speak out against this bill for the sake of Canadians, perhaps even for the sake of people overseas.