Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to report that Statistics Canada itself came up with the $7-billion figure when estimating lost revenue due to tax evasion and the use of tax havens. It would be no problem for me to find out the year the report was published.
The problem with the figure provided by Statistics Canada is that employees are able to estimate the amount only when the companies or individuals tell them that they have sent money to tax havens and that money came back here after the transfer. They are not obligated to systematically report this to Statistics Canada. The result is that these estimates are based on data that has been voluntarily submitted.
This is why the Conference Board of Canada and Canadians for Tax Fairness quote numbers much higher than $7 billion or $8 billion.
We regard that figure as a minimum and believe the actual amount to be much higher.