Madam Speaker, the member talked about a couple of points. First, she may want to correct the record about the government investing this amount of money in CRA this year. It is over a five-year period. It is important for Canadians to understand the investment the Liberals are making into the CRA after the Conservatives cut 3,000 positions.
The member said this is a top issue for the folks she represents in Davenport, and then went on to say, over and over again, how much confidence she had in the CRA and its ability to hound and get after these tax cheats. However, we know about the case of KPMG, the scam that she talked about. It was running for more than a decade, by the way, before the great CRA even found out about it. Once it did find out about it, that all of these wealthiest of Canadians were avoiding paying their fair share, the CRA then offered, in secret, a deal to those Canadians to not pay any penalties whatsoever.
Here is the lesson or the message that the Canada Revenue Agency is sending out to wealthy Canadians: if they do cheat, if they use these scams like KPMG set up, CRA will probably never find it, but if it does find it, it will take a decade, so they are good. Even if CRA does find it, all they will have to do is pay some, maybe, of the taxes that are owed but there will not be a penalty.
The Liberals are somehow suggesting that, in paying back what is owed to the Canadian people, the government had the audacity to ask these wealthy, well-heeled Canadians to, oh my gosh, pay the interest on the money that they owed rather than the penalties. What about all those middle-class Canadians Liberals constantly talk about yet do not defend?
Is my friend from Davenport happy with the deal that the CRA, in which she has so much confidence, offered in a sweetheart package to wealthy Canadians who cheated the system and who then had to pay no penalties whatsoever?