Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
We completely support additional investments. During the Conservatives’ term in office, we asked that they reinvest in the Canada Revenue Agency. We made very frequent requests for hiring more auditors. Unfortunately, the Conservatives reduced investment instead. Fortunately, $444 million has now been invested. For the moment, my colleague is the very person who tables the government’s answers to questions on the Order Paper. If I look at the recent figures we have, dated today, with the new international investigations branch that was created on April 1, 2006, 56 investigations have been opened, but none has yet been sent to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. We have therefore seen no results.
If we take the case of the Panama Papers, more than 397 individuals had been identified on the date when my question was answered, including 50 companies and 80 individuals. How many of those cases were referred to the criminal investigations program, the step before prosecutions? None. This is not moving fast enough. Canadians are outraged by this situation, and the government keeps saying that it is investing money. However, we are not seeing any results. It is all very well to keep up the fine talk, as the minister has done with her pink cards, but if there are no results at the end of the line and if no white-collar criminals are convicted in the Canadian courts or in the criminal courts, these are not positive outcomes.
I support these additional investments, but I am anxious to see concrete results and people who are actually in handcuffs for tax fraud and tax evasion. That is not what we have seen, however, and it is not what we are seeing. I hope it comes to pass.