Madam Chair, I thank the member for his excellent question. I want to tell him that this is obviously a very important question.
This question has to do with the important sector in which the government is taking action to protect Canadians. In its efforts to deal with base erosion and profit shifting, the OECD identified a number of specific situations in which the terms of existing tax treaties could potentially be abused.
The OECD then developed effective measures to counter base erosion and profit shifting, measures that the countries can choose to include in their tax treaties to effectively close these loopholes. However, given the large number of existing tax treaties and the long period of time that would be required to bilaterally renegotiate such an agreement, a new approach was created so that these changes can be implemented more quickly and effectively. This new approach is the multilateral tool that was mentioned.
The MLI would allow signatory nations such as Canada to quickly modify their bilateral tax treaties to work more effectively together in the fight against aggressive international tax avoidance. At the same time, the MLI would improve the functioning of the international tax system and provide greater certainty for Canadian taxpayers by improving dispute resolution under Canada's tax treaties. It was developed and negotiated by more than 100 countries and jurisdictions, including Canada. Budget 2018 confirmed that, this year, Canada would take the steps necessary to enact the MLI into Canadian law and to ratify the MLI as needed to bring it into force.