Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank my colleague for Beloeil—Chambly for always fighting for tax fairness for working Canadians.
As a former business owner and executive director of a chamber of commerce, and as the critic for the NDP on small business and tourism, I have had a chance to work with entrepreneurs, as well as be one. Entrepreneurs are often struggling just to make ends meet, just to make payroll or pay their suppliers or leases. They are under a tremendous amount of pressure.
When they are late paying their taxes, CRA does not take any time at all and is on top of the small business person. There is a collector assigned to them. CRA is aggressive in getting the taxes back. Despite the Prime Minister calling small business people tax cheats, I would say that most small business people are honest, hard-working people. They are the job creators and people who donate to our community organizations and build our communities. However, at the same time, as we saw with the KPMG scandal, if one has a good lawyer and a lot of money, the CRA will back off and make a deal, unlike its treatment of small business people.
I would like to ask my colleague about making sure that when we go ahead and make tax changes to fix these loopholes and gaps in these tax agreements, that CRA gets direction and prioritizes going after the heavy-hitters, the 1% who are trying to avoid paying taxes. Maybe it could shift those resources away from chasing the small person who is grinding it out day in, day out.
I would like to hear from my colleague if he thinks that CRA should be giving priority to those who are not paying their fair share off the backs of everyday working Canadians, shifting their money out of the country to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.