Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for endeavouring to give the House a straight answer. I believe that this is a fundamental issue related to today's debate.
The other question that I would like to ask is whether the government is prepared to continuously monitor tax conventions.
I will come back to the debate on Bill C-82. The one thing the government and its officials have admitted is that tax treaty abuse does occur. Bill C-82 is before us so we can renew and improve tax conventions.
The question I have for my colleague concerns the conventions in general. I would like to know if the government is engaging in any monitoring or some sort of control of conventions to ensure that, over time, countries with which Canada has double taxation conventions do not become tax havens. Naturally, we hope they are not, but we need to ensure that, over time, they do not become countries with low rates of taxation.
Is the government carefully and continually checking that those countries that Canada has agreements with do not become tax havens and that taxpayers cannot abuse these conventions?