Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his work as finance critic, and I want to thank the NDP members who have examined the issue of money laundering.
The Liberal government has taken a leadership role on beneficial ownership. As I said in my speech, the Minister of Finance met with his provincial counterparts and came to an agreement with them to move forward with harmonization and to get a better idea of who owns Canadian companies. He realizes that the vast majority of businesses fall under provincial jurisdiction, so he must work with the provinces.
Under the leadership of the federal government and the Minister of Finance, we are working with the provinces to give authorities greater access to the beneficial ownership of Canadian companies, to see where the owners of different companies are located.
In addition, we allocated significant resources to the Canada Revenue Agency in the 2016 and 2017 budgets to help the agency combat tax evasion or avoidance. This has been a priority for our government since we came to power.
This obviously will not happen overnight; these investigations take time. It will also take a significant amount of job training. This was obviously not a priority for the former government, but has been for us since budget 2016. I think this is clear to the Canadians watching.