Madam Speaker, first, that is a complete falsehood. Conservatives have spoken out against corporate welfare. We were the first party to stand in the House and insist that the wage subsidy not go to paying dividends. I warned, on the floor of this House of Commons, the then finance minister, Bill Morneau, that if he did not ban it, corporations would use the wage subsidy to pay dividends to executives and wealthy shareholders. He ignored me, and that is exactly what they did. We, on this side, were the ones who spoke out against it. We are the party that opposes corporate welfare.
However, the member asked about these tax revenues that they want to generate by closing loopholes and shutting down, as we call them in French, the “paradis fiscaux”. Of course we agree that everybody should pay their own fair share, but I find that when these left-wing governments take office, although they always claim that rich people will pay, rich people never end up paying, and it ends it being the middle class and the working people who get the full bill.
The current government cannot produce a single, solitary shred of evidence that it is raising any new money from the rich. Yes, the Liberals raised the rate, but there is not one annual filing from Revenue Canada that shows it generated a nickel in new revenue. The poor will end up paying for—